David Whyte (poet)

David Whyte (born November 2, 1955) is an English poet. His book The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (1994) topped the bestseller charts in the US.

Life and work

Whyte's mother was from Waterford, Ireland, and his father was a Yorkshireman.^[1][2] He attributes his poetic bent both to his mother's heritage and to the landscape of West Yorkshire. He has memorised swathes of Irish poetry, including works by W. B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. He grew up in West Yorkshire and has commented that he had a "a Wordsworthian childhood".^[3] Whyte has a degree in Marine zoology from Bangor University.^[1][4] During his twenties Whyte worked as a naturalist and lived in the Galapagos Islands, where he had a boating accident and nearly drowned.^[3][5][6][7] He led anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes the Amazon and the Himalayas.^[8]

Whyte moved to the US in 1981 and began his career as a poet in 1986.^[10][11] In 1987, he was approached by a business leader to work as a corporate advisor and run creativity seminars for his staff. Since this time Whyte has worked writing, consulting and lecturing on organisational leadership models.^[6][10][12] He aims to bring forward the vitality and adaptability in workers by unlocking their creativity, mostly working with companies in the UK and US. He seeks to examine the frontiers that leaders are negotiating and the 'structured conversations' that he argues can make up the majority of their roles.^[13] He has worked with companies such as Boeing, AT&T NASA, Toyota, The Royal Air Force and the Arthur Andersen accountancy group.^[14][15] Work and business is the subject of several of his poetry books, including Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as Pilgrimage of Identity, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship ^[3] and The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Self in Corporate America which topped the business best seller lists, selling 125,000 copies.^{[14][15][16][17]}

Whyte has written seven volumes of poetry and three books of prose. He describes his collection Everything is waiting for you (2003) as arising from the grief at the loss of his mother, who was an anchor in his life. He had spent much time looking after her together with his sisters and father.^[18] Pilgrim was published in May 2012.^[1] He has also written for newspapers including The Huffington Post ^[19][20] and The Observer.^[21] He leads group poetry and walking journeys regularly in Ireland, England and Italy.^[3]

He has an honorary degree from Neumann College, Pennsylvania, and is Associate Fellow of both Templeton College, Oxford, and the Saïd Business School, Oxford.^[1][4]

Whyte runs the Many Rivers company and the Institute for conversational leadership.^[8][22] He has lived in Seattle and on Whidbey Island and currently lives in Langley, in the US Pacific North West and holds dual US-British citizenship.^[2][16] He has one daughter, Charlotte, from his second marriage to Dr. Leslie Cotter, and a son, Brendan from his first marriage to Autumn Preble.^[23] Whyte has practised Zen and was a regular rock climber.^[3] He was a close friend of the Irish poet John O'Donohue.^[24]

Works

Poetry collections

• Pilgrim (2012)
• River Flow: New & Selected Poems Revised Edition (Many Rivers Press 2012)
• River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007 (Many Rivers Press 2007)
• Everything is Waiting for You (Many Rivers Press 2003)
• The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press 1996)
• Fire in the Earth (Many Rivers Press 1992)
• Where Many Rivers Meet (Many Rivers Press 1990)
• Songs for Coming Home (Many Rivers Press 1984)

Prose

• The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship (Riverhead 2009)
• Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as A Pilgrimage of Identity (Riverhead 2001)
• The Heart Aroused: Poetry & the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (Doubleday/Currency 1994)

Audiobooks

• Pilgrim
• Sometimes
• Return
• What to remember when waking
• Echoes in the well
• Sweet darkness
• Clear mind wild heart
• Midlife and the great unknown
• Thresholds
• The poetry of self compassion
• Life at the frontier
• A change for the better
• The teacher's vocation
• Make a friend of the unknown
• The opening of eyes
• Faithful to all things
• The power and place of poetry
• Footsteps: A writing life

Further reading

• Poet David Whyte's Questions That Have No Right to Go Away O, Magazine

References

External links

• David Whyte official website, Many Rivers
• Whyte profile in the Financial Times
• TED talk from Whyte 2011
• "The Conversational Nature of Reality", video. 5 mins
• Interview with David Whyte, from Sounds True publishing