Nacido en Los Ángeles, California, fue criado en Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Alberta y Columbia Británica. Estudió arquitectura, lingüística y física en el Massachusetts Institute of Technology, y posteriormente literatura comparada y filosofía en la Universidad de Utah. También posee un BA de la Universidad de Indiana y un MFA en narración creativa de la Universidad de Columbia Británica.

En la actualidad reside en Quadra Island, cerca de Campbell River, Columbia Británica.

• The Shipwright's Log – 1972
• Cadastre – 1973
• Eight Objects – 1975
• Bergschrund – 1975
• Tzuhalem's Mountain – 1982
• The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972–82 – 1982 (nominated for a Governor General's Award), 1985 (Copper Canyon Press)
• Tending the Fire – 1985
• The Blue Roofs of Japan – 1986
• Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music – 1986, 1987 (Copper Canyon Press)
• Conversations with a Toad – 1987
• The Calling: Selected Poems 1970–1995 – 1995
• Elements (with drawings by Ulf Nilsen) – 1995
• The Book of Silences – 2001
• Ursa Major – 2003 (shortlisted for the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize)
• New World Suite Number Three: A poem in four movements for three voices – 2006
• Selected Poems – 2009

• Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada (with Geoffrey James, Russel Keziere & Doris Shadbolt) – 1983
• Ocean/Paper/Stone – 1984
• The Raven Steals the Light (with Bill Reid) – 1984
• Shovels, Shoes and the Slow Rotation of Letters – 1986
• The Black Canoe (with photographs by Ulli Steltzer) – 1991
• Boats Is Saintlier than Captains: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Morality, Language, and Design – 1997
• Native American Oral Literatures and the Unity of the Humanities – 1998
• A Short History of the Printed Word (with Warren Chappell) – 1999
• The Elements of Typographic Style – 1992, revised 1996, revised 2004, revised 2005
• The Solid Form Of Language: An Essay On Writing And Meaning – 2004
• The Tree of Meaning: Thirteen Lectures 2006
• Everywhere Being is Dancing 2007
• The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada – 2008

• A trilogy entitled Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers:
  • A Story As Sharp As a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World – 1999 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
  • Nine Visits to the Mythworld – (a reinterpretation of the stories of mythteller Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas, as collected in 1900 by John Reed Swanton^[1]​) – 2000 (shortlisted for the 2001 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller - Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay – 2002
• Parmenides, The Fragments – 2003

• Esta obra contiene una traducción derivada de «Robert Bringhurst» de Wikipedia en inglés, publicada por sus editores bajo la Licencia de documentación libre de GNU y la Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including audio clip
• Robert Bringhurst reads from Nine Visits to the Mythworld (video)