This spoken word artist was born in Pasadena, California to two government agency spies who were so beyond square they were Pentagonal. Growing up on all three coasts (East, West and Gulf), the spiritually hungry budding poet fell under the cosmic spell of Buddhist books by Suzuki and Watts and he read sutras, Sufi writings and the poetry of Gary Snyder and the other Beats, many of which he would later meet.
He made his public reading debut at UC Santa Barbara under the tutelage of Kenneth Rexroth, grand-daddy-o of the Beat generation and he later got started performing regularly by putting $1 poems on the menu where he worked as The Espresso Bar night manager in the early 80's in Pasadena. His first featured reading was on a farm in Northfield, Minnesota, his first solo appearance at Tigh Johnny, an Irish pub on the Rue Montmartre in Paris. Since 1985 he has performed extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the first National Poetry Slam in San Francisco in 1990 he was employed as the barker at the front door. He's hit most of the blue states, some of the red ones and toured Europe four times, often with flute player Margery Snyder and electronica artist DJ Louka (Lucalyptus). He's also collaborated with cellist Michael Kott, guitarists Bob Log III, Steve Westfield and East Bay Ray and appeared with Jello Biafra, Attila the Stockbroker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maya Angelou, Billy Childish and Lydia Lunch.
Whitman McGowan has generated a number of paper and audio collections and published in magazines all over the United States and Europe. The latest anthologies to include him are Poems for the Retired Nihilist (Fortune Teller Press, London, 2005), Public House (Public House Press, San Francisco, 2004), New American Underground Poetry: Volume 1: The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell (Trafford Press, Victoria, B.C., 2005) and Chokecherries (S.O.M.O.S., Taos, New Mexico 2006). His most recent cd Caught in the Act (Little Records, 2003) is a collection of live musically accompanied shenanigans. Whitman McGowan is most famous for his widely performed pagan anthem "White Folks Was Wild Once, Too," also available on a dvd reissue and on the Caught in the Act cd via his website.
Upon meeting the exiled Jura Lama in the basement of a burnt out Swiss nightclub, Whitman McGowan realized his newest calling as a contemporary cool clairvoyant and radically refreshing raconteur, bringing forth a gospel of nondenominational joy in the face of abject misery and doom. Returning home in the physical body to San Francisco he shared his revelations with local Buddhist hymnist Shaku Shotoku, who gave him his new name, Trungpa Bumbleché. He's only just begun to publish and record under this new identity. Nonlinear reality consultant Trungpa B. is now offering impersonal salvation, private speaking, motivational listening, persona training, deep (thinking) discounts, remote emotional counseling, certified infinity brokering, a sex talk hotline (for female aspirants only), and marshmallow artistry. We're not sure what the last phrase means, but it sounds delicious. Trungpa B.'s first book's working title is Fragments of the Jura Lama. It's a collection of aphorisms, epigrams and one-liners "channeled" by His Holiness Grand Master Trungpa Bumbleché, 100,437th-in-line to be next Supreme Lama of Pasadena. You are invited to a satsang with Trungpa B. at his Center for the Self and to worship at his Ego Altar, both of which are wherever he is.
