Kenneth White was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, but he spent his childhood and adolescence at Fairlie near Largs on the Ayrshire coast, where his father worked as a railway signalman.

In 1989, White founded the International Institute of Geopoetics to promote further research into the cross-cultural, transdisciplinary field of study which he had been developing during the previous decade.

In October 2005, Kenneth White delivered a series of three lectures on the Geopoetics project in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

He was an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and was recently appointed a visiting professor at Scotland's UHI Millennium Institute.

[3] Kenneth White lived on the north coast of Brittany with his wife Marie-Claude, who is a translator and photographer.