W. N. Herbert

W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee in 1961, and educated there and at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he published his thesis on the Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid (To Circumjack MacDiarmid, OUP, 1992).

His poetry collections with the northern publisher Bloodaxe have won numerous accolades. Forked Tongue (1994) was selected for the New Generation promotion, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot and Saltire prizes. Cabaret McGonagall (1996) was shortlisted for the Forward and McVities prizes; and The Laurelude (1998), written whilst he was the first Wordsworth Fellow at Grasmere, was a PBS Recommendation. All three books won Scottish Arts Council book awards. The Big Bumper Book of Troy (2002) was longlisted for Scottish Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Saltire Prize. Bad Shaman Blues (2006), was a PBS Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Saltire prizes. Recent books include Omnesia (2013), a PBS recommendation, and The Wreck of the Fathership (2020). From 2013-2018 he was Dundee’s first Makar, or City Laureate. In 2014 he gained an honorary degree from Dundee University, in 2015 he was awarded a Cholmondeley prize, and in 2016, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

After holding several Scottish residencies he moved to Newcastle in 1994 to take up what was then the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship, and has remained there ever since, holding residencies with Cumbria Arts in Education and the Wordsworth Trust. He taught in the Department of Creative Writing at Lancaster University (1996-2002), and is currently Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

He has engaged in numerous public art and cross-media projects in the North-East and Borders, making a film in Berwick, originating sculptures and stained glass pieces in Ambleside, Dumfries, Sunderland and North Tyneside, and wrote a poem for a strip of stainless steel set into the pavement in Graingertown, Newcastle. He has produced libretti for the composers Keith Morris, Naomi Pinnock and Evangelia Rigaki. He edited the interactive CD-ROM Book of the North (NWN, 2000), featuring prominent writers and artists from the region. In 2009 he collaborated with poets Andy Croft and Paul Summers on a collaborative volume of verse about the Moscow Metro, Three Men on the Metro, (Five Leaves Press, 2009). Since 2001 he has been the lead poet for the award-winning Westpark development in Darlington, a text-led public art project.

He was co-editor with Richard Price of the Scottish cultural magazine Gairfish (1989-1994), culminating in the anthology Contraflow on the Superhighway: an Informationist Primer (Gairfish/Southfields, 1994). In 2000 he edited the bestselling anthology Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry with Matthew Hollis. In 2006 he contributed the poetry section to Creative Writing: A Workbook (Open University/Routledge), which appeared from Routledge as a separate volume, Writing Poetry, in 2010. With Andy Jackson he has edited an anthology of historic and contemporary poetry from his home city of Dundee, Whaleback City (EUP, 2013), and an anthology of political poetry, New Boots and Pantisocracies (Smokestack, 2016).

In 2007 he edited an anthology of translations from contemporary Bulgarian poetry and original poetry by the translators called A Balkan Exchange (Arc); and with Martin Orwin he translated the Somali poet Gaarriye for the Poetry Translation Centre, published as a pamphlet by Enitharmon in 2008. In 2012, he co-edited an anthology on contemporary Chinese poetry, Jade Ladder, working with the prominent Chinese poet, Yang Lian, and the translator Brian Holton, following this with a further book of translations into and out of Chinese, The Third Shore, also edited with Yang Lian (Shearsman, 2013). In 2018 he edited So At One With You, an anthology of modern Somali poetry, with Said Jama Hussein (Poetry Translation Centre/Pointe Invisible). In 2021, he co-translated The Kindly Interrogator, poems from the Persian, with its author, Alireza Abiz (Shearsman).

He lives in an old lighthouse in North Shields with the novelist and editor Debbie Taylor. They have one daughter, Issie.