Bill Herbert

Background

About Bill Herbert

W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee, and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he published his DPhil thesis (To Circumjack MacDiarmid, OUP, 1992). He has published seven volumes of poetry and four pamphlets, and he is widely anthologised. His last five collections, with Bloodaxe Books, have won numerous accolades. He has been shortlisted twice for the T.S. Eliot prize and twice for the Saltire. He has gained three Poetry Book Society Recommendations, and won three Scottish Arts Council Awards. He has published broadly in the field of Creative Writing, and is a regular reviewer of contemporary poetry. After holding writer's residencies in Dumfires and Galloway and in Morayshire, Bill Herbert moved to Newcastle in 1994 to take up the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship. Subsequently he held residencies with Cumbria Arts in Education and the Wordsworth Trust. He has engaged in numerous public art and cross-media projects in the North-East, making a film in Berwick, originating sculptures in Ambleside and Dumfries, and writing a poem for a strip of stainless steel to be set into the pavement in Graingertown. He is the poetry consultant for the Westpark project, originating text and co-ordinating artworks across this development in Darlington, one of the largest public art projects in the North East. In he edited the bestselling anthology Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry with Matthew Hollis. He also edited the interactive CD-ROM Book of the North (NWN, featuring prominent writers and artists from the region. Specialties: Research Interests Creative Writing theory and practice; contemporary British poetry, especially Scottish poetry, focussing on Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan; poetry in translation. Other Expertise Text and Public Art; poetry in collaboration with other artforms.