DURHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2000

 

W.N. HERBERT

W.N. Herbert is a highly versatile poet who writes both in English and Scots. Born in 1961 in Dundee, he established his reputation with two collections from Bloodaxe, Forked Tongue (1994) and Cabaret McGonagall (1996). His other books include a critical study, To Circumjack MacDiarmid (Oxford University Press, 1992) and The Testament of the Reverend Thomas Dick (Arc, 1994). His is co-editor with Matthew Hollis of Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry (Bloodaxe).

He was Northern Arts Literary Fellow in 1994-96, has held other residencies, with Dumfries and Galloway (1993), Moray libraries (1993-94) and Dove Cottage (1997-98), and has been Writing Fellow in the Creative Writing Department at Lancaster University since 1976.

All three of his Bloodaxe collections have won Scottish Arts Council Book Awards. Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Saltire Awards, Forked Tongue was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation as well as a selected title in the New Generation Poets promotion. Cabaret MacGonagall was shortlisted for the Forward and McVities prizes.

 

‘A weird mix of Desperate Dan, MacDiarmid and Dostoyevsky….a rare and fantastic voice’

The Guardian

‘In comparison with Cabaret McGonagall, much contemporary poetry seems dim, deaf, invertebrate and, above all, unnecessary’

Sean O’Brien