Backroom 35: Bill Herbert

In the Backroom today is Bill Herbert, an eminent poet and writer on poetry. Bill is an entertaining, accessible, interesting, learned and friendly poet.

His biography is as long as some folk’s arms but I include a summary. Haud yer braith.....

Bill Herbert was born in Dundee in 1961 and educated at Oxford.
He has published eight volumes of poetry and six pamphlets which have garnered many prizes including three Scottish Arts Council Awards and a Northern Arts Award. He has also been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot, Saltire, Forward and McVities prizes. In 2014 he earned a Cholmondeley award from the Society of Authors, and in 2015 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University.He was Makar of Dundee from 2013-18.

Bill has also co-edited with Andrew Jackson two popular poetry blogs. 'New Boots and Pantisocracies' and the brand new 'Postcards from Malthusia'. His new book, called 'The Wreck of the Fathership' is due out in October and here he reads the poem Dirt Bath.





Here is the link to his new book:

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/the-wreck-of-the-fathership-1234

A longer version of his biography along with other recorded poems, can be found here: https://poetryarchive.org/poet/w-n-herbert/


And here is his profile on the SPL Website

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/w-n-herbert/



The Babies


I’m driving at night through the countryside
trying to decide what it is the countryside is
to the side of. Since we all already share
a perfectly good roadside – perhaps it’s beside
this. Certainly there is more to it than verge:
it also has an underneath of sexton beetle,
a canopy of bat and owl and, by the sea,
another side, although, for some reason,
I can’t remember which sea. In fact,
for the moment, I can’t remember which country.
It’s far too dark to confirm any of this
on this particular road, which is narrow,
mountainous, meandering between villages
without lights, banked by mounds of bushes
merged with eucalypti, beneath a milky ribbon
of stars. Then, caught in my headlights,
are two babies standing in their nappies, talking.
They are at once by the roadside and in
the countryside. One turns to watch me, thin-
lipped, drilling his eyes into my tail-lights,
the back of my darkened head, until
the car is out of sight. Then they return
to their sullen, unhurried symposium, as though
I’d never passed, as though I’d never been born.