When Bill Herbert was made Dundee Makar (or City Laureate), he intended to write about his home town in both its native tongues. Then within six months his much-loved father died, and that civic idyll was thrown into crisis. This is his Dundonian Book of the Dead, in which he explores both his own grief and the encroachment of a new intolerance.
The anthology features a unique collaboration between Bulgarian and English poets, showcasing their joint efforts in writing, editing, and teaching. It highlights a diverse collection of original poetry and fresh translations, reflecting the cultural exchange and creative synergy between the two groups.
The Big Bumper Book of Troy is driven by sudden shifts of register - English to Scots, free verse to antique stanza, page to performance, narrative to lyric. Everything has become a dialect, yet - cheekily borrowing the Russian composer Schnittke's term - Herbert aims at a disrespectful polystylist unity. It is his most unorthodox rebellion yet against the dictatorship of the slim volume. A riot of colourful humour, a revolution in poetic taste.
As well as representing many of the most important poets of the last 100 years, Strong Words charts many different stances and movements, from modernism to postmodernism, from futurism to the future theories of poetry
Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Come to the Cabaret - on tour somewhat erratically in the North. Sample its impassioned ballads, phantasmata, and despairing satires. The cast includes a suicidal Pict from Galloway, Morayshire's unsavoury Third Corbie, and the demented Edinburgh surgeon, Scrapie Powrie. Appearing now at the House of Fear, King Shit-Click's Palace and Bede's World. In this new collection from W.N. Herbert, the verse veers from the Whitmanic to Dunbar-like flytings, and the language lurches from Scots to English through all half-way houses. The result is a big bad anxious trip through the Information Age with one of the most various of contemporary poets. W.N. Herbert is a highly versatile poet who writes both in Scots and English. Sean O'Brien has called him 'outstanding - a poet whom nothing - including what he terms the Anchises of the Scots Style Sheet - will intimidate'. For Douglas Dunn, his was 'the best writing in Scots - thoughtful, studied, clever - I've seen in years'. Jamie McKendrick admired his 'vibrant' poetry, his 'ear for the sensuous music of Scots' and his 'ability to effect sudden shifts of scale that bring the human and the cosmic face to face'.