Allison Joseph has selected my poems “The Birth of Venus,” “Liminal Passage,” “Ice Storm,” and “Journal of the Plague Year,” for the 2022 Arts & Letters/Rumi Prize for Poetry. The prize includes $1,000 and publication of the poems in Arts & Letters’ upcoming Fall issue.
On Empathy & Extinction
Q & A with W. J. Herbert and Priyanka Ray of Beacon Press: With Radical Empathy, Perhaps We Can Save What’s Left of Life on Our Planet.
Dear Specimen, Poetry for the Extinction Crisis: An Interview on NPR’s Living on Earth with Host Steve Curwood.
Dear Specimen: Poetry for the Extinction Crisis: Poet W. J. Herbert joins Host Steve Curwood to explore the role of poetry in revealing and consoling our anxieties about the climate and extinction crises. Herbert reads poems from her debut poetry collection throughout the interview.
INTERVIEW WITH BILL MCKIBBEN FOR THE NEW YORKER CLIMATE CRISIS NEWSLETTER
Dear Specimen is featured in this “Passing the Mic” segment of Bill McKibben’s weekly newsletter. Thanks for your insightful questions, Bill, and for giving me the opportunity to share some of the collection’s poems with your readers.
AT THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR!
Miami Book Fair Interview with Kwame Dawes & W J Herbert: A reading and interview with the judge of my 2020 National Poetry Series-winning debut collection, Dear Specimen. Please watch free & on demand anytime!
NEWS/INTERVIEWS
“Inspiration in the Stacks: Four Questions for W.J. Herbert
Many thanks to Julie Swarstad Johnson, library specialist at the University of Arizona Poetry Center for hosting this interview on the center’s blog on January 28, 2021. In the interview, she and I discuss the creation of my prize-winning poetry collection, “Dear Specimen.”
Winner of the National Poetry Series
I am thrilled to announce that Kwame Dawes has chosen my debut full-length poetry manuscript, “Dear Specimen,” as his pick for this year’s National Poetry Series Competition. The manuscript will be published in Fall, 2021 by Beacon Press. More than 1,400 poets entered this year! I am very grateful to my family, friends, and fellow poets who helped make this win possible. Thank you!
“Riddles of Flock & Bone” Named Finalist for 2020 Texas Review Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize
“Speciesism” Named First Runner-up for 2019 River Styx International Poetry Prize
Judge Octavio de la Paz remarked: “I delighted in the close and rapturous looks at things in jars but also the wisdom beyond what is contained.”
“Lyuba and other Poems” Named Finalist for 2019 New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Poetry Prize.
“Riddles of Flock & Bone” Named as Finalist for 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship
I am thrilled to have been selected by judge Patricia Smith as finalist for the 2019 PSA Chapbook Fellowship. From a field of nearly 400 entrants, Ms. Smith chose “Riddles of Flock & Bone” as one of her two finalist picks. I am honored to have been recognized by a poet whom I greatly admire.
“Riddles of Flock & Bone” Named Second Runner-up for 2019 Slapering Holl Press Chapbook Prize
“Riddles of Flock & Bone” Named Finalist for 2018 Autumn House Press Chapbook Prize
“Mounting the Dove Box” Anthologized in 2017
W.J. Herbert’s sonnet, “Mounting the Dove Box,” was selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner and nineteenth US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2017. Chosen by David Lehman as second prize winner in the 2015 Morton Marr competition, the poem first appeared in The Southwest Review, Vol. 101, No.1.
In a series that Robert Pinsky has said offers “a vivid snapshot of what a distinguished poet finds exciting, fresh, and memorable,” this year’s volume of The Best American Poetry 2017 will be published by Scribner in cloth and paperback in September.