The Laurelude

by W.N. Herbert

For nearly three hundred years Scotland and England were the Laurel and Hardy of nations. For nearly two hundred years The Prelude was a poem by Wordsworth. Something had to give. As Britain begins to resemble a cut-up by William Burroughs, and the heritage of Robert Burns is flushed down a lavvie in Leith, one verse-monger steps forward to do battle with (or possibly for) cultural chaos. Bill Herbert’s Laurelude is in three The Laurelude is a blank verse myth about Ulverston’s Idiot Boy, Stan Laurel. Othermoor depicts a cubist version of the North where the Wild Boy himself, the late Bill Burroughs, rewrites the rules. And The Madmen of Elgin squashes both Lost Boys and Solitary Reapers into Middle Scots verse forms for a pre-millennial song-and-dance. Like Oliver Hardy this volume refuses to be it bursts all borders, literary and political, creating a zone where the Hollywood musical meets the Jolly Beggars, where lament bumps into love lyric, where the dictionaries go to die. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1999

About the author

W.N. Herbert FRSL (b. 1961) is a Scottish poet. He writes in both English and Scots. He and Richard Price founded the poetry magazine Gairfish. He currently teaches at Newcastle University.

Herbert was educated at Grove Academy and then studied Brasenose College, Oxford, becoming a Doctor of Philosophy in 1992 after completing a thesis on the work of Hugh MacDiarmid.

In 1994, he was Writer-in-Residence for Morayshire and one of 20 poets chosen by a panel of judges as the New Generation in a promotion organised by the Poetry Society. He was one of the writers involved in the Informationist poetry movement that emerged in Scotland in the 1990s.

In September 2013, Herbert was appointed as Dundee's first makar.

Reviews

[Peter B Waddell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The middle section of this anthology kept me focused for some time. It contains a number of terrific poems that are great on the ear and which rewarding the reader who knows that repeated enjoyment leads to an unpicking of knots and a rich sense of the embroidered design.