Gwyneth Herbert

Born in South London and now based in Weston-super-Mare, Gwyneth Herbet is a singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and writer who by her own admission has never called herself a poet. She has however ‘always wanted to be a story maker’ and ‘the musicality of language and connection form the heart of [her] artistic practice’.

Among Herbert’s most impactful works to date are her heartfelt 2018 album and touring project Letters I Haven’t Written, which began as a letter to a friend who’d just taken her life and led to Herbert ‘connecting deeply with people around the country,’ as ‘at each performance, audience members offered up their own unsent words of grief, regret and gratitude.’ And her soundscape project View In View Out which explored the land and stories of the Mendip Hills.

‘Poetry feels like a way of being in the world to me. It helps me live in the pain-joy-wonder-mess of my everyday life’.

Herbert cites a wide-ranging collection of artists as having offered inspiration and influence in her work, including Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Fran Landesman, Fran Lock, James Baldwin, Margaret Attwood, Max Richter, Nina Simone, Ram Das and Rikki Ducornet. And though her base may be in other art forms she says that she was drawn to poetry through ‘its music – how somehow the sound patterns and rhythms could light up [her] heart in a way that prose didn’t’.

For Herbert, being a part of A Poet in Every Port ‘is a gift’, and as well as ‘deepening [her] own creative practice’, she is looking forward to ‘developing tools to take into [her] work as an activist and workshop facilitator, helping to serve the community of poets-in-the-making on [her] doorstep and beyond.