W. N. Herbert FRSL, also known as Bill Herbert (born 1961) is a poet from Dundee, Scotland. He writes in both English and Scots. He and Richard Price founded the poetry magazine Gairfish. He currently teaches at Newcastle University.^[1]

Herbert was born in 1961 in Dundee. He was educated at Grove Academy and then studied at Brasenose College, Oxford gaining a Doctor of Philosophy in 1992 after completing a thesis on the work of Hugh MacDiarmid.^[2]

In 1994, he was one of 20 poets chosen by a panel of judges, as the New Generation in a promotion organised by the Poetry Society.^[3] He was one of the writers involved in the Informationist poetry movement that emerged in Scotland in the 1990s.

He became a Professor of Poetry & Creative Writing at the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University.^[4]

In September 2013, Herbert was appointed as Dundee's first makar.^[5]

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015.^[6]