Herrera describes himself in the Workshop as being “thirsty and hungry, without knowing it.”
“I picked up so many ways of writing,” says Herrera, 68, who was named the country’s 21st poet laureate in 2015 and passed the title to Tracy K. Smith in June 2017. “All the books I’ve written after 1990, all of them used what I learned in the workshop.”
University of Iowa. “Former US Poet Laureate Reflects on His Writing and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.” Iowa Now, 5 July 2017.