Hugo Williams, self-styled anglo-american poet

Abstract

Although his poetry gives every appearance of being pre-eminently 'English', Hugo Williams claims he is an 'Anglo-American' poet. This surprising assertion rests on his enthusiastic embrace of American popular culture as well as the construction of a style out of American Imagist, "Objectivist" and Confessional strategies. Both elements of the epithet Anglo-American are examined in relation to the poet's work and in the process Williams' claim is shown to be unsustainable, yet at the same time highly revealing of currents within English literary culture.