Andrew Hudgins

Andrew Hudgins Poems

Andrew Hudgins Biography

Andrew Hudgins was born into a military family and spent his early childhood moving from base to base. When he was in high school, his family made its last move, to Montgomery, Ala., where his father subsequently retired from the service. Although an average student, Hudgins read voraciously as a child. He decided to become a writer, but, to please his parents who were concerned about his ability to support himself, he earned a teaching certificate while attending college. After graduating in 1974 with a BA in English and history from Huntingdon College, he taught for one year in the Montgomery public school system. To further his writing ambitions, Hudgins attended the University of Alabama, earning an MA in English in 1976. He then spent two years studying at Syracuse University in New York. Upon his return to Montgomery, he taught composition as an adjunct instructor at Auburn University at Montgomery. He then enrolled in the Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa, from which he earned an MFA in 1983. He joined the English department at the University of Cincinnati in 1985 and is now on the English faculty of Ohio State University. Hudgins began publishing his work while still in graduate school. His first book of poems, Saints and Strangers, was published in 1985 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In addition to his many literary awards, Hudgins has also held a number of fellowships in poetry, including residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. Interests and Themes Some of Andrew Hudgins's poetry has been seen to embody the Southern Gothic tradition: grotesque imagery combined with a strong sense of history, religion, and family. Some of his poems are narrative and are told from the points of view of historic or religious figures. He has also written and published personal essays and literary criticism. Literary Awards Witter Bynner Award, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1988 Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 1988, for Saints and Strangers Hanes Award for Poetry, Fellowship of Southern Writers, 1995 Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 1996, for The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer, 2005, Alabama Writers' Forum and Alabama Writers Symposium)

The Best Poem Of Andrew Hudgins

In The Well

My father cinched the rope,
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste

my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got

another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand, my father
dropped me from then to then:

then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my chest.
I shouted. Daddy hauled
the wet rope. I gagged, and pressed

my neighbor's missing dog
against me. I held its death
and rose up to my father.
Then light. Then hands. Then breath.

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