Andrew Hudgins is as Southern as a pair of clay-stained sneakers on a front porch. His juggling of the bigotry and old world gentility of Southern culture is sometimes jarring, sometimes elegant, but always subversive in its effectiveness. His poetry frequently tells a joke at which the reader doesn't want to laugh (especially not in public), but classifying Hudgins as a shock poet, the kind that relies on gimmickry and outlandishness, is shortsighted and erroneous. His poetry, so meticulous in its execution, is rooted in the Southern tradition of storytelling and an unflinching examination of the self; it is as much W.H. Auden and William Stafford as it is Jerry Springer.

Hudgins was born in Killeen, Texas in 1951, but spent the majority of his childhood and teenage years in Montgomery,

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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Andrew Hudgins". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 December 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11885, accessed 31 October 2024.]