Hugo Williams was born in 1942 and grew up in Sussex. He worked on the London Magazine from 1961 to 1970, and has since earned his living as a journalist and travel writer. His Collected Poems, which brings together work from eight books, including the 1999 T. S. Eliot Prize-winning Billy’s Rain, was published in 2002. His poetry collection Dear Room (2006) was shortlisted for...
Videos
Related News Stories
In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion). Judges Blake Morrison (Chair), Selima Hill and Jamie McKendrick chose Hugo Williams’s Billy’s Rain (Faber &...
This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025. The winner of T. S. Eliot Prize 1999 was Hugo Williams for his collection Billy’s Rain (Faber & Faber). Williams was awarded £5,000, the generous gift of Mrs...
