This lecture by Heide Kunzelmann, Director of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre in London, will analyse the Austrian avant-garde poet Hans Carl Artmann’s relationship to the English language and English literature. Artmann (1921 – 2000) was strongly influenced by the aesthetics of English Romanticism and Gothic literature of the 19th and 20th century and by English speaking popular culture. Using Artmann’s example, this lecture explores the way English culture and literature affected the emerging post-War avant garde literature in Austria and looks at curious and fascinating adaptations of British and American literary classics.