Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature. Tranströmer has been suggested as a contender for the prize for many years; in the Prize committee’s words, “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.”
Tranströmer is the most recent author primarily known for poetry to win the award since Wisława Szymborska in 1996.
An Associated Press story available here gives a quick overview of the worldwide interest in the Nobel Prize for Literature and of Tranströmer’s life and work.
Much of Tranströmer’s work is available both in the original Swedish and in translation at UIUC: you can see his work in our catalog here.
We’ve also collected some links having to do with Tranströmer and his work:
- Tranströmer’s website, including a biography, bibliography, selected criticism, selected poetry and settings of his poetry to music
- Publisher Bloodaxe Books’ concise biographical overview and a longer overview (also from Bloodaxe), including an excerpt from Tranströmer’s memoir Memories Look at Me
- Another biographical overview, on the occasion of Tranströmer’s winning the Griffin Poetry Prize
- An interview with Tranströmer by poet Jenny Morelli
- A review of The Sorrow Gondola, one of Tranströmer’s most recent works in translation
- A review of The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems from Contemporary Poetry Review
- A discussion of New Collected Poems at the poetry site Via Negativa
Congratulations to Tomas Tranströmer!
