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Prize-winning poet

October 6, 2011

Sweden's own Tomas Tranströmer has won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in the country that bestows the prize.

https://p.dw.com/p/12mxB
Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2011Image: picture-alliance/dpa

The Nobel Prize academy said that the 80-year-old poet had received the prize "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."

It's the first time in more than three decades the award has been given to a native of Sweden.

The award also comes some 20 years after a stroke severely impaired Tranströmer's speech and left him partially paralyzed.

Born in Stockholm in 1931 to a journalist and teacher, Tranströmer began penning works in his teenage years. He celebrated his literary debut in 1954, at age 23, with a collection of poems. His work has meanwhile been translated into some 50 languages.

The trained psychologist worked with juvenile offenders following graduation from Stockholm University in 1956, writing poetry and then memoirs all the while.

Continuing to write with a helping hand

Swedish landscape
Sweden's landscapes are themselves poeticImage: picture-alliance / dpa

He resumed writing following his stroke, writing the volume of memoirs "Memories are Watching Me," which was published in 1993, with the help of his wife.

Noted US poet Robert Bly has translated Tranströmer's work into English, saying the Swedish poet "has a strange genius for the image."

Tranströmer's works include his debut collection "Seventeen Poems," as well as "The Sorrow Gondola," in which Tranströmer describes his feelings on losing his ability to speak. "The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems" appeared in 2006.

The line "Here the walker suddenly meets the giant oak tree, like a petrified elk whose crown is furlongs wide before the September ocean's murky green fortress," from the poem "Autumnal Archipelago," is found within the latter collection.

In the run-up to the announcement, literary critics considered possible candidates to be everyone from Syrian poet Adonis, to poetic music legend Bob Dylan to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

The prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.45 million) is the fourth of this year's Nobel awards announced this week.

Author: Louisa Schaefer (Reuters, dpa, AFP)

Editor: Stuart Tiffen