On October 6, 2011, poet and psychologist Tomas Transtromer became the first Swedish recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1974. Transtromer is also the first poet to receive the honor since Wislawa Szymborska, of Poland, in 1996. The Nobel Prize organization lauded Transtromer in their announcement: “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.”

Transtromer, born in Stockholm in 1931, is known in the United States for his poetry collections, Secrets Along the Way, The Half-Finished Heaven, and The Great Enigma, most prominently translated by poet, Robert Bly, who first introduced his work to the U.S. in the 1960’s. Thanks to a life of growing global acclaim, Transtromer’s work now appears in more than fifty languages. Unfortunately, he suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him paralyzed and severely limited his ability to speak.

“His poems have a kind of stark, piercing inwardness that’s very striking,” said poet Robert Hass. “There are lots of poems written about driving back and forth to work, poems about dawn, poems about dusk. He gets those moments in life, those ordinary periods of change.”

Source: Associated Press

Photo Credit: Paula Transtromer/Associated Press