The Works of Tomas Tranströmer

Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) is one of Sweden’s most important writers. He is also one of the most influential figures in contemporary world literature. His career spanned fifty years, and thirteen collections of poetry, which include 170 poems. His poems have been translated into more than 60 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Malayalam. Among the array of awards that he has received are the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1990), the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize (1991), the Griffin Poetry Prize (2007), and the Nobel Prize for Literature (2011).

In Tranströmer’s writing, there is an authentic relationship that bridges poetic articulation and the processes of critical interpretation. It is one that hinges on the equilibrium between experience and expectation. The poetry shows tremendous control and balance. It informs an entire system of considering individual and collective perceptions, which corresponds with the terrain of phenomenological apprehensions. The importance of Tranströmer’s work is the universality that the poetry attains.

In this first book-length study of Tomas Tranströmer’s work, in English, Lim Lee Ching takes on the massive task of scrutinizing all of Tranströmer’s poems.This study deals with the wide variety of ideas and issues that the poet deals with over the course of his long career, in a manner that befits their gravitas. This book is a return to the critical tradition; it provides a poem-by-poem approach to the Tranströmer corpus. This book reveals how much we have to learn from Tomas Tranströmer.

This book is an important addition to all poetry, Modernist studies and Scandinavian literature collections.