Tranströmer, Tomas

Tranströmer, Tomas 1931–, Swedish poet, grad. Stockholm Univ. (1956). Widely considered Sweden's greatest living poet, he is also Scandinavia's most important contemporary poet. A published poet since the 1950s, he is also a well-known psychologist who has specialized in treating adolescent prisoners, addicts, and the disabled. His modernist poetry has been described as icily lyrical, elegant and direct, and very much of its own time. It frequently revolves around his own experiences, often evokes the stark landscape of his homeland, and is replete with strikingly unusual imagery. He has published more than 20 volumes of verse, and his work has been translated into some 50 languages. Among the English translations of his work are Night Vision (1972), For the Living and the Dead: New Poems and a Memoir (1995), The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (2001), and The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (2006). In 1990 he suffered a stroke that affected his speech, but he has continued to write poetry.