Tranströmer, Tomas, 1931–, Swedish poet, grad. Stockholm Univ. (1956). Regarded as Sweden's greatest living poet, he is also Scandinavia's most important contemporary poet. Published since the 1950s, he was a well-known psychologist as well, specializing in treating adolescent prisoners, addicts, and the disabled. His modernist poetry, usually short in length and muted in tone, 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 widely translated. Among the English translations of his work are Night Vision (1972), For the Living and the Dead: New Poems and a Memoir (1995, repr. 2011), The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (2001), The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (2006), and The Deleted World (2006). In 1990 he suffered a stroke that affected his speech, but he has continued to write poetry. Tranströmer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011.
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