STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to Canadian poet Anne Carson for her modern twists on Greek mythology and antiquity that have inspired new forms of contemporary writing, the Swedish Academy said.
The 76-year-old — who announced in 2024 that she has Parkinson’s disease —was honoured “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature,” the Academy said.
The permanent secretary of the Academy, Ingrid Carlberg, said she had briefly spoken to Carson.
“We didn’t have so much time to speak. All she had time to tell me was that she is for the moment in Iceland, where she’s listening to the wind.”
“She was taken by surprise, but very happy. I could hear that in her voice.”
Carson has for more than 15 years spent part of the year in Iceland, where she holds citizenship, according to Icelandic broadcaster RUV.
A professor of classics with a background in dead languages, literature, anthropology and history, she was described by The New York Times in 2001 as “one of the great pasticheurs.”
Her unique contemporary poetry earned her several key literary prizes in the 1990s, including the 1996 Lannan Award and the 1997 Pushcart Prize.
A year later, “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse” — loosely based on the Greek myth of the monster Geryon and Herakles but transformed into a modern tale of a love triangle — received widespread praise.
The Academy called it a “spectacular form of epic poetry with its great lyrical qualities”.
The Academy said almost all of Carson’s literary production “has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning.”
It singled out her 2010 poem “Nox”, printed on one continuous sheet of paper in homage to her brother who died in 2000, as “an unforgettable work”.
“Palpable here is a deep sense of loss that works its way up from below. The result is a creation as sculptural as it is literary, an epitaph in the form of a box containing an accordion-fold-out of pictures, letters and other written texts dedicated to her dead brother.”
It also highlighted her translations from Classical Greek, which “may be regarded as independent works in their own right”.
Academy member Steve Sem-Samberg called Carson “an author for our time”, in an interview with the Nobel Foundation.
Carson had been mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate for years, though some experts said the Academy was unlikely to honour another Canadian so soon after the 2013 prize to short story author Alice Munro.
With her Icelandic citizenship, she is also the country’s second author to win the prize after Halldor Laxness in 1955.
The Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and $1.2 million. — AFP
