Nobel Prize in literature for the bold and imaginative poetry of Anne Carson

BarcelonaThe Canadian writer Anne Carson (Toronto, 1950) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this Thursday. Author of books such as Decreacion, Beauty of the Husband and Albertine—all published by Vaso Roto and translated into Catalan by Núria Busquet Molist—, the poet is one of the most prominent voices of her generation. Carson has been awarded "for having created an audacious and inventive literature, which, starting from the classical tradition, has built new forms of contemporary literature." The Nobel Committee called the writer to announce the recognition. "We spoke for only a few minutes. She was very surprised and happy. She told me she was in Iceland listening to the wind," said the secretary of the Swedish Academy, Ingrid Carlberg.

Most of Carson's literary work has focused on the philological obsession with words and the poet's desire to create new meanings. With her doctoral project, the poet started from the work of Sappho to reinterpret it. The work became a book, titled If not, winter (2002). Through those fragments of Sappho, Carson delved into the study of archaic and classical Greek literature and translated other fundamental works such as Antigone by Sophocles, Oresteia by Aeschylus and The Bacchae by Euripides. Among the author's modern influences are Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith and Virginia Woolf, whom she considers "the most important author in the history of literature."

"Carson's poetry manages to bring us different voices that play with one another. Her way of working has resulted in works that move between classical and modern poetry and that have inspired new forms of contemporary literature," highlights the president of the Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson. One of the writer's most prominent titles is The glass essay (1995), a long poem about grief and love that blurs narrative genres from the perspective of a woman who has been abandoned by her husband. In Carson's work, there is also a strong impact from Emily Brontë, who even appears directly in this text with fragments of her verses. Three years after The glass essay came Autobiography in red (in Spanish by Vaso Roto), considered one of her best works. "With a great sensitivity for idiomatic turns and the experiences of the current era, Carson takes as a starting point fragments of poems by the 6th century BC Greek poet Stesichorus about the winged and red monster from the myth of Geryon," states Olsson.

"Anne Carson's poetry has a very deep sediment of philosophy and knowledge of classical culture, and from there she takes it to places that can be deeply relevant to today," says the poet Maria Callís, who when she was co-director, together with Manuel Forcano, of the Barcelona Poesia festival managed to have Carson participate with a memorable recital at the Palau de la Música in May 2025. "Audacity and intelligence" are two concepts that Callís uses to describe the work of the Nobel laureate.

A playful intellectual

"She is an intellectual, above all else," asserts Núria Busquet Molist, who has so far translated six of the Canadian poet's books, including one yet to be published, Economy of the Unlost. "But she is an intellectual who doesn't take herself too seriously. And that makes her very special because she makes books that require careful reading, but that make you smile, sometimes. Because you realize she is pulling your leg a bit, that she is playing the role of the intellectual," adds Busquet Molist, who agrees with Callís in describing Carson as a "bold and brave" writer who "has no problems combining different literary genres and different ways of seeing things, in saying one thing at the beginning and something different at the end." "One thing that makes me very nervous about her is that sometimes she invents quotes and supposedly autobiographical things that we all know are not true," says the translator. "And all mixed with all these kinds of ghosts from classical Greece."

In several interviews, Carson has explained that boredom has always been a stimulus for creation. She has also often shown her gratitude to readers. "Grace goes back and forth between the creator of a work of art and their audience, as between one who gives and one who receives a gift. Neither could exist without the other," she said in 2020, when she received the Princess of Asturias Award.

Throughout her career, the poet has not turned her back on other disciplines and has combined literary creation with collaborations with choreographers, visual artists, and stage directors. These experiences have directly influenced her creation, sometimes with theatrical touches and a strong visual power. Nox (published in Spanish by Vaso Roto, 2018) was the first book of poetry by Carson written after the death of her brother. Through those verses, the writer delved into absence and grief, but also into the memories she shared with him.

Anne Carson was unpublished in Catalan until 2023, when Vaso Roto published Decreation. Subsequently, Beauty of the Husband, Albertine and Wrong Norma arrived, all four translated by Núria Busquet Molist, who has also been the translator of another Nobel Prize in Literature winner: the American poet Louise Glück. And now she has underway the translation for Lleonard Muntaner of the tetralogy by Joyce Carol Oates, a writer who year after year appears as a candidate for the Nobel. She has also translated Carson's Bittersweet Eros, which Veles i Vents will publish this month. The book is, according to the publisher, "an exploration of the nature of love and desire based on ancient poetry" and "a display of sagacity".

Last year, Carson visited Barcelona to attend the 40th International Poetry Festival. On stage, the writer dedicated brief reflections imbued with lyricism to the Homo sapiens, to trout, to the exile of the poet Ovid and to the sculptor Camille Claudel, who lived the last thirty years of her life in an asylum. She also spoke of a memory linked to her mother: "Mother forbade us from walking backwards. That is how the dead walk, she said. Where had she gotten that idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. After all, the dead do not walk backwards, but they do walk behind us," said the poet.

"We had been wanting to bring Anne Carson to the festival for four years. It was thanks to Aurelio Major and Valerie Miles, two of her friends, that we finally managed it, because it is not easy to access her," says Maria Callís, who as a reader began to delve into the poetic universe of Anne Carson with Beauty of the Husband. "It seems to me a good entry point to a poetry that is a eulogy to difficulty; it is not placid poetry. And the last thing I read of hers is Nox, which is a precious book, a very beautiful book-object that reflects on the death of her brother with moments of great delicacy," recommends Callís.

Carson is the second Canadian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Alice Munro. Last year, the prize distinguished the Hungarian writer László Krasnahorkai –author of novels such as Satanango – for his "passionate and visionary work, which, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art". The award is endowed with 12 million Swedish kronor (1.07 million euros), after the Nobel Foundation increased the amount in 2026.