Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for “bold and inventive” works that fuse the classical and the modern and blur the boundaries of poetry and prose.
The Toronto-born Carson, 76, has drawn on themes from classical Greek and Roman literature, modern influences and personal experience for genre-blending titles that have ranged from translations of ancient Greek poets to collaborations with dancers and musicians, including Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.
The Swedish Academy that awards the prize said she won “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
The permanent secretary of the academy said the author was in Iceland “listening to the wind” when the panel reached her to notify her of the honor.
Asked how she felt about the award, Carson told the Icelandic public broadcaster RUV: “I think they’re all crazy.” She described the conversation with the academy as “rather halting.”
“They have the usual questions, and I have no answers,” she said.
She said poetry is “probably more useful than prose right now because it’s faster, and everybody is in a hurry. So basically I think it’s good because it’s brief. Except Homer. Homer’s not brief.”
Carson is among the more high-profile recent winners of the literature Nobel, which often honors authors little known outside of the literary world and is sometimes criticized for valuing literary experimentation over the ability to connect with a broad readership.
However, the prize can also introduce readers to writers and works beyond their own languages or reading habits. Among previous recipients whose books sales surged: Alice Munro, who won in 2013 and had been the last Canadian honored before Carson.
Asked how the prize would change her sales, Carson said: “I’ll get a sticker on the front of my book. Stickers help.”
Carson’s books include “Eros the Bittersweet,” a look at the pleasure and pain of desire in ancient Greek literature, the verse novel “Autobiography of Red,” as well as “Men in the Off Hours,” a collection of poetry and prose that won Canada’s Griffin Prize for poetry in 2001, and “Norma Jeane Baker of Troy,” which compares Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy.
“Autobiography of Red,” which reimagined the myth of Hercules and the monster Geryon as a love story, is likely her best known work. It has sold nearly 100,000 copies in the U.S. alone, according to a spokesman for Alfred A. Knopf, which published the book in 1998.
She also has translated works of classical Greek literature that, the academy said, “may be regarded as independent works in their own right.” They include “If Not, Winter,” based on poem fragments by Sappho, Sophocles’ tragic plays “Electra” and “Antigone” and Euripides’ “Bakkhai.”
