American poet adds Nobel Prize

American poet Louise Glück has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature for “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”, the Swedish Academy said yesterday.

Academy permanent secretary Mats Malm said Glück was “surprised and happy” at the news despite receiving it in the early morning North American time.

A professor at Yale University, Glück (77) made her debut in 1968 with Firstborn, and is seen as one of the most prominent poets in American contemporary literature.

Her poetry is characterised by “a striving for clarity”, the Academy said, with a focus on childhood, family life, and close relationships between parents and siblings.

The literature prize has been dogged by controversy over the past several years. The 2016 literature prize granted to Bob Dylan sharply divided opinion over whether a popular musician should be given an award that had been largely the domain of novelists and playwrights.

Last year the Academy exceptionally named two winners after postponing the 2018 prize in the wake of a sexual assault scandal involving the husband of one of its members.