Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) was Sweden's foremost poet, and the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature was awarded not for a single work but for his entire body of poetry. Beginning with his debut collection 17 Poems (1954) and spanning more than ten volumes, his verse explores the border between dream and waking life, the intersection of nature and human interiority, and the passage of memory and time in language of striking clarity. His work has been translated into over sixty languages, and he later received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011.

A body of poetry that illuminates the boundary between dream and waking, nature and interior depth, in language of transparent clarity.