Louise Gluck reveals 'first thought' after winning 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature

2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”. However, in a brief interview with the Committee official, the 77-year-old poet revealed her “first thought” on learning she won the award was that she “won’t have any friends”. Adding that most of her friends are writers, Glück said then she thought “no, it won’t happen”. Followed by a long pause, the poet said that “it’s too new”, she acknowledged that its a “great honour” to win the prize.

While replying to the question, Glück said, “My first thought was I won’t have any friends, because most of my friends are writers. But then I thought, No, that won’t happen”.

“I don’t know really what it means. And I don’t know whether, I mean it’s a great honour, and then of course there are recipients I don’t admire, but then I think of the ones that I do, and some very recent," she added.

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The Swedish Academy had announced the prize on October 8 and said that the works by the 2020 Literature Laureate are characterized by a striving for clarity. The academy said in a statement, “Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and siblings, is a thematic that has remained central with her”.

Louise Glück made debut in 1968

Louise Glück was born in New York in 1943 and made her poetic debut in 1968 with Firstborn. She was soon acclaimed as one of the most prominent poets in the American contemporary literature and has already received several prestigious awards including Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and National Book Award in 2014. Till now, the 77-year-old poet has published 12 collections of poetry along with some volumes of essays on poetry. Glück is currently a professor of English at Yale University.

Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, said that the Nobel laureate is engaged by the shifting conditions of life and is a poet of radical change & rebirth, where the leap forward is made from a deep sense of loss. His statement added, “In her poems, the self listens for what is left of its dreams and delusions, and nobody can be harder than she in confronting the illusions of the self.”

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Read - Nobel Prize In Literature 2020: Louise Glück Awarded For ‘her Unmistakable Poetic Voice'