1998 Tua Forsström, Finland: Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar

1998 Tua Forsström, Finland: Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar

About the author

Tua Forsström was born in Porvoo in Finland and is best known as a poet, but has also written revues, radio plays, closet plays, cabarets and texts for an oratorio and a cantata. She has received a wealth of literary honours, e.g. Radio Sweden’s lyric poetry prize and the Edith Södergran Prize. Her mother tongue is Swedish, and she is considered one of the most important Swedish-language writers in Finland.

About the winning piece

After Spending a Night Among Horses is a collection of 26 poems in the form of addressed letters, often to Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky. The book can be described as a collage and often presents quotations from other literature and the film world. Nature and animals, including horses, are a key component in Tua Forsström’s literature. The animals represent the freedom to be and to feel, and they also show the frailty of life. The collection of poems moves around the whole world and expresses the perishableness of everything and the loneliness of man – always present in life.

Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar (After Spending a Night Among Horses)

Published by: Albert Bonnier's publishing company 

Publication year: 1997

This is what the Adjudicating Committee had to say

The Nordic Council Literature Prize 1998 is awarded to the Finnish writer Tua Forsström for “After Spending a Night Among Horses”, which is a multifaceted collection of poems, with streaks of humour and sorrow. It is thematically coherent, musical and has a strong presence in the present.