This interview took place on April 7,1989 in a high-rise apartment overlooking Indianapolis.

Neville: I don’t get the feeling from your poems that you think of yourself as a wanderer. You’re quite rooted in Sweden, its weather, etc. Would you agree with that?

Tranströmer: I think I’m rooted in the landscape, sights, experiences… You mentioned weather. That’s very important for us who write poetry and for all of us in Sweden. The very strange lights. We are so far North but because of the gulf stream, the climate is rather mild…but the lights are arctic, which is the only place in the world where that takes place. We have these summers that are completely light and the winters that are too dark.

Neville: Yes. long and dark. You have some wonderful summer poems. The feeling of the relief of summer is very strong. You mentioned earlier that when you were younger the primary thing was a very strong relationship to the exterior and nature in Sweden. I was struck in your poems that, though they are very much structured on the inner life, or self, there is still a very exterior quality, and actually there are very few interiors in your poems. The poem “Vermeer” is one of the few I can think of where you are actually inside, in a studio and a tavern. But, I think it’s in “Elegy,” even when you walk into a room, your attention is immediately drawn out of the room, to the window, or to the alley and its traffic. Could you talk about this? It struck me as unusual that your interest is interior but your perception is always outward.

Tranströmer: That probably is the way inspiration works for me—the feeling of being in two places at the same time… 0r of being aware that you are in a place that seems very closed but that actually everything is open. Well, this is vague but it has to do with the whole inspiration that makes a poem for me.