He was born in 1931 in Stockholm. Since attending second year at Södra Latin School, Tranströmer published poems in the school magazine. The commentaries by his Latin language teacher were that the boy writes “obscure modernistic scribbles”. Tranströmer makes his first appearance at the age of 23, diring his studies of History of Religions and the University of Stockholm. His first poetry book of 17 poems reaches success promoting the big talent and artistic value of the poems. He completes his studies at the Psycho-technical Institute in Stockholm in 1956, and later works in the same Institute till 1960. He writes poetry in the meanwhile. His poetry collections are relatively small in volume, but according to the experts on his work, each of them has a background of years-long work. Until the nineteens he won many awards in poetry, both in his country and abroad. He has been translated in more that forty countries. In 1990 he suffered a stroke that made his right side of the body motionless, and his ability to speak was drastically reduced. Besides this accident, Tranströmer continues his poetry writing and playing the piano with his left hand.