Eva Ström is a doctor and lives in Kristianstad and has been a full-time author and critic since the late 1980s. In her first poetry collections Den brinnande zeppelinaren, 1977, and Steinkind, 1979, she demonstrates her skill in creating images, as well as a fascination with myths and folk-tales, and she utilises the world of images and symbols that she became familiar with through her experience in a modern hospital. She describes the experiences of women in intense poetry brimming with allusions.
In her first novel, Det mörka alfabetet, 1981, she points out the relative nature of psychiatry’s distinction between healthy and ill. She does this in a series of poems, which enter the territory of the experimental form of the novel. She also conveys a religious theme and the problem of language and communication, which is also evident in her poetry collection Akra, 1983, and in her prose book Samtal med en daimon, 1986. The poems in Kärleken till matematiken, 1989, can come across as more intellectual, like the philosophy of Enlightenment as opposed to Romanticism that she investigates in the novel Mats Ulfson, 1991.
Edith Södergran, the poet who together with Sylvia Plath has meant the most to Eva Ström, is the subject of a monograph of 1994, and impressions from Södergran’s world are mingled with the war in Yugoslavia in her collection Brandenburg, 1993, which indicated the return of the critical contemporary poem to Sweden. In her poetry collection Berättelser, 1997, this type of poem is developed further as is her intense prose poetry. As a dramatist, Eva Ström has successfully collaborated with the director Susanne Osten in radio plays and theatre plays such as ALLA – utom jag, 1987, and Paddakvariet, 1988.
Additions by the editorial team 2011:
The above biography was first published in 1998. Since then, Eva Ström has published the poetry collections Revbensstäderna, 2002, Rött vill till rött, 2004, and Kniv och flod, 2009, as well as the novels Bröd, 1999, Claires leende, 2007, and Den flödande lyckan, 2011.
Eva Ström is the recipient of a number of awards and honours, including the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2003, Gerard Bonniers lyrikpris 2005, Bellmanprisen 2005, and Tegnérprisen 2010.
