Maj-Britt Willumsen was born in Frederiksberg. In a small, well-written memoir in the anthology Museum midt på dagen – 80’er digtere skriver erindring i utide, 1991, she writes about her childhood, during which the family constantly moved home. As a self-taught craftsman, her father built the houses, but soon after they were finished, wanted to move on, so mother and children followed suit and learned not to form attachments.
In Maj-Britt Willumsen’s poems, it is emotions and relationships between people that are prominent in a typical present day, between the words and in the moments and present day that are captured in the poems. After her debut in 1981 with her poetry collection Strandvask, which came into being in concrete surroundings and has the familiar backdrop of a 1970s residential environment, she published her remarkable poetry collections Stød, 1984, Trang, 1985, Voldsom foran glas, 1988, and Saltet med ild, 1995. Together with the poet Camilla Christensen, she published the anthology Svingfigur. Kvindelige digtere 1980-90, 1991, with a postscript about trends among the new women poets. She is represented in a large number of anthologies about modern Danish literature, and is one of the founders of the association Danske Skønlitterære Forfattere (Danish Writers of Fiction and Poetry).
Additions by the editorial team 2011:
The above biography was first published in 1998. Since then, Maj-Britt Willumsen has published the novel Gå til hundene, 2003.