Born in Toronto, Anne Carson has a deep and long-standing relationship with Europe, having both lived in and frequently visited several countries for academic work, artistic collaborations, and personal journeys. Ms Carson also holds Icelandic citizenship.
Owing to her background as a renowned classicist and poet, Europe features heavily in her work. Some of her most notable European connections include:
• Scotland: Early in her academic career, she studied Greek metrics at the University of St Andrews.
• Spain: In 1983, she walked the famous Camino de Santiago, trekking across northern Spain from the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela. This profound journey inspired her famous multi-genre travel essay, Kinds of Water. She returned to Spain in 2020 to accept the prestigious Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
• Denmark: Her well-known elegy Nox was written after her estranged brother, Michael, died unexpectedly in Copenhagen in 2000, prompting her to handle his memory across the Atlantic. She also travelled back to Denmark in 2024 as a guest at the Louisiana Literature Festival.
• Germany: In 2007, she lived in Berlin as an ‘Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow’ at the American Academy in Berlin, where she worked on her translation of the ancient Greek play Prometheus Bound.
• Iceland: Together with Robert Currie, her husband, Anne Carson has spent time living and working in Reykjavik for part of every year since 2008. She has frequently used the country’s vast, quiet landscapes as creative inspiration.
As a major international cultural figure and a translator of Antigone, Anne Carson regularly visits European cities, including London, Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Luxembourg and Basel – for theatre productions, poetry readings and lectures. For Carson, Europe is not merely a destination, but a living archive from which her creative work continually draws breath.
