Following the award of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature to the American poet, Louise Gluck,Belinda Cooke explores her early work which is conveniently gathered together in Carcanet’s  The First Five Books (1997).

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Louise Glück (b. April 22, 1943) is an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised ‘her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal’. Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.

Glück was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. She began to suffer from anorexia nervosa while in high school and later overcame the illness. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University but did not obtain a degree. In addition to being an…