Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann FRSL was born in 1957 in Freiburg, the son of German parents, and came to England in 1961. He lives in London, having taught for many years at the University of Florida. He has translated nigh on a hundred books from the German, including the novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which won the 2024 International Booker Prize. He has edited selections from Malcolm Lowry, W. S. Graham, John Berryman and Robert Lowell. He reviews for the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and the Australian Book Review; his criticism has twice been collected, in Behind the Lines (2001) and Where Have You Been? (2015). In 2020 he gave the Clarendon Lectures (‘Messing About in Boats’) on four poems in four European languages. He has published five books of poems, most recently One Lark, One Horse (Faber & Faber, 2018). A further volume, Caret, is in preparation. Author photo © Gary Doak