“Tradition as innovation”: Anne Carson wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for ““for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.

We asked Filomena Mitrano, Professor of Anglo-American Literature at Ca’ Foscari’s Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, to comment on the news.

“When I heard that Anne Carson had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, I could barely finish lunch with my colleague, trying to maintain the courtesy and kindness he deserves (especially as he knows so much about poetry). But as soon as we finished our coffee, I hurried away, crossed the city, and finally reached Cannaregio. It took me two attempts to get the key into the lock. There it was, right where I left it: I reached out with a trembling, eager hand and finally held it close – “If Not, Winter”: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson. I relive the emotion of reading it for the first time: discovery, astonishment, wonder. That rare wonder we experience when we encounter books that have been waiting for us, books that make us feel as though we are being brought into the world as readers. I shared that sense of wonder with just one of my students, Ignjat, now a fellow interlocutor, who had long admired Carson. For people like Ignjat and me, this Nobel Prize is a precious recognition, particularly for those who love twentieth-century literature, because Carson, among other things, carries forward and transforms what the Anglophone modernists taught us: tradition as innovation.

The Swedish Academy's citation is striking for its clarity and truth: it describes her as ‘bold and inventive’, emphasising her ‘dialogue with the classical tradition’. Turning back to tradition means approaching reading as an act of love – neither monumentalising nor idolising, but generating new forms of writing. Surrendering to another poet, writing alongside another – this is one of the emotions Anne Carson gives us. Like Pound or H. D. before her, Carson looks back and surrenders to a voice reaching us from afar – in her case, Sappho's – a voice we feel we have yet to fully reach. The fragment illuminates and offers us a new word. It is not merely an object of philological study, but a generative encounter: the remnant of a voice calling out to us, a crumb that nevertheless sustains us.

If Not, Winter. Exactly: without poets like Anne Carson, we would be left a little more exposed to winter.”

Anne Carson (b. Toronto, 1950) studied at the University of Toronto. Since 1979, she has taught classics, comparative literature and creative writing at universities in the United States and Canada, including McGill University, the University of Michigan, New York University and Princeton University. With more than twenty books of original writing and translations published to date, she has received Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships and has won the Lannan Literary Award, two Griffin Poetry Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry and the PEN/Nabokov Award. In 2005, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in recognition of her contribution to Canadian literature.

Carson's work was first published in Italy in 2010, with Antropologia dell'acqua, published by Donzelli Editore