Michael Krüger

(Germany, 1943) is a writer, translator and publisher. He has said that his life's goal is to "show people that a day without poetry is a wasted day." The late Michael Zeeman called him "a romantic in the era of cynicism, a lyrical voice of desire." A selection of Krüger's poetry, Voor het onweer (Before the Storm), was published in 2012, translated by his longtime translator Cees Nooteboom. In his introduction, Nooteboom praised Krüger's "utterly unique" voice "that pulls you into an intimacy, parlando poetry of deceptive simplicity that sees and tells much." From 1968 to 2013, Krüger worked for the famous German Carl Hanser publishing house, which he eventually directed. Since 1975, he has been a jury member for the Petrarch Prize for European poets. In 2013 he became President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.