Let’s start with her work experience programme. There was a shortage of good work experience programme options in Arvidsjaur in northern Sweden, where Elin Käck comes from. So when the famous Swedish poet Bob Hansson came to her upper secondary school, she simply took the chance.
“He visited our school for a documentary. I asked him if I could do my work experience programme with him and he said yes,” says Elin Käck, who is now a senior associate professor at the Department of Culture and Society at Linköping University.
Bob Hansson gave her various assignments, such as writing a poem with all words beginning with the same letter, and then he commented on it. She says it was great fun, especially since at that age she dreamt of becoming a poet.
Jonas RoslundUS-Europe relations
After upper secondary school, she studied literature and worked as an upper secondary school teacher. Her plans for a career as a poet were shelved, but not her interest in poetry. In 2015, she wrote her doctoral thesis on the American poet William Carlos Williams. This gave her the impulse to immerse in American poets’ journeys to Europe during the early and mid-1900s.
In the autumn of 2025, she published the results of almost ten years’ efforts: the book Constructions of Europe in modern American Poetry. It is about twenty American poets’ travels on the European continent and how they were influenced by their experiences and by European colleagues, who in turn were influenced by them.
She sees it as important to talk about this connection between the United States and Europe. Especially today, when the relationship is strained.
“I think it’s only when you realise the major cultural dimension of the Euro-American relationship that you can understand how much we actually need it. The Americans were instrumental in developing what we now think of as European Modernism. It has created some of the greatest art we know of and that exchange of ideas must mean something,” says Elin Käck.
Archive aficionado
Most of her research was done in her spare time, during evenings, nights and summers. It has involved a lot of travelling, mainly to American archives where the various poets’ papers and gadgets are stored. This includes letters and other writings, but also tickets, passports, travel brochures and other things.
Elin Käck admits that she loves spending time in archives. The feeling of touching something you know the poet has touched.
“It’s almost impossible to describe. You really don’t want anything to change and of course you mustn’t break anything. I’ve been lucky, I was always very careful and didn’t have any accidents,” she says.
Jonas Roslund
Journey to freedom
That magical feeling of closeness to history is somewhat reminiscent of what the American poets were looking for when visiting Europe. They wanted to meet the classical culture on site, but also to experience the then emerging trends in art and literature. Those arriving in the early 20th century also found a freedom they did not have in their home country.
“The early generation of modernists were often only able to publish their works in Europe because of censorship in the United States.”
American poets continued to travel to Europe into the 1950s and 60s. It was a like a marker for being a true poet. This is not really the case nowadays. The United States has its own cultural Meccas: New York, San Francisco. Europe is on the internet.
“But with culture sector cuts in the United States, we may also come to see a kind of revival for trips to Europe, although perhaps to other places than before. In recent years, for example, European suburbs that have seen riots have found their way into poetry collections,” says Elin Käck.
The book: Constructions of Europe in Modern American Poetry, (2025) E Käck, Edinburgh University Press
Translation: Anneli Mosell
