Gunvor Hofmo

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Passions

Vocation

Norwegian poet. She is considered one of the most important modernist poets in Norway. Hofmo started her literary career submitting poems for publication to a wide variety of presses, including the communist newspaper Friheten ('The Freedom') and weekly magazines such as Hjemmet ('The Home'). One of her first published poems was dedicated to her close friend Ruth Maier. During the Holocaust, Maier was arrested, deported, and killed in Auschwitz (in 1942), and this became by all accounts the central tragedy in Hofmo's life. She was hospitalized in 1943 for depression, starting a lifelong struggle with mental illness. In 1947 Hofmo met the poet Astrid Tollefsen. They moved in together, becoming one of the first Norwegians living in an openly lesbian relationship. They continued to live and travel together until Hofmo was incapacitated and committed for her mental illness. She was institutionalized at Gaustad Psychiatric Hospital, suffering from mental illness, characterized as schizophrenia, paranoid type, from 1955 to 1971, leading to what was known as her "16 years of silence." Following her discharge, she went into a period of considerable productivity, publishing fifteen poetry collections between 1971 and 1994. From 1977 to her death she never left her apartment. Hofmo died on 14 October 1995, in Oslo, aged 74. Link to Wikipedia biography