Eleonora Luthander

Eleonora Luthander (née Damjanović; 9 February 1954 - 25 August 2021), born in Kruševac, Yugoslavia, was a Swedish and Serbian poet, columnist and translator.

Biography Luthander studied at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade. Between 1986 and 1994 she lived on the Adriatic island of Hvar in Croatia where she made her debut as a writer in 1993 with the book Žvončići sreće.

She has published over 30 books and translations partly through her Swedish book publisher Ord & Visor. She has translated contemporary Swedish poets in Serbian; Kristina Lugn, Bruno K. Öijer, Lukas Moodysson and Ulf Lundell and haiku poetry from Dag Hammarskjöld. Her poetry collections Diktogram and Vägen till Gdinj (Road to Gdinj) are listed in the Swedish Academy's Nobel Library.

Luthander was a member of the Swedish Writers Association and the Swedish Immigrant Writers Association, later renamed the Swedish International Writers Association. She worked as a columnist for the magazine Sesam Öppnar Dörrar.

She often participated in poetry slam competitions in Sweden, both as a contestant and as an organizer. Luthander often drew inspiration from Japan; several of her published works are Japanese short poems, haiku. Luthander folded origami flowers and wrote her poems on stalks. She brought haiku, origami and ikebana together into her own Orikebana.

She was married to the Swedish journalist Per Luthander between 1975 and 1986. She has a daughter and a son, they both live in Stockholm.

Style Her poems are often described with sense of joy and energy. The poetry is straightforward and unadorned as stylistic for poets such as Märta Tikkanen, Kristina Lugn and Bodil Malmsten. Luthander's poems are unsentimental and the imagery is original and sometimes drastic.