Born in Zamora in January 1934, Claudio Rodriguez is one of the most personal poets of the mid-century generation and with his work Don de la ebriedad (1953)-considered to be one of his most important books-he marked the path that his own poetry and that of the rest of his generation would have to follow.In 1951 he moved to Madrid, to study Philosophy and Letters, graduating with a degree in Romance Philology. His biographers point out that his personality as a youth was characterised by two traits: that of being very fond of children, a lover of observing and recreating their games and songs, and that of being a great walker, always out and about. Apparently, his walks through Zamora, along the banks of the Duero and through other Castilian towns were famous.In the Spanish capital he formed a closer relationship with Vicente Aleixandre, the famous poet of the Generation of A 27 and later Nobel Prize-winner for Literature, at whose home all the young poets called, their manuscripts under their arms, to show them to the master.Rodriguez is also the author of other volumes of poetry of such great beauty as Conjuros, Alianza y condena, El vuelo de la celebracion and Casi una leyenda. His great capacity for observation, his natural sense of rhythm and his everyday language, at once concrete and transcendent, combine to form a poetic career from which two basic values may be drawn: solidarity and simplicity.Rodriguez worked intensively as a teacher and lecturer. He served as Reader in Spanish at the universities of Nottingham and Cambridge from 1958 to 1964, and lecturer in Spanish Literature at various American universities with campuses in Spain. Likewise, he was an outstanding translator into Spanish of the works of T.S. Eliot.Claudio Rodriguez won some of the most important awards in Spanish literature, such as the Adonais Poetry Prize (1953 & 1983), the National Poetry Prize (1983) and the Critics Prize (1965), the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters (1993) and Reina Sofia Prize for Latin-American Poetry (1993), granted by Spanish National Heritage and the University of Salamanca. He was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language from 1987 until his death in 1999.
