Prolific Danish poet, novelist, and essayist, whose major collections of poetry include det (1969) and Alfabet (1981), which demostrates the idea that the language of poetry is an aspect of nature. Inger Christensen was the foremost experimentalist of her generation. Central theme in her work is the distance between language and experience, reality and words. 

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death
('Alphabet 5,' in Alphabet by Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied, New York: New Directions, 2001, p. 14; first published in Danish by Gyldendal as alfabet, 1981)

Inger Christensen was born in the town of Vejle on the eastern coast of Jutland. Her father, Adolf Emanuel Christensen, was a tailor, and mother, Erna Hansine Østergaard, was a former domestic, who later worker in a meat-packing plant. The family lived in an ordinary apartment. In the summers, they went for eight or fourteen days to the south side of Vejle Fjord near Munkebjerg, where the Tailors' Union had a cottage for its members.

From 1940 to 1945, the Nazis occupied Denmark. When Christensen heard a loudspeaker announce that the country had been liberated, her heart pounded, "and the other parts of my body were immediately mobilized to bring my heart and body into equilibrium again." (The Condition of Secrecy: Essays by Inger Christiansen, translated by Susanna Nied, New York: New Directions, 2018) After graduating from Vejle Gymnasium in 1954, Christensen moved to Copenhagen, enrolling in medical school, but later withdrew for financial reasons. She then went to Århus, where she studied at Teachers' College, receiving her teacher certificate in 1958. During this period, she published poems in the journal Hvedekorn, edited by Torben Brostrøm. The poet and critic Poul Borum (1934-1996), whom she married in 1959, guided her early writing. Christensen and Borum divorced in 1976. They had a son, Peter Borum, born in 1973.

After working at the College for Arts in Holbaek in 1963-1964, Christensen devoted herself entirely to writing. Lys (1962, Light), her first collections of poems, and Græs (1963, Grass), examined creativity, self-knowledge, and the function of the language. Also ordinary language philosophy has left traces in her work. In 1964 Christensen became a full-time writer.

Her groundbreaking poetic work from this decade is det (1969, It), which reflected at one level contemporary aesthetic, social and political topics, but innermostly explored existential questions: "I have attempted to tell about a world that does not exist in order to make it exist." (quoted in 'Christensen, Inger' by Sven Hakon Rossel, in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century: Volume 5: Supplement and Index, edited by Steven R. Serafin, New York: Continuum, 1993, p. 140) One of the sources of inspiration was Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar. Christensen's poetry made her a member of the international avant-garde community. After visiting in New York city she said she would never return because there was no place to smoke.

In her novels Christiansen also dealt with creativity, fiction, and reality. Det malede værelse (1976, The painted room) was about the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna, who combined harmony and spatial illusion with mathematical precision. The novel had three different narrators. At the end, the barrier between world and its picture eventually crossed and reality and imagination are thus integrated.

A strong ecological point of view, the anticipation of a doom, dominate the  book length poem Alfabet (1981, Alphabet), twice translated into Swedish. This work is the most famous Danish example of the so-called "systemic poetry" (systemdigtning). The term was described by Steffen Hejlskov Larsen in his book Systemdigtningen: modernismens tredje fase (1971).

Starting with the line "apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist," Christensen's poem is formally structured around alphabets from "a" (apricot trees) to "n" (nights) and on the Fibonacci (c. 1170-c. 1250) sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...), in which every term is the sum of the two previous ones (0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5...). Each number designates the number of poem lines; thus the third poem consists of three lines: "cicadas exist; chicory, chromium / citrus trees; cicadas exist; / cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum". (Ibid., p. 13) The ninth alphabet is "i", and subsequently Christensen started the section with the word "ice" (in Danish "is") – "ice ages exist, ice ages exist, ice of polar seas, kingfishers' ice". The system ends with the letter "n", which has several meanings, including the case in which "n" is the symbol for the set of natural numbers. Susanna Nied's translation of the book was awarded the 1982 American Scandinavian Foundation PEN Translation Prize.

Another famous example of combining systematic thought with poetry is Primo Levi's The Periodic Table (1975), which contrasted the Russian chemist Mendeleyev's periodical table of elements with autobiographical meditations. George E. Duckworth has studied the appearance of the Fibonacci Sequence in Virgil's Aeneid in a book titled Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil’s Aeneid: A Study in Mathematical Composition (1962), and found hundreds of instances of Fibonacci ratios. (Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry by Marcia Birken and Anne C. Coon, Amsterdam; New York, NY: Rodopi, 2008, p. 60)

Moreover, there is a connection between Pythagorean numerology and the Fibonacci sequence. Pythagorean poetry is based on mathematical principles and harmony. H.C. Andersen has written a poem on how to solve Pythagoras' Theorem, 'Formens evige magie' (1831): "Og ad den samme Vei vi faae: / AD er lig AK. / Der har Du Maaden, / Snart som Pythagoras man løser Gaaden. / . . . Fornuft og Form har her skabt — Poesi. / Her seer man "Formens evige Magie.""

Christensen contributed to such magazines as Krise og Utopi and Chancen, wrote children's book and a number of radio and television plays. She translated among others Paul Celan, Max Frisch, and Virginia Woolf. Her poems have been set to music by the Danish composers Ib Nørholm and Svend Nielsen.

Sommerfugledalen (1991, Butterfly Valley: A Requiem), Christensen's last collection of poems, was a sonnet sequence about butterflies, the fragility of life, and reincarnation. "What do we want with the great atlas moth / whose wingspan spreads a map of all the earth / resembling the brain-web of memories // that we kiss as our icons of the dead? / We taste death's kiss that carried them away. And who has conjured this encounter forth?" (Butterfly Valley: A Requiem, translated by Susanna Nied, New York: New Directions, 2004, p. 10) The final (15th) sonnet consists of the first lines of the preceding sonnets. 

In 1978 Christensen was appointed in the Danish Academy and in 1995 she become a member of Académie Européenne de Poésie. She received numerous prizes, including the Nordic Prize of the Swedish Academy (1994), Der österreichische Staatspreis für Literature (1994), Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de Poésie (1995), and Edvard Pedersens Biblioteksfonds Forfatterpris in 2003. She was frequently mentioned, especially in Germany, as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. Inger Christensen died after a short illness in Copenhagen on January 2, 2009.

For further reading: Anxiety in Modern Scandinavian Literature: August Strindberg, Inger Christensen, Karl Ove Knausgård by Markus Floris Christensen (2024); Nollpunkten: precisionens betydelse hos Witold Gombrowicz, Inger Christensen och Herta Müller by Gabriel Itkes-Sznap (2021); Besvärja världen: en ekopoetisk studie i Inger Christensens Alfabet by Sofia Roberg (2021); Ordkonst och levnadskonst: det skrivande subjektet i John Ashberys, Yves Bonnefoys och Inger Christensens diktning by Erik Erlanson (2017); 'Biological Avant-Garde: Inger Christensen's det' by Tue Andersen Nexø, in: Avant Garde Critical Studies, Volume 32 (2016); Gentagelsens verden i Inger Christensens digtning by Per Lindegård (2016); A Cultural History of the Avant-garde in the Nordic Countries, 1950-1975 by Tania Ørum, Jesper Olsson  (2016); Sommerfugletilstanden: et essay om den poetiske tænkning i Inger Christensens Sommerfugledagen by Hardy Bach (2014); 'Native and deep-rooted: positions in Inger Christensen's philosophy of nature' by Anne Gry Haugland, Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms, No. 3 (2014); Naturen i ånden: naturfilosofien i Inger Christensens forfatterskab by Anne Gry Haugland (2012); Jordsanger: økokritiske analyser av Inger Christensens lange dikt by Henning Fjørtoft (2011); 'Christensen, Inger (1935-)' by Jan Nielsen, in The Facts on File Companion to World Poetry: 1900 to the Present Time, edited by Victoria Arana (2008); Poems for the Millennium, Volume Two, ed. by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (1998); Sprogskygger, læsninger i Inger Christensens forfatterskab by Lis Wedell Pape (1995); Mellemværender: om subjekt og køn i det senmoderne: med særligt henblik på nogle linier i Inger Christensens forfatterskab by Lis Wedell Pape (1994) 'Christensen, Inger' by Sven Hakon Rossel, in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century: Volume 5: Supplement and Index, edited by Steven R. Serafin (1993); Tre kvindelige lyrikere: Et essay by Asger Schnack (1991); En moderne klassiker: Inger Christensens roman Azorno by Pia Fuglsang Bach (1989); 80 moderne danske digtere by Jørgen Gustava Brandt & Asker Schnack (1988); Out of Denmark: Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen 1885-1985 and Danish Women Writers Today, edited by Bodil Wamberg (1985); Tegnverden: en bog om Inger Christensens forfatterskab, ed. by Iden Holk (1983)

Selected works:

• Lys: digte, 1962 - 'Light,' in Light, Grass, and Letter in April (translated by Susanna Nied, illustrated by Johanne Foss, 2011)
  
• Græs: digte, 1963 - 'Grass,' in Light, Grass, and Letter in April (translated by Susanna Nied, illustrated by Johanne Foss, 2011)
  
• Evighedsmaskinen, 1964
• Azorno, 1967 - Azorno (translated by Denise Newman, 2009)
• det, 1969 - it (translated by Susanna Nied, 2006)
• Intriganterne, 1972 (play)
• Det malede værelse, 1976 - The Painted Room: A Tale of Mantua (translated by Denise Newman, 2000)
• Brev i april, 1979 - 'Letter in April,' in Light, Grass, and Letter in April (translated by Susanna Nied, illustrated by Johanne Foss, 2011)
  
• Den historie der skal fortælles, 1979
• Alfabet, 1981 - Alphabet (translated by Susanna Nied, 2001)
• Del af labyrinten, 1982 (essays)
• Den store ukendte rejse, 1982
• En vinteraften i Ufa og andre spil, 1987 (plays)
• Digte, 1988
• Lys og Græs, 1989
• Mikkel og hele menageriet, 1990 (illustrated by Lillian Brøgger)
• Sommerfugledalen, 1991 - Butterfly Valley: A Requiem (translated by Susanna Nied, 2004)
• Samlede digte, 1998
• Hemmelighedstilstanden, 2000 - The Condition of Secrecy: Essays (translated by Susanna Nied, 2018)
• Light, grass, and letter in April, 2011 (translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied; drawings by Johanne Foss)
  
• Som var mit sind lidt græs der blev fortalt, 2017 (fra Inger Christensens papirer i udvalg ved Marie Silkeberg og Peter Borum)
  
• Verden ønsker at se sig selv: digte, prosa, udkast, 2018 (fra Inger Christensens papirer; redigeret af Marie Silkeberg og Peter Borum)
  
• Essays: Del af labyrinten / Hemmelighedstilstanden, 2019 (Kbh.: Gyldendal; 1. oplag)
  
• Genbesøgt: Inger Christensens efterladte papirer, 2020 (redigeret af Dan Ringgaard og Jonas Ross Kjærgård)
  
• Jeg bor i en hemmelig drøm: tidlige digte, 2023 (edited by Peter Borum)
  
• Lys; Græs: digte, 2023 (Kbh.: Gyldendal; 2. udgave)