Michael Hofmann, poet, translator (German-English) and critic, was the Arts Queensland/Judith Wright Centre Poet-in-Residence for 2008. His work has garnered some of the most prestigious British and European awards in its fields, including for poetry the Cholmondeley Award for Nights in the Iron Hotel (1984), the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize for Acrimony (1988) and the Arts Council Writers' Award for Approximately Nowhere (1997); and, for translation, the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 1998 and 1993, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for translation in 1998, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation prize in 2004 and 2007, among numerous other honours.