(Wittgendorf / Saxony, 1943) spent his youth and college years in West Berlin. He now lives in Munich, running the Carl Hanser publishing house. In 1968 both he and Klaus Wagenbach founded the literary annual Tintenfisch. He is editor of the periodical Akzente, the first outlet for a great many promising authors. His What to do? An old-fashioned story, Why Peking? A Chinese story and Why me? A German Story, as well as The end of the novel and the novel The man in the tower have all been published in Dutch.

His first collected poems Reginapoly (1976) generally deal with dreamt experiences and missed opportunities; deficiencies which poems can express but not meet. This theme recurs in his later collections; in Aus der Ebene (1982), for example, he describes walks and flights - from the country to the town, from childhood to the here and now, from reality to the perception of reality and back. Departure and decay, following the criss-crossing tracks which all suggest a destination, a home, which is nowhere to be found. Always on the move, always the unpleasant landing.

These themes have been developed in Michael Krüger's subsequent collections. In Ydillen und Illusionen (1989) he paints flighty and intimate observations and fantasies in the shape of strict, eleven-line stanzas. `He lovingly and intently notes down little happenings and images, often inspired by the perturbed nature: a forlorn little plant, rigid rocks or an unopened book. In so doing he lifts the most delicate moments of the day from the whirlpool of the blunt everyday existence in which everything is chased away by chemicals, squashed by mobile cans, choked by concrete ...' has been said about this collection. Cees Nooteboom translated these diary-like poems into Dutch.

Michael Krügers earlier participations in Poetry International date back to 1975, 1980 and 1990.