He published his first poetry collection Tobě, živote!, in 1951. Over the next seven decades, he published dozens of other collections of poetry, as well as many children's books. He also translated works by Boris Pasternak, Boris Slutsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko into Czech and wrote dozens of television screenplays.
In 2000, he received the Czech State Award for Literature for his poetry collection Šarlat (1999). He is a two-time winner of the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for his collections Srdce svého nejez (1989) and Nesmír (2011).[2] He won the Magnesia Litera award for Zimoviště in 2004 and was nominated for the same prize for Nesmír in 2011. In 2010, he received the Czech Medal of Merit.[3]