Finnish Poets

A sample of poetry from Finland (Suomen runous).

In my research of websites containing World Poetry, I have found a treasure on Finnish Poetry at the site ELECTRIC VERSES. SUOMI has always spelled with the magic of their land and people.

I have found a lot of great contemporary poets, such as MARTIN ENCKELL, ANNUKKA PEURA, EVA-STINA BYGGMÄSTAR, TOMI KONTIO, LEEVI LEHTO, RAKEL LIEHU, LAURI OTONKOSKI, MIRKKA REKOLA, SIRKKA TURKKA and many, many others.

Next you will find just a sample:

AGNETA ENCKELL (b. 1957) has published seven collections of poems since 1983. Enckell has also written works of text/sound/music for stage and radio in co-operation with composer Patrick Kosk. Among these works are Ord har hål (Words have holes, 1990), No Solution (1996), Icebice/paradis (1999), No Name (2000).

Nearer to God
and sweaty
like
a breathing
in pieceslit-up
fragments of
like a ringing / hoveringin
side
a ringing,

voices toneless bowing faces
in a journey,

:::::

JOUNI INKALA (b. 1966) is writer living in Helsinki. He has published seven collections of poems, the latest of which, Sarveisaikoja , appeared in 2005.

Bright water beads glint in the spiderweb
on the clothesline, this calm morning after a storm.
It is quiet.
Sun spider leaps to the languid center,
devours its night-moist catch.

Until it is noon and nothing else happens.

The blackcurrant bushes had raged in the dark wind
like tents
obscenely undulant with too many sleepers.

In memory, they still beget descendants,

born years ago when the ground was cold
and the breakfast meatballs at camp

resembled hairballs puked up by an owl.

Bird hysterics demanding a new
interpretation;
then time, as a squirrel, burst across the lawn -
these prove that something definitely exists

and has a voice that smells of me,
and looks exposed, and the same color as I.

::::::

JYRKI KIISKINEN (b. 1963) worked as editor in chief in the Nuori Voima literary magazine in 1991-1994 and Books from Finland in 1995-2000. He is one of the most important literary figures of his generation. He has published five collections of poems, three novels and three children’s books. He was awarded the Eino Leino Prize in 1992, Kalevi Jäntti Prize in 1994 and Yleisradio’s (the equivalent of the BBC) Tanssiva Karhu (Dancing Bear) Prize in 2000.

X (in the series Maisema särkyneen tuulilasin takana)

This is the well
that hid the skull
that gave birth to
the image of god

that created the impala
that ran at a speed
that inspired envy
that gives us strength

that generates a deed
that gives birth to freedom
that constructs
man's own image

that tunes an engine
that speeds up a car
that gives birth to a god
that crushes a skull

that is flung to a well
that fills up with water
that conceals a current
that dispels the spirit

that dreams a forest
that hides a well
that pierces
a man's soul

that sprouts a tree
that carries a chirping bird
that wakes up a mother
that doesn't fly away.

::::::

HEIDI LIEHU author and philosopher (b. 1967) has published five collections of poems and two novels. In addition to them, she has published several works of philosophy, the most well-known of which is Perhosten valtakunta (The Butterfly Empire), more than thousand pages of feminist philosophical analysis of culture and an utopia.


So that I would hear
the sea wildly wave its wet fist before me
so that a dog would leap up high from the scene
from the fifth quarter
glove in mouth
and speed past me

I am,
in a fierce wind in a fierce summer
tree's millebuddha struggles
wearing all his ornaments.

I am,
naked death
sleeps somewhere,

I am,
I impress into my mind:
ship's wreck rests at the sea bottom,
wave abandons rock,
thousand directions
I am
I
to splintered cities,
I
to twilight
without depth,
to statues water makes
to light's copper
light's copper
light's
deceit
To the hastening
dusk

::::::::::

HENRIKA RINGBOM (b. 1962) is a Finland-Swedish poet, who also writes prose and essays. She has published four collections of poems, the latest of which Den vita vinthunden (The White Greyhound, 2001), and a novel. In her work unite keenness to images and exact, mucial language.


The sky cloudy, grey, it’s warm,
almost stifling. We walk
along the gravel road, the country road

The pines, their shoots

The warm dampness in the greenhouse. We drink
coffee, black coffee, buy scevola,
two garlic plants, a tomato plant, celery

Back along the road

The sky’s globe, clouds in layers. I long to be
nowhere else but here