Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

The Finnish poet Helvi Juvonen (1919–1959) often studies small things: moles, lichen, bees and dwarf trees; she ‘doesn’t often dare to look at the clouds’. But small is beautiful; her nature poems and fairy-tales mix humility and the celebration of life. Commentary by Emily Jeremiah

Cup lichen

Luke 17:21

The lichen raised its fragile cup,
and rain filled it, and in the drop
the sky glittered, holding back the wind.

The lichen raised its fragile cup:
Now let’s toast the richness of our lives.

From Pohjajäätä [‘Ground-ice’], 1952) More…

The heroines in Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen’s new collection, Iloisen lehmän runot (‘Happy cow poems’, 2009), are timeless creatures, mythical and archaic, and yet our contemporaries, living their lives alongside us (see Ruminations)

Let the cows out on Monday
and they’ll enter the forest, wander far
aim for the waterfalls, the hole in the rock and down the precipice.
The dead come back along our the road to our yard:
Rebecca, Isolde, Rosamunda.
Allison, Eulalia, Euphrosyne.
Not as ghosts but as old friends.
Whom will they, the wingless ones, protect here?
A lean lass, a lean lass. More…

Physical, mythical, sensual, playful: Sirkka Turkka’s poems, never abstract, speak of life, death, dogs, horses, nature and humans. In her universe the humorous and the grave socialise without effort. These texts, in prose form, with Hamlet as one of the characters, are often set in a wintry landscape (see Nature girl)

Poems from Yö aukeaa kuin vilja (‘The night opens like corn’, Tammi, 1978)

Of his early childhood, Hamlet really only remembered his father’s slightly crooked and gnarled index finger, pointing at the lowest branch of a holly oak. A small owl sat on it. It can’t see anything, it’s asleep now. It won’t fly off until night. These were the only words Hamlet remembered his father saying to him during the first six years of his life. Later, all he saw of his father was his back, bent over in study of agricultural conditions in a village called Jawohl or of waterside traffic on the river Vistula at the turn of a particular century. When it came to governmental matters, the king placed his trust chiefly in his unconscious and in wheat bread, thick white slices of which he devoured from the moment he awoke. More…

The poems in Ilpo Tiihonen’s new collection, Jumalan sumu (‘God’s mist’) – about fakirs, beggars, poets, lovers and life – are tinged with a gentle sense of the ephemerality of human life (see Gatecrashing the universe)

Poems from Jumalan sumu (‘God’s mist’, WSOY, 2009)

SANTO PAN

These mornings when beggars
station themselves at church doors
and a little grace slips through
the fingers of some of us,
it seems for a moment good

That crows are flying about
and princes’ bones are clattering in huge sarcophagi

And now, with a basic shape planned
for the daily bread,

Early morning wakes up in Florence
with black flour in its fingernails More…

In his new collection, Claes Andersson (born 1937) – poet, pianist and politician – takes a look at what human existence is about: excess, apathy, greed, devotion, freedom, and the simple pleasures of everyday life (see the introduction)

Poems from Lust (‘Desire’, Söderströms, 2008), translated by David McDuff and David Hackston
A Finnish translation, by Jyrki Kiiskinen, is entitled Ajan meno (WSOY, 2008)

(easter)

Despite the prognoses of the Earth's imminent warming
today April 8 it is cold enough to make one’s teeth chatter

In a few weeks I will turn seventy, my ninth grandchild
  August (Siiri's younger brother)
was born two months ago and the tenth is on the way

More…