Tag: writing

Life and letters

Issue 3/1989 | Archives online, Authors, Interviews

Meeting grey-suited Jarkko Laine on a Helsinki street, few would guess that he is a poet. His black briefcase seems more likely to contain accounts and computer printouts than Chinese poems or short stories by Raymond Carver. Few would imagine, either, that this friendly, smiling, gentle poet chairs the Finnish Writers’ Union, a post he has held since 1987.

And even fewer would guess that this is the most characteristic poet of post-war Finland, an ‘urbanist’, ‘child of Marx and Coca-Cola’, ‘mouthpiece for his generation’, ‘Nordic beatnik’, ‘the Gladstone Gander of Finnish literature, who succeeds in everything he sets his hand to’…

‘Sometimes it seems to me that people still brand me as a young poet,’ says Jarkko Laine, whose work is prolific and diverse: poetry, prose and journalism, in his capacity as editor-in-chief of the literary journal Parnasso. More…

The comi-tragedist

Issue 2/1988 | Archives online, Authors

Early March, Rome. Mimosas and cherries are in bloom. Few tourists are about as yet. On a street corner close to the Spanish Steps I bump into Juhani Peltonen. He and his family have been to see Pompeii the day before. We agree to meet again back in Finland.

The journey into the world of Juhani Peltonen passes through clean, white snow. Two big dogs are barking in the garden of the yellow house. They are familiar from Peltonen’s books. The dogs are as friendly as their master.

In the house there are many rooms, many beautiful things, many paintings, framed book jackets and theatre programmes, books, books, books, an old-fashioned typewriter that is still in use, an aged grand piano, flowers. The stuffed birds on top of the book case are so life­like that they look as if they have just alighted for a second to listen to our conversation before flying off again.

This is not just a house. It is also a fantasy world. In these spacious rooms it is easy to believe that Juhani Peltonen began his career as a romantic with leanings towards surrealism. More…