Six Finnish Poets

ed. Teemu Manninen

Bilingual English / Finnish edition

Features the work of six of Finland's most exciting living poets: Vesa Haapala, Janne Nummela, Matilda Södergran, Henriikka Tavi, Juhana Vähänen and Katariina Vuorinen.
Translated by Lola Rogers, Fleur & Emily Jeremiah and Helen R. Boultrum.

Part of our New Voices From Europe and Beyond series edited by Alexandra Büchler

Six Finnish Poets, the eleventh volume in this series, features six writers whose work is symbolic of the connection between the life of poetry in Finland and the life of the poets who write it. In Finland, poetry is a part of everyday life, a way of living, founded upon a do-it-yourself attitude that is independent of the approval of critics, publishers, or the popular masses. The poets selected here exhibit the vast range of Finnish poetry, from experimental prose to image-rich surrealism, and from sparse, stark minimalism to ironically melancholy pop-culture references.

The salient characteristic of the poetry presented here is a freedom to try on all kinds of costumes, voices, faces; to explore boundaries, to play, frolic and wander; and to dream of possibilities for literature which are not tied down by definitions of what poetry or even prose have to be like. These poets propose that, in order to write something different, we should rid ourselves of the poet's voice and find new ways of communicating with each other.

978-1906570-88-0 Paperback
156 x 234 160 pp
£10.99 (pbk)
Published November 2013