The creative poem is here!

Young Finnish and Swedish poetry in Finland

By Claes Andersson

Interest in reading and creating poetry goes up and down like a yo-yo, and has a complicated relationship to changes in society. Because poetry is essentially private and not very rewarding in economic terms, one can perhaps see it as a reaction to an excessively profit-oriented zeitgeist where most things are measured in money.

Poetry also seems to come to life during crises and when some group within society feels threatened or oppressed. One can recall the stream of poems that began to flow from Ostrobotnia with the irresistible force of tectonic shift, in connection with the conception at the time of Finland-Swedes as a species threatened with extinction that was clinging to a melting ice-floe. Even ten or fifteen years ago, poetry - especially new, young poetry - seemed to live a fairly retiring life without creating a lot of fuss. It was argued at the time that creative young people were finding their niche in rock or the world of TV-video-film.

The Living Poets' Club
But without any prior warning, new Finnish poetry arose at the beginning of the 90s like a phoenix from the ashes. The distinguished radical cultural society Nuoren Voiman Liitto (The League of Youthful Strength) became active again and Elävien Runoilijoiden Klubi (The Living Poets' Club) was founded and soon acquired several hundred members. The large publishing houses received competition from a host of small publishers - from a technical point of view it became much simpler and cheaper to produce and publish poetry books. Poetry competitions were organised and received good publicity; poetry recitals, "poetry slams" and various cross-overs of poetry, rap and stand-up attracted a new, young public. Television started to broadcast regular poetry and literature programs, and Runoraati (The Poetry Council) on TV proved to be a real hit with the public.

Amongst Finland-Swedes, the renaissance of young poetry was not as organised or as marked, but many of the young poets who were starting out wrote in a new way - more openly than previously, with less respect and more magic-realistic linguistic invention of words. I'm thinking primarily of Catharina Gripenberg and - from a slightly older generation - Agneta Enckell and Peter Mickwitz, who have both made their artistic breakthrough since 2000. Many other original voices can be added: Oscar Rossi, Ralf Antbacka, Katarina Gäddnäs, Eva-Stina Byggmästar, Curt West...

Diverse and irreverent
In Finland, we are now experiencing a strong and diverse renaissance for both Finnish and Finland-Swedish young poetry. Whereas ten or fifteen years ago one could still feel a certain disquiet that the lyrical regrowth was rather scant and that creative poetry was taking its time to appear, the situation today is completely different. What characterises the new poetry above all is its breadth, irreverence and many-sidedness.

Of the young Finnish poets that I have read and taken to, I could name Saila Susiluoto, who writes a sort of creation-mythology poetry; Jukka Koskelainen, an epic, society- and globally-oriented poet inspired by South American poets; Anja Erämaja, who is a kind of mixture of Märta Tikkanen and Sirkka Turkka; and Timo Hännikäinen, a Haavikko-influenced, ironic, modernist poet. Thirty-one of the young Finnish poets are presented in the book Uusi ääni (New Voice - Otava, 2006; ed. Eino Santanen and Saila Susiluoto).

The time when a poem should "look" a certain way, be central-lyrically compressed or in some other way assimilated into a canonic tradition seems to have gone for ever.

And a good job too!

Rhyming poetry is allowed too!
Certainly, most young people today write free poetry in a modernist or post-modernist spirit. But rhyming poetry or poetry that is in some other way metrically bound is no longer taboo (just look at rap poetry!) The narrative and anecdotal elements can enliven verse again, as can everyday forms of speech, often in dialect. There is plenty of committed, even tendentious poetry, satirical, angry and ironic poetry about the lives and circumstances of women or oppressed minorities. Poetry that takes a social or political stand embodies the mechanisms of repression, poverty, globalisation and ecological threats more indirectly and less agitatorially than in the 1970s - but even so!

Catharina Gripenberg (born 1977) writes as follows about love in Ödemjuka belles lettres från en till en (Humble belles lettres from one to one; Schildts, 2002):

De gröna träden, de skitna fåglarna i skyn, de stinna blommorna, var jag hos dig, i ett rum tre våningar upp i staden skulle vi ligga, med varsitt fotografi på bröstet, utan att dö.

The green trees, the fouled birds in the sky, the bursting flowers, if I were with you, in a room three floors up in the city, we would lie, each with a photograph on our breast, without dying.

And here the Finnish speaker Sanna Karlström (born 1975) writes about love in Taivaan mittakaava (Heaven's yardstick; Otava, 2004):

Poika vihelsi parvekkeelta kuin lintu
ja pudotti tytölle avaimen,

kuin lintu kun seisoin mykän pensasaidan vieressä
ja toivoin että varjeltuisin rakkaudelta.

The boy whistled from the balcony like a bird
and threw down the key to the girl,

Like a bird as I stood alongside the mute hedge
and wished that I could be spared love.


Claes Andersson (born 1937), a specialist in psychiatry, is best known as a poet, but has also written plays and novels. The 1990s were dominated by politics, and he was Finland's Minister of Culture (1995-9). He is also well known as a jazz pianist. Lives in Espoo.

Translated by Roy Hodson