Recent articles by Mervi Kantokorpi
Mervi Kantokorpi
The balance of grief
19 December 2011 | Authors, Reviews
Henriikka Tavi. Photograph: Heini Lehväslaiho
In recent years volumes of contemporary Finnish poetry have offered readers the chance to enjoy excellent cover artwork. Right down to the typographical layout, the visual aspects of recently published volumes of poetry – by small and large publishers alike – have turned these books into highly refined, almost holistic works of art.
In such a way the poetics of the language and, in particular, the thematic starting point of the poems are lent a platform that both enhances and strengthens them.
Decorated with images of butterflies, the mournful grey jacket sleeve of Toivo (‘Hope’, Teos 2011), the third volume of poetry by Henriikka Tavi (born 1978), conceals the book’s bright yellow covers and an illuminated woodland path winding its way across them.
In this way the troubled central theme of this multi-disciplinary, collage-style work is immediately reflected in Camilla Pentti’s cover design. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
On the Trans-Siberian express
3 October 2011 | Authors, Reviews
Rosa Liksom. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
A Finnish girl studying archaeology in Moscow finds herself sharing a train compartment with a Russian man on the long journey from Moscow through Siberia to Ulan Bator. The girl travels for weeks to see the region’s ancient rock-paintings; the man’s destination is a big building site. The drama of the enclosed space is built of two people and two worlds that cannot escape one another.
The story, in Hytti no 6 (‘Compartment number 6’) by Rosa Liksom, develops through small stories and reminiscences as the backgrounds of the girl and the man open up. At the places where the train stops, other people from the steppe and cities of Russia become intertwined with the narrative.
The career of the Lapp writer Rosa Liksom spans more than 25 years and demonstrates a rare ability to master various fields of both writing and the visual arts. In the history of contemporary Finnish prose, her novels and collections of short prose are a fantastic chapter of originally developed Nordic localism and post-modernist world citizenship. Liksom’s first book, short prose, was published in 1985; her work has been translated into 14 languages. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Poetry written aloud
20 May 2011 | Reviews
Heli Laaksonen. Photo: Otava/Irmeli Jung
In the 21st century, poetry written in various dialects has drawn new audiences to poetry readings. A common feature of, for example, Sinikka Nopola’s short prose about the family, written in the dialect of the Tampere area, and Heli Laaksonen’s poetry, which is written in the dialect of south-west Finland, is the enormous popularity of live performances by the authors. Their audiences love to hear them read in dialect, because the texts are funny, and they sound even funnier when read aloud.
Heli Laaksonen (born 1972) has, ever since her first collection, Pulu uis (‘Pigeon swimming’, 2000), been Finland’s best-selling poet. Her three collections and audio books have achieved sales figures that are astonishing in the Finnish context – tens of thousands of copies. Her fourth collection, Peippo vei (‘The chaffinch took it’, Otava, 2011), has been at the head of bookseller’s sales lists throughout March and April. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Matti Suurpää: Parnasso 1951–2011 [Parnasso, 1951–2011]
21 April 2011 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Parnasso 1951–2011. Kirjallisuuslehden kuusi vuosikymmentä.
[Parnasso, 1951–2011. Six decades of a literary journal]
Helsinki: Otava, 2011. 559 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-1-23368-8
€ 45.90, hardback
The 60-year history of Parnasso, Finland’s longest-running literary journal, is a chronicle of the assimilation of ‘the modern’ into Finnish literature. Matti Suurpää – a long-time contributor, and former head of the SKS publishing house – singles out the 1958–1965 period under the editorship of Kai Laitinen (professor of literature, Editor-in-Chief of Books from Finland from 1976 to 1990) as the era with the broadest editorial scope. Finnish modernist literature, developed during the 1950s, had by then staked out its territory, and the journal consolidated its power to promote it. Laitinen published an excellent themed issue on Finland-Swedish literature to rehabilitate and reintegrate writing by Swedish-speaking authors into the field of Finnish literature. Subsequent editors considered it important to include translations of foreign literature in Parnasso. As the archives of the journal have been lost, Suurpää carried out a close reading of the annual volumes. The result is an eminently clear and readable work in which a wealth of extracts of writing and discussions illuminate the story of the modernisation of Finnish literature.
Translated by Ruth Urbom
Mervi Kantokorpi
In the mirror
5 April 2011 | Reviews
Aila Meriluoto. Photo: Tiina Pyrylä/WSOY
One of the more attractive aspects of Finnish literature is the juxtaposition of poetry-writing generations. 2011 sees the debut of both the 82-year-old Martta Rossi and new poets born in the 1980s.
Compared to them, the 87-year-old Aila Meriluoto is an old hand: Tämä täyteys, tämä paino (‘This fullness, this weight’, WSOY, 2011) is her 14th volume of poetry.
Since her first collection, which appeared 65 years ago, the grande dame has published more than 20 works: poetry, prose, diaries, books for children and young people, biographies and translations, among them poetry by Harry Martinson and Rainer Maria Rilke. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Portrait of the artist as a young boy
30 September 2010 | Reviews
Olli Jalonen. Photo: Katja Lösönen, 2008
Poikakirja (‘The boy’s own book’), Olli Jalonen’s 13th novel to date, continues an ongoing narrative often nominally examining the author’s own family history. In this novel the first-person narrator is the young ‘Olli’ in his first years at school, and his story is the present-tense monologue of a boy between the ages of 7 and 10. The choice of the present tense underlines a certain sense of ‘perpetual now’ in the intensive narrative of childhood.
Jalonen (born 1954) is one of the acknowledged masters of contemporary Finnish prose. His expansive novel Yksityiset tähtitaivaat (‘Private galaxies’, 1999) was an astonishing demonstration of the author’s desire to combine his cyclical understanding of history with a highly sensitive depiction of humanity. The work brought together three of his earlier novels and shaped them into an entirely new composition: at over 800 pages, it would be no exaggeration to call the resulting work a kind of symphony. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Outside the human realm
28 May 2010 | Authors, Reviews
Tiina Raevaara. Photo: Heini Lehväslaiho
Themes enriched by the natural sciences set in a kind of naturalised literary fantasy make Tiina Raevaara an interesting young prose-writer. She is a doctor of genetics and a science writer whose collection of fourteen short stories, En tunne sinua vierelläni (‘I don’t feel you beside me’, Teos, 2010), is her second literary work.
Fantasy and a sombre dystopia combine in her debut novel, Eräänä päivänä tyhjä taivas (‘One day an empty sky’, 2008), which took its readers to the centre of ecological catastrophes and struggles for power taking the form of family relationships. The novel was seen as a morality tale examining the issue of human responsibility, and Leena Krohn, Johanna Sinisalo, Maarit Verronen and Jyrki Vainonen were identified as its literary godparents.
What unites these Finnish writers working at the borders of fact, fiction and fantasy? They are distinguished from realist prose by the way they pose a certain type of ethical question: the complex relationship between humankind and what is called nature, and the inexplicable fuzzy area between the two, which the hard sciences are unable to grasp. In these writers’ work, fantasy often layers into philosophical allegories which examine the limits of what can be experienced as human. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Ruminations
16 April 2010 | Authors, Reviews
Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen. Photo: Heini Lehväslaiho
One of the most exciting features of Finnish poetry since 2000 has been the wealth and breadth of poetry by young women. Compared to literature written by women in earlier decades, contemporary poetry appears to have freed itself from one-track feminism and knotted brow earnestness to become a literature with a richer approach to womanhood, its forms and history.
The first collection by Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen (born 1977), Sakset kädessä ei saa juosta (‘You mustn’t run with scissors in your hand’, 2004) was a glimpse into the culturally restricted but nevertheless autonomous world of young girls. Mother’s instructions and Father’s advice will be broken down as one grows up; in spite of the genderised system, it is still possible for a young woman to make her own choices. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Boys Own, Girls Own? –
Gender, sex and identity
14 January 2009 | Essays, Non-fiction
Knowing good and evil: Adam and Eve (Albrecht Dürer, 1507)
In Finnish fiction of the present decade, both in poetry and in prose, there seems to be at least one principle that cuts across all genres: an overt expression of gender, writes the critic Mervi Kantokorpi in her essay
Relationships and family have always been central concerns of literature; questions about gender and individual identity have received a new emphasis in Finnish literature from one season to the next. The gender roles represented in contemporary literature appear to become ever more stereotypical. The question is no longer only of the author consciously setting his or her gender up as the starting point for expression, as has already long been the case with modern literature written by women. More…
Mervi Kantokorpi
Happiness is a warm gun?
30 September 2008 | Authors, Reviews
Petri Tamminen. Photo: Ville Juurikkala
Mervi Kantokorpi on Petri Tamminen’s new novel
‘As a group, we’re prone to getting pissed-off’ sums up one interviewee in Petri Tamminen’s new book — his seventh — Mitä onni on (‘What happiness is’, Otava, 2008). And that is exactly what this story is about — an analysis of the causes and consequences of the blues inherent to true Finnishness.
What’s wrong with the Finns? A shared national penchant for playing in a minor key, difficult weather conditions, an excess amount of the protestant work ethic, or what? Two friends — an author and an artist — initiate a field research project with the intent of publishing a book. The episodic narrative takes them on a cruise ship to Sweden, through a university and an eco-commune and all the way to Denmark to interview people with one question: What is happiness? More…