Author: Teppo Kulmala
Blog-jam
24 October 2011 | Authors, Reviews
Jouni Tossavainen. Photo: Like
Poet and writer Jouni Tossavainen has directed his verbal curiosity towards blog writing in his eighth prose work, entitled Sivullisia (‘Outsiders’, Like, 2011); it consists of a collection of (fictional) blog posts, which seem to contain plenty of junk as well as treasures.
The book is a dizzying linguistic playground; it includes posts, around a page in length, from 157 ‘outsiders’. Escaping the familiar structures of language usage gives rise to snapshots of estrangement.
The narrator of the book claims to have assembled his material from a collection of blog posts received from the greater Helsinki region. Individual fragments of views and facts are like codes that have lost what they were meant to unlock. Mocking, satirical jibes emerge from the texts, accompanied by a sneaking suspicion of understanding and solace, as there ought to be in a true carnival. More…
Opera of the everyday
5 November 2010 | Reviews
Saila Susiluoto. Photo: Pekka Holmström
A plaza in Seville suddenly turns into a modern shopping mall in the new collection of poetry by Saila Susiluoto (born 1971). In Carmen (Otava, 2010) Susiluoto combines the elements of Georges Bizet’s eponymous 1875 opera – popular folk tradition and intense emotions.
The Carmen of these poems is a gypsy, a stranger, a femme fatale, a fiery augury of death. These terse poems combine a narrative continuum, a love story, the triangle drama of the opera, and Susiluoto’s own, distinctive visually flowing style, which is both fresh and familiar.
Her debut collection Siivekkäät ja Hännäkkäät (‘The Winged and the Tailed’, 2001) seems to exist within the frame of a narrative painting or a film. In this suburban story of human relations, she is both an individual growing in passions and her lover’s deserter. More…