Tuesday 25th February 2014; 7pm to 8.30pm,
CCA Cinema Room, Glasgow:
Another Kind of North: Poems From and About Finland
Donald Adamson is a poet and translator, living in Galloway and Finland. Winner of the Herald Millennium Poetry Prize, Donald will be launching his new collection – From Coiled Roots (published by Indigo Dreams). The book explores life, landscapes, and history in Finland and Scotland. Helen Dunmore has commented: ‘I like the poems, that sense of time past; honouring the dead without possessing them; the sharp eloquent stories of the past. The poems are alive with feeling.’ Eeva Kilpi (Finnish Nobel Prize nominee) says the translations are ‘like the humming of the trees around our human suffering and joys.’
Joining Donald will be fellow Scottish poet and lover of all things Finnish, Liz Niven. Liz has worked with up-and-coming Finnish poet and translator, Aila Juvonen, on ‘chain’ poems – responses on Finnish themes. Liz’s fourth and most recent collection, The Shard Box (Luath Press), was selected as a Scottish Libraries Summer Read; the works utilise multiple techniques to address fragmentation and reconstruction through a Chinese lens. Prof. Alan Riach, ASLS, has said of this collection: ‘her techniques are diverse: translation into Scots of Chinese poems, Brechtian observation of foreign things, jokes; they are often understated, ironic, compassionate, unsentimental, unobtrusively restrained’.
An award-winning poet, Liz has appeared at Literary Festivals across Europe, China, and Australia, recently participating in Clunes. She has promised to read extracts from her Scots versions of the Karelian saga, The Kalevala (Finland’s national epic, and one of the most significant works of Finnish literature).
Aila Juvonen teaches social skills and assertiveness to children in Finland, and has written a wide range of articles and columns as a free-lance journalist. She has published two books – Kipeä Katse and Skidikantti – and is currently working on a novel (The Green Stone), a play for adolescents (The Cream Cake Soldiers), and a poetry collection. Aila’s poetry has appeared in Northwords Now, and she has translated Liz Niven’s poems into Finnish for Liz’s reading tours of Finland.
SWC founding member Gerry Loose also has a long-standing relationship with the culture and ecology of Finland. Gerry has been honoured with a Finnish Koneen Säätiö Award, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, and a Creative Scotland Award. He has worked as Poet in Residence at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, as well as Jardin des Plantes, Montpellier – currently, Gerry is the Creative Director of the Peace Garden. His poetry is informed by a wide knowledge of gardening and environmental issues; publications include The Elementary Particles (Taranis Books, 1993), Tongues of Stone (Mariscat Press, 1998), Eitgal (Mariscat Press, 2001), Printed on Water: New and Selected Poems (Shearsman 2007), Ten Seasons (SPL & Luath, 2007), The Deer Path to My Door (Oystercatcher 2009), and That Person Himself (Shearsman 2009).
Tickets: £6 (£3 for concessions). Free to SWC members.
