Troubled by joy?
Poems from Boxtrot (WSOY, 1998) Nine lives So far nine lives only, and all mine, like my head in my hands. My first was curled up at the foot of a fir tree in the autumn forest just at day-dawn in...
View ArticleOh heiferiness and humanness
Kesäillan kevyt käsitteellisyys. III laulu: Suvisimfonia, omistettu Joel Lehtoselle. ‘A summer evening’s slight conceptualness’. III song: Summer symfony, dedicated to the author Joel Lehtonen...
View ArticleOn the waves of our skin
The poems in Ilpo Tiihonen’s new collection, Jumalan sumu (‘God’s mist’) – about fakirs, beggars, poets, lovers and life – are tinged with a gentle sense of the ephemerality of human life (see...
View ArticleHorror on the first line
In this series, Finnish authors ponder their profession. In his radical youth, the poet and author Ilpo Tiihonen thought blind rage was what fuelled poetry. As he later found it’s a lot more...
View ArticleDread and happiness
A selection of poems. Introduction by Herbert Lomas Comet He stands at the edge of the market, not much to look at himself, with a stare: across the black dome a shooting star draws its portrait – and...
View ArticleStreet-corner man
In the first part of a series on writers and their inspirations, the poet Ilpo Tiihonen writes about his early hero, the poet Arvo Turtiainen My first concrete encounter with the poet Arvo Turtiainen,...
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Eroica
Ilpo Tiihonen. Photo: Irmeli Jung Poems from From Eroikka (‘Eroica’, 1982). Introduction by Pertti Lassila Ilpo Tiihonen (born 1950) published his first collection of poetry in 1975. From the...
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