Mirkka
Rekola
Born 26 June, 1931, in Tampere.
Numerous collections of poetry, of
aphorisms. Translations, criticism and
editorial work.
Contrasts played an influential role in my environment in all sorts
of ways, as I was growing up. I could not squeeze my real
experiences into them, nor between them. Even language was
made up of pairs of contrasts, and this struck me almost mute. My
earlier poems seem to be journeys through this predicament. A
change took place some time before the sixties. Also my idea of
power changed, power became somehow more elastic.
A poem's substance: a flock of birds that I perceived through the
train window was no more ephemeral than the rock underneath it.
I did not want to build; what I write would get built by itself, out of
my life. The polysemic nature of language has been regarded as the
hallmark of my poems. It has never been an end in itself. Language
has simply opened up experience on many levels. My books follow
from one another. A year turned into a place, why not say it, it
became like the New Jerusalem to me: time that was space.'
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