Jyrki Kiiskinen (b. 1963)

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Works:
Runoilija vaaran rinteellä (A poet on the edge), 1989
Sillä ei ole nimeä (It has no name), 1990
Silmän kartta (The map of the eye), 1992
Suomies, a novel (Swamp man), 1994
Kiiskinen is also the editor of Unelmat ja ruosteinen arki (Dreams and a rusty reality), a collection of interviews presenting alternative life styles, Ryhmä 92 (Group 92), an anthology of young writers (together with Kari Levola), and MOTMOT 1994, the yearbook of the Living Poets’ Club (with Lauri Otonkoski).

As a poet, Jyrki Kiiskinen is possessed by language; he studies homonyms and the smallest distinctive features of words. Yet writing is for him the writing of the body, writing on the body, and in the body. He does not shun even grotesque tunes in his presentation of the fundamental bodily aspect of life, reminding us that language is always a correlated with the flesh, primitive, subconscious and hidden elements. Kiiskinen has taken on the task of providing words with weight and linking them to the material surrounding them. Language is not only a freely floating chain of signs, an echo of random meanings: it has its limit in the body, in some fundamental experiences which determine the nature of language.
Kiiskinen’s poems are possessed with the desire to penetrate into the dark region, where the layers of culture have been removed. This reveals the treacherous nature of words: the words have gaps, sudden turns of meaning and surprises. Language is not what it seems to be, and yet it is linked with basic experiences. The poems often talk about falling and hitting the bottom, wherethings are seen differently, turned upside down. This produces poems of multiple exposure, with no shutter; seemingly opposite meanings coexist.
The latest poems study the interaction of accident and necessity. There are moments when one might catch a glimpse of some old laws, dating from beyond individual consciousness. At other times, the speaker of the poems seems to be in an iron cage of necessities, where some larger trajectories manage to penetrate as brief flashes. The universe may not answer the call of freedom, but freedom is not defiance, it is a space to be crossed: the speaker of the poets struggles to understand something about the essence of the entire cosmos.

Jukka Koskelainen
Translated by Kaisa Sivenius