Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started

Ten is for

Ten items I could not live without

Friendship
Softness – blankets, hugs, warm tea from worn-out cups
the way you look at me with curious touch
Sadness, days when paths turn into streams, brooks and runnels
twisting underneath the darkest tunnels
through which our raft built from scrap will take us.

Shelter
Love – in all shapes and shades, in spruces evergreen
in waves which carry those who are ocean-shaped
Safety, not every day but in fleeting moments
where the unknown purrs and stretches paws
settles in front of the fire’s warmth.

Adventure
Collision with the strangest people upon edges of the Earth
sunset bonfires, clinking glasses,
Courage to become a part of this world
Today.

Advertisement

Day 8? Eight, I think – Exercises with different mediums

I love working with different mediums, and I love singing. I’m also terrified of singing, because I have far too many times been told I can’t sing – which is not the whole truth. I am actually a decent singer whenever I’m not afraid. But I’m sure you can see the vicious circle there.

Today, I wanted to look at skin and seashells – again – and if this little project should go further, I’d love to explore the revelations when people get to know each other more through images and words of skins bursting open. The risk of letting close is so intriguing.

Anyway, today the poem is a video. A song. A poem. You decide. All done in a three hours, filmed and edited and recorded with a smartphone.

Monday, rejections & day 7

I’ve been lucky enough to get grants as an emerging artist, and my work has been shortlisted and published, but the amount of rejections compared to the amount of succesfull submissions is sometimes quite soul-crushing. Like on a Monday when you get two rejections on the same day from things which matter and you feel like screaming pick me, pick me, I am good enough for this but you make me feel like I am not.

Due to this, there’ll be no new poem for day number seven, since I firmly believe in feeling shite when you feel shite to get through it. Let’s be devasted and disappointed (and yes, I know this too shall pass, don’t worry) and read a combination of notes from my phone:

I think I have a bruise on my tongue
from talking too much?

Aimee calls me brave for going alone
Yet I have no courage to let anyone close.

As soon as the waves swallowed her
I reached out
As soon as the moon spit –

Do your fucking job I wish I had a fucking job
repeat
I have nowhere to go tomorrow

I guess we always thought we were the good guys

Van Gogh gets fun when you touch it and wait for security.

Juurihoidossa
Hyvin konkreettista
Sit ku on hyvin sekaisin
Juurihoito on ihan jees
Juurruttavaa

Haluaisin lausua rakkausrunoa
vaan olut maistuu liian kauniilta
Ota aikaa
Mulla ei oo kiire mihinkään

Junat eivät nykyisin pysähdy enää missään
ne kulkevat vain eteenpäin

Ja me kävelemme kaupunkien kaduilla

etsimme yhteyttä yksiössä.

Day 5 – Polar Night (a theme given as a gift)

I love writing from words or themes other people give me – please, if you feel like there’s anything you want to be turned into poetry, head to the form which will send your suggestions to me. I love them mostly because I always find something which I wouldn’t otherwise write – it pulls me away from the personal stuff into more imaginative realms.

The picture today is from the process of creating a poem from the prompt “polar night”. I’m think the poem has a lot of potential to develop into something really nice with some further editing!

Simple things – day 4

Constantly looking for the next innovation or new way of doing things shifts the focus of work in such a way that depth disappears – I prefer growing things, repetition and practice, research and lots of failure, and I think the trick is to focus on that repetitive work, not finding something extraordinary (it appears if it does). Obviously, it’s hard since the outside pressure often asks for something we have not thought of, new ways of thinking or so on. Common issue!

So today, it’s just a few very simple things collected from the shore:

Herään meren rannalta
joka aamu:
Se on sama kuin eilen
toisenlainen
ja henkeäsalpaavan kaunis.

Tunnistan tämän rakkaudeksi.

I wake up from the seashore
each day:
it’s the same as yesterday
all changed
steals my breath away.

I recognize this is love.

Exercises in patience pt. 3 – This time, also in Finnish. Sama suomeksi.

This poem is, in a way, very personal. I haven’t felt like this in a long time, and I actually started writing about the weird situations where you realize you are both the person you were before and a person you are now – especially in relation to how I am both Iquiet and very loud. Layered contradictions. But this is kind of a memory which climbed through those layers tonight.

BORDERLINE

I borrow skins from others
for mine aches,

if I try to exist inside of it

I light a cigarette, then
ghost myself

on the tossed around bed sheets
where Romeo lays still asleep
his arms around that girl
who plays hide-and-seek

with the invisible.

RAJATILA

Pukeudun ihoon, joka on toiselta lainassa,
sillä omani särkee kaikesta olemassa
olemisen painosta.

Myllätyillä lakanoilla
päästän itsestäni irti
puhallan tupakansavusta kummituksen kattoon

Romeon uniset käsivarret
kantavat tyttöä

joka on piilosilla näkymättömän kanssa.

Exercises in patience pt. 2 – Presidential poetry & call for participation

Todays’ poem is unsurprisingly inspired by the election in US, but I also took something from the walk of the morning where I counted thousand steps to try and slow myself down. The aim wasn’t to make a perfect count (I’m fairly sure I skipped from 729 to 780 somehow) but to engage my mind with something that ties with the body in a way that I have to take time for each step. I have been curious about exercises which embody the mind and/or grow thoughts out of that slower pace of existing ever since I realised I don’t really breath while walking because I go way too fast.

Also, as promised – I would love to make this blog a bit more interactive, and I am fond of the thought of poetry letters, which would basically mean that if you want, take a part of my poem and respond to it – or write the same situation from a different viewpoint (like, what was the hedge thinking when I was there counting my steps all enlightened!) I will post your poems if you want them published here alongside with mine. Respond to poem here > >

Or if you want to contribute in a different way –

Send me an image to engage with > >

Request a theme or a word that I have to include within a poem > >

A THOUSAND STEPS (4th of November 2020)

Today, the big man with power behaves

as if he couldn’t lose

he won’t lose, he has promised to those whose votes

were cast for him 

but mostly I think he has fallen in love with power

maybe we should make him the space president, king of Jupiter

to satisfy that hunger because where else can he

like dough rise and expand

until there is no more room left?

 

Then I wonder whether we choose this world, if we upkeep it with the things we do –

I was interviewed about mental health the other day and wanted to keep it under mere first name

to not claim a personal space but that reason wasn’t good enough

I could either say I won’t stand up with my face because I am ashamed, afraid or a public figure

or then I could say it’s the full me, all of me and I will claim what I say

but I don’t want to make this about me

 

and then they called in with a photographer

 

but I was out on this road which crosses emptiness, stone walls, dry hedges

counting my steps to practice my breathing

and my patience  

 

don’t take my picture, it’s not my space – we want stories with a personal touch

but it’s not the time for them

somewhere across the ocean they count votes

for US president

I count a thousand steps

to slow down

to be on time  

for whatever comes next.

Exercises in patience – The curious case of footwear and a new project (there is too many of those)

For me, finding ideas to write about has never been especially hard – they are everywhere. I’ve always struggled more with the labour of bringing them out in the world in such a way the chaos within me becomes understandable to others as well. I often get to a point where something is nearly done and then leave it unedited and unpolished and start something new because I can see where it’s going and turn away because hey, we know what that is now, don’t we all? I hide my impatience inside the love I hold for mismatched things and unfinished business. I also tend to work with a thousand projects at the same time –

Now I feel like should assure you that I am able to meet deadlines when it’s actually necessary! Just don’t tell me there’s a fluid date which will expand into eternity, I will wander out of time. And space.

For the month of November, I want to try something that combines bit of both – continuity and labour with acceptance and use of ideas. Nothing fancy, just a blog post every day with a a picture & poem in it, either in English or Finnish or both. I’d also love to get other people involved, but I will get around that tweak tomorrow to not have too much information on one post.

November 3th 2020 – This poem is yet to be named, but it’s from the beach in the above picture where I had my morning coffee with a seagull.

The November sunrise softened the sand on the shore
into something my bare feet were eager to experience
without the supposedly water-proof hiking boots
which, I admit,
are now carry-around footbaths
with the threads undone from where they were holding it together.

I bought those shoes in an attempt
to shelter myself against water streams, puddles and rainfall
against cold damp socks
rusty nails, twigs, and mud

but my feet are bare and restless
struggling to get through the sole of the boot
touch the seabed

and I let them

slow me down

I breathe in the rhythm of what I was made for without all this resilience
we built for ourselves to feel protected.