Lake Onega and Other Poems

Lake Onega and Other Poems spans Leevi Lehto's poetry from early 90's to this day, including translated samples from his four Finnish books of poetry from this period (Ihan toinen iankaikkisuus, Otava 1991, Kielletyt leikit, Otava 1994, Ääninen, Like 1997, and Ampauksia ympäripyörivästä raketista, Savukeidas 2004). The translations are by the author, or by the author in cooperation with others; in the case of Ääninen, fully translated for the book, they also serve as examples of the authors view of poetry translation as a radical adaptation and re-writing. The volume will also feature new poems originally written in English, as experiments in "writing in second language" – an approach both justified and critically important in view of the current developments in the networks of global communication. The final poem, "Of the Help Her Art", is a conceptual piece and an experiment in "Google Poetry" from the time of the conception of Lehto's influential "Google Poem Generator".

Leevi Lehto (born in 1951 and living in Helsinki), is a Finnish poet, translator, and programmer. Since he made his poetic debut in 1967, he has published six volumes of poetry, a novel, Janajevin unet (Yanayev's Dreams, 1991), and an experimental prose work, Päivä (Day, 2004). He has been active in leftist politics (during the 70's) and worked as a corporate executive in communications industry (during the 90's). He is also known for his experiments in digital writing, such as the Google Poem Generator. His translations, some forty books in all, range from mystery writing to philosophy, sociology, and poetry, including work by Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, George Orwell, Stephen King, Ian McEwan, Arthur C. Danto, Mickey Spillane, Alexander Dubcek, Josef Skvorecky, Walter Benjamin, John Keats, John Ashbery, and Charles Bernstein. He is currently working on a new Finnish translation of Ulysses by James Joyce. He teaches poetry at the Critical Academy (Kriittinen korkeakoulu) in Helsinki, and is Chairman of the Planning Group for the yearly Helsinki Poetics Conference, member of the Planning Group for the yearly Kuopio Sound Poetry Seminar, responsible for the "poEsia" series of poetry books in Finnish (Nihil Interit and Kirja kerrallaan), member of the Editorial Council of Sibila, a Brazilian magazine of poetry, and Contributing Editor for the Electronic Poetry Center (EPC). Beside English, his work has been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese, Russian, and Farsi. For more, see www.leevilehto.net.