Baltic Humanoids was initially intended as an event gathering writers living in the Nordics or in the Baltic area. Organised by NOXLit (Sweden) and Sivuvalo (Finland), it was slated to take place at Oodi, Helsinki’s Central Library. The focus was the symbolic function of bodies, animals, and landscapes in poetry, as new modes of social critique and of describing an ongoing planetary transformation.
As with so many other events this year, the Oodi reading was cancelled due to the pandemic. The grief of the cancellation could not hinder, however, our excitement about these topics and authors. A one-time reading grew into a series of interviews and translations, which intends to showcase these and other poets to a non-Finnish speaking public, and to bring to Finland new voices and aesthetics, which might resonate with current debates in Finland.
The series intent is to present the silent revolution that is renovating the relations between big old concepts, like nature and culture, human and animal, living and inert, beauty and ugliness, mind and body, the self and the other.
Authors
Kati Neuvonen (Finland), author of Naku (Poesia, 2009). A sample of Neuvonen’s eerie, intimate poetry is available in the Finnish original, an English translation, and a Spanish translation.
Hamdam Zakirov (Uzbekistan / Finland, author of Kaukana mereltä, 2016).
Sini Silveri (Finland) is author of Titaanidisko (Poesia, 2020), a Surrealist raid into nature and the urbanized landscapes of contemporary Finland. The poet gave us an interview and three poems are featured in this series, along with translations into English and Spanish.
Saad Hadi (Iraq / Finland) Saad Hadi’s more recent novels are Lame Whore Birds (2013), The Sultans of Ash (2014)., and Blackens (2019).
