Five for: Michael Pedersen
In advance of the Neu! Reekie! / 3:AM evening of poetry, animation & drink (Friday 27th of May), poet & co-host Michael Pedersen has chosen five ‘sage and savant’ poems representative of the spirit of the Edinburgh night. Norman MacCaig – After His Death – for Hugh MacDiarmid … the government decreed that on the […]
Maintenant #62: Pekko Käppi
Lönnrot is to me a saint, a tragic, distant and shape-shifting figure. His achievements are in a way comparable to the miraculous deeds of any mythological hero, but he was a doctor with a practice, he lost most of his children and was helpless. I think he also destroyed his diaries and I don’t know why but it has made him more distant to the generations. Although he kind of is everywhere and one of the most important historical characters. But I like the feeling when one’s hands and mind gets dirty. Lönnrot’s “rival” K.A. Gottlund’s journals have survived and apart from being a scholar workaholic and enthusiast for the folk traditions he was a dirty old bastard in a way, sorry for the expression. But I guess we all are, and have been since the dawn of the mankind. I like to think that tradition is as always imperfect as I am and it doesn’t convert or translate from its world to mine directly, many things are lost, many things are different, some things are similar, few things the same.
In the 62nd of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Finnish balladeer poet Pekko Käppi.
Three Poems
What do I sing, of whom am I singing?
I am singing about the Creator’s death
about the death of Mariainen
Deep grave was dug
Deep grave, iron bottom
to the depth of nine laps
to the depth of ten arm lengths
There the Creator was buried
Mariainen put to death
sealed with tin nails
sealed with iron nails…
By Pekko Käppi.