Paper Title
Radical Verses: Aku Päiviö's Literary Influence on the Finnish Working-Class
Location
Fisher 126
Event Website
http://www.finnforumx.com/
Start Date
12-4-2014 2:20 PM
End Date
12-4-2014 2:40 PM
Description
Aku Päiviö was one of the most influential voices of the Finnish labor movement in North America—a poet who also wrote plays and novels, and an editor who worked for a variety of newspapers across the United States and Canada. During the height of the Finnish socialist movement from around 1904-1916, Päiviö published a number of poems that identified with the actions and ideologies of the working-class. He also edited for newspapers such as Kansan Lehti and Raivaaja, further extending his literary reach. Despite his prodigious publications and influence, however, little of Päiviö’s writing has been translated into English. This paper celebrates Päiviö’s legacy with some English translations of his poems, specifically those commemorating the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike, and illuminates how various thematic and structural relationships in these poems relate to the ideologies and movements of the time.
Presenter Bio
Boulton holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from Northern Michigan University (NMU) where she also teaches writing. While studying at NMU, she dedicated most of her energy to interpreting themes from Finland's national epic poem, Kalevala. She then studied at Oulun Yliopisto where she published in the Kaleva newspaper. Currently, she is writing poetry from the perspective of Finnish immigrant miners and families who inhabited Michigan's Copper Country from 1900-1920, and has recently tuned her interest to translating the poetry of Finnish radical Aku Päiviö.
Radical Verses: Aku Päiviö's Literary Influence on the Finnish Working-Class
Fisher 126
Aku Päiviö was one of the most influential voices of the Finnish labor movement in North America—a poet who also wrote plays and novels, and an editor who worked for a variety of newspapers across the United States and Canada. During the height of the Finnish socialist movement from around 1904-1916, Päiviö published a number of poems that identified with the actions and ideologies of the working-class. He also edited for newspapers such as Kansan Lehti and Raivaaja, further extending his literary reach. Despite his prodigious publications and influence, however, little of Päiviö’s writing has been translated into English. This paper celebrates Päiviö’s legacy with some English translations of his poems, specifically those commemorating the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike, and illuminates how various thematic and structural relationships in these poems relate to the ideologies and movements of the time.
https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/copperstrikesymposium/Schedule/Saturday/40
