Our first issue of 2019 presents three different dialogues between images and words, it also brings you literal street poetry, a brand new poetry generator and Nokturno´s first whole audio book.
Our web designer Teemu Tuovinen has created a poetry generator based on old Finnish poems of the Kalevala tradition. Loihe creates incantations letter by letter and the results mix Finnish words with new ones generated from the text material. Instead of a text-only presentation Tuovinen´s generator has the appearance of a kind of a Finnish version of the Easter Island statues.
Auringonkukkamafia (Sunflower Mafia) is a collective of anonymous poets. Their essay Valon vangitsijat is a collectively written poetic report about their art project last summer in Jyväskylä, Central Finland. Inspired by situationists and street art the group raised sunflowers and brought them into the city space with poems attached to the them. Flowers are a theme also in Eira Ainalinpää´s photo poem Vihreä viini. Photo poems are a genre of visual poetry often associated with greeting cards. Ainalinpää´s poem takes a step further and depicts also the phonetic aspect of the sight.
Photography and poetry are also combined in the 11-part work Transit by the Australian author and researcher Kathryn Hummel. The poem was originally part of a larger audiovisual piece, Why Do Things Break? performed at the Creative Research Symposium at the University of Adelaide. Moving in coastal and urban landscapes, the poem, as its name suggests, processes questions of transition and passage in visual and textual ways, both through found and self-created material.
This issue also dives deep into the future/possible futures! Visual artist and researcher Tomi Dufva´s visualized words is an Instagram project of altogether 365 words about future and technology. It´s a collaboration between Tomi and his brother Mikko Dufva, a foresight specialist at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund. Tomi´s diverse images explore and expand the relationship between images and words and apply a wide range of modes, such as bodily metaphors, illustrations and intertextual cues. We are proud to present a 10 piece selection from their fascinating and educating project.
Sound poetry has always been present at Nokturno but this issue brings you a whole audio book! Karri Kokko`s Varjofinlandia, first published in 2005 (poEsia) and now available at ntamo is a Finnish classic of experimental poetry. The book is a collage of found poetry based on Finnish depression blogs. Marko Niemi´s gentle reading brings together all voices floating from one troubled day to another.
Last but not least we have FSLSK NTF T0 T ART by poet Volodymyr Bilyk from Ukraine. Bilyk´s poem explores what happens when compression techniques used in for example photographs are applied to poetry. A compressed photograph is (usually) still recognizable, but how does a poem transform in the process?
Our open call for this year´s digital residencies has ended. We announce the new poets-in-residence for Spring and Fall next month. Submission deadline for the next issue is 31st of March, poems and poetry-related texts are welcomed at .
(image: Unfolding – Tomi Dufva)