Lake Onega and Other Poems

"Salt Publishing is delighted to announce the publication of a major selection of Leevi Lehto’s work in English as Lake Onega and Other Poems, in September 2006. The 160 pages volume will include translations from his four latest Finnish poetry books, from Ihan toinen iankaikkisuus (1991) to Ampauksia ympäripyörivästä raketista (2004). The translations are by the author, or by the author in collaboration with others, permitting a self-reflexive meditation upon the act of translation, as in the case of the sonnet sequence Ääninen (1997), translated in full for the collection. The volume will also feature new poems written in English, experiments in “writing in second language”, an approach both justified and critically important in view of the current developments in world poetry as well as in the structures of global communication.

Leevi Lehto’s work has been praised for its linguistic musicality, versatility, and experimentation; his long poems are, in words of a recent reviewer, “unique in the history of Finnish literature”. Born in 1951 he is now agreed to be “one of the most well-known contemporary Finnish poets abroad”. Lehto is also recognized as both a practicing translator and a theoretician of translation, and known to the international poetry community through his experiments in sound poetry, and through his digital and computer-generated work, such as the Google Poem Generator."