Ville Hytönen

Ville Hytönen (b. 1982 Porvoo) is a poet and co-founder / director of Savukeidas, a publishing house focused on domestic and translated poetry and essays. Hytönen spent his youth in Turku but is now living as a writer in residence in Hämeenlinna. Hytönen’s poems have already been translated into thirteen languages, including Georgian and Udmurt. Whenever he can, he travels around Europe giving readings, walking and doing research on the overlapping worlds and surprise elements of reality and narration.

Hytönen has also written a fictitious poetry collection Kolmas sotaleikki (“The Third War Game”, Poesia 2008) under the female pseudonym Anna Halmkrona, and a coarse, humorous cook book, Nälkätaiteilijan keittokirja (“Cookbook for a Hunger Artist”, Johnny Kniga 2006). Hytönen has translated Mark Twain and Albanian poetry into Finnish, edited collections, anthologies and non-fiction for his own as well as other publishing houses. He also writes radio feature plays for the Finnish Broadcasting Company and columns for newspapers.

In 2010 Ville Hytönen received a great recognition from The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. He was awarded the 50 000 € Sammon Tekijät Award for new thinking, creativity, innovative approach and usefulness. State prizes were awarded to ten young people under the age of 29.

Ville Hytönen: Death in Europe, Black Swan of the East & A Tree for the Dead

Ville Hytönen’s debut collection, Kuolema Euroopassa (“Death in Europe”, Tammi 2006) was a critical success and nominee for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Award. Book reviewer Kuisma Korhonen referred to Hytönen’s debut as “pale, faded memories of a continent steeped in history”. Death in Europe is absorbed with romantic Europe, with 19th century trolley buses and steel structures, with the casino bar lobby and the hotel rooms where every sex act is mind-numbing and insignificant.

In his second poetry collection, Idän musta joutsen (“Black Swan of the East”, Tammi 2009), Hytönen highlights the grotesque yet beautiful diversity behind the official concept of Europe. The poems deal with death and love, diseases and pornography. To them all is connected Eastern Europe, that historical giant held together by rusted metal skeletons and destabilized by morality.

Old-worldly, slightly distorted romanticism and etnofuturism inspires Hytönen. This also shows in his newest poetry collection, Karsikkopuu (“A Tree for the Dead“, 2011). These poems dig deep into ancient Baltic culture, all the way to White Karelia and Norwegian Lapland. The collection searches for folk connections with the modern world, the influence of myths and prehistoric upheavals on our thought, something also reflected in the language and form of the poems. A Tree for the Dead brings Finno-Ugric legends into our day and asks whether the firmament is upheld by the World Oak, two towers, or a withering tree for the dead.*

(*The ”karsikkopuu” was a tree traditionally carved with the initials and death year of the deceased. This practice attempted to connect the deceased with the community of the dead and prevent him from returning to the land of the living. It was a border marker between the worlds of the living and the dead.)

Original name: Kuolema Euroopassa
Publisher: Tammi 2006
75 pages
Softcover 140 x 210 mm
ISBN 978-951-31-3642-0
Cover design: Tuija Kuusela

Original name: Idän musta joutsen
Publisher: Tammi 2009
72 pages
Softcover 140 x 210 mm
ISBN 978-951-31-4299-5
Cover design: Laura Lyytinen

Orginal Name: Karsikkopuu
Publisher: Tammi 2011
63 pages
Hardcover 134 x 213 mm
ISBN: 978-951-31-6287-0
Cover design: Laura Lyytinen