Finnish PEN organisation considers withdrawing from St. Petersburg poetry event

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The Finnish PEN organisation is considering withdrawing from a planned Finnish-Russian poetry evening in St. Petersburg scheduled for December. The move would be in response to a decision by the Finnish Consulate General in St. Petersburg to reject the participation of writer Sofi Oksanen.
     The organisation’s chairman Jukka Malinen says that the board of Finnish PEN will discuss the matter on August 20th.
     “The prevailing feeling is that in principle, this kind of thing is not acceptable. However, the event is important from the point of view of young poetry”, Malinen says, describing the initial discussions among members of the board.
      Helsingin Sanomat reported on Wednesday that the Consulate General, which is organising the event along with PEN, does not want Oksanen to take part.
     
PEN sees that the decision to reject Oksanen results from the writer’s outspoken political views, stemming partly from her Estonian family background. The Consulate General denies this, and says that Oksanen is not appropriate for the occasion, because she is a prose writer and not a poet.
     In a statement sent to Helsingin Sanomat on Wednesday, Consul General Olli Perheentupa says that he would welcome Oksanen to some other event, but not to an evening for young poets.
     
Oksanen and a couple of other writers are being offered a separate trip to St. Petersburg, Malinen says. The schedule and practical arrangements remain open.
     Oksanen says that while she would be quite willing to take part in the alternate trip, she still feels that the cancellation of her participation in from the poetry evening is an act of censorship.
     “This appears to be a good example inability of the people of the age of Finlandisation to deal with their own actions”, Oksanen says.
     
In St. Petersburg Oksanen was to have recited a number of prose poems written for the event.
     She was also to have spoken about her novel Stalinin lehmät (“Stalin’s Cows”), in which she describes the life and difficulties of a Finnish-Estonian woman in Finland.
     “The situation has been the same for many expatriate Russians as well”, Oksanen observes.
     
The poetry event has been arranged in St. Petersburg three times before.
     At the events, young poets who have published one or two collections have generally presented their work. Sofi Oksanen has had a few individual poems published, but no actual collections.
     Last year’s participants included Jarkko Tontti, Sinikka Vuola, Henrikka Tavi and Miia Toivio.
     Mallinen says that this year, poets expected at the event include Mikael Brygger, a poet and one of the editors of the poetry journali Tuli ja Savu (“Fire and Smoke”), as well as Satu Manninen, who published her first collection of poetry in the autumn. Brygger is also the secretary of the Finnish PEN organisation.
     Mallinen says that the audience at the event is to include young Russian poets, critics, and students.
     
Brygger’s journal has commissioned the prose poems that Oksanen was to have presented in St. Petersburg. The next issue of Tuli ja Savu is expected to come out in October.
     “People cannot be divided into poets and prose writers. At most, works can be divided into poetry and prose, if even that”, Brygger said, commenting on the controversy.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Writer Sofi Oksanen dropped from poetry evening in St. Petersburg (6.8.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat