Jouni Inkala

Who is Jouni Inkala?

Jouni Mikael Inkala was born on 15 April 1966, in Kemi, Finland. Until the year 2005 he had published seven collections of poems of which the latest were Kirjoittamaton and Sarveisaikoja. Jouni Inkala encounters Anton Chekhov, Joseph Brodsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, in his collection of poetry Kirjoittamaton which approaches its semi-fictional subjects with sharp twists and sarcastic asides.

Jouni Inkala's first work Tässä sen reuna received the J. H. Erkko Award in 1992. After Inkala's first poem collection the poet has changed two or three times his attitudes strongly, and Inkala's readers have been able to see this in his "poetic grammar". He has also strongly made an approach to Christian mysticism and nature mediation. Inkala uses bright imagery without technical isolation. Syntactic elasticity in combining with deep thinking and concrete expression makes his poetry well balanced.

The titles of the collections, Huonetta ja sukua and Pyhien seura, refer to the Bible and to a religious tradition, but employ largely the same material as in his deput. In particular, the former of the two collections is characterised by long, open and closed sentences, the language defies meaning and makes itself the subject. In the collection Sille joka jää Biblical events and religious themes in fact form a framework to which the poems can refer. The voice in these poems is nonetheless the same as before. There are few dramatic external events, rather internal and external visions succeed in stopping time and in doing so allow language and thoughts to assume their own paths.