Leevi Lehto

Who is Leevi Lehto?

Leevi Lehto, is a Finnish poet, translator, and programmer.

Since he made his poetic debut in 1967, he has published six volumes of poetry, a novel, Janajevin unet, and an experimental prose work, Päivä. He has been active in leftist politics and worked as a corporate executive in communications industry. He is also known for his experiments in digital writing, such as the Google Poem Generator.

His translations, some forty books in total, range from mystery writing to philosophy, sociology, and poetry, including work by Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, George Orwell, Stephen King, Ian McEwan, Josef Skvorecky, Walter Benjamin, John Keats, John Ashbery, Mickey Spillane and Charles Bernstein. His latest work is the new Finnish translation of Ulysses by James Joyce.

He teaches poetry at the Critical Academy in Helsinki and is Chairman of the Planning Group for the yearly Helsinki Poetics Conference, member of the Planning Group for Kuopio Sound Poetry Seminar, responsible for the "poEsia" series of poetry books, member of Editorial Council of Sibila, the Brazilian magazine of poetry, and Contributing Editor of US-based Electronic Poetry Center.