Partner Mirjam Polkunen
Queer Places:
Runopuu mural, Pinninkatu 14, 33100 Tampere, Finland
Kalevankangas Cemetery
Tampere, Tampere Municipality, Pirkanmaa, Finland
Mirkka Elina Rekola (June 26, 1931, Tampere – February 5, 2014, Helsinki)[1] was a Finnish poet, aphorist, translator and essayist.[2]
She has been considered a lyricist difficult to interpret, which may be due to the extreme conciseness and ambiguity of the expression.[3]
Rekola's long-term life partner was the poet and cultural influencer
Mirjam Polkunen.
Rekola's father was Eero Rekola, a journalist from Tampere, and her mother was an elementary school teacher, Helmi Ollila.[4] Rekola matriculated from porvoo girls' upper secondary school in 1954.[1] She studied literature, philosophy and art history at the University of Helsinki from 1954 to 1957.[5] Rekola wrote poems, essays and literary reviews for Finnish Finland, Parnasso and New Finland, as well as for compilations.[1] Rekola's first collection of poems, Water Returns, was published in 1954, receiving a mixed reception.[6] Rekola described the reception in How my books came about: "I was completely alien to the readers of traditional poetry, not modern enough to the ultra-modernists".[7] The author's beginnings were not completely ignored, as several writers' awards were awarded. Since then, the prestige of the poet, who has been awarded an honorary doctorate, is very high, and in the justifications for the Finland Prize for Art, which was awarded to Rekola in 1995, her word art was ranked among the most significant in the world.[8] Rekola's production has only really become the subject of research since the mid-1990s. In 1997, Liisa Enwald's doctoral dissertation Resting in the Movement of Everything was published, which in part served as a pioneer for research. In 2020, the Runopuu mural, painted by Teemu Mäenpää and produced by the Annik Poetry Festival, was unveiled in Tampere, with Rekola's poem "I love you, I say it to everyone".[9]
My published books:
