OHI [2022]
anthology, available in Finnish
OHI – kirjoituksia kuolemasta ja sen vierestä (Past – Writing on Death and Beyond) is an anthology on death, co-edited with Aurora Lemma. Its texts imagine Silicon Valley vampires in pursuit of eternal life, probe the soul's place in the body, and trace the connections between individualism, the illusion of immortality, and ecological catastrophe. The anthology brings together writing by Carmen Baltzar, Aurora Lemma, Iida Sofia Hirvonen, Niillas Holmberg, Maryan Abdulkarim, Teo Ala-Ruona, Saara Hannus, Warda Ahmed, Laura Eklund Nhaga, Ndéla Faye, Maija Butters, and Olga Palo, with cover art by Tino Nyman and an audiobook narrated by Noora Dadu.
My lyrical essay Erilaisia kuolleita, kuolevia ja kuolevaisia (Different Kinds of Dead, Dying, and Mortals) plays with literal and figurative language around death. It weaves together Cotard's syndrome, the delusion of believing oneself dead, the death-and-birth loop of the agave plant, and dying languages. It looks at Finnish Romani history through the body of a mudlark found in the Thames in 2018, a man who died in the late 1400s or early 1500s, still wearing his leather boots.