topelius fragments

The special Finland issue of the Swedish poetry magazine OEI, that was published in Stockholm last weekend, contains a series of my text fragments titled "Impressioner från Haviseva" that was generated using this machine. The source text used in the generator is the famous song "En sommardag i Kangasala" ("Kesäpäivä Kangasalla"), written by Zacharias Topelius in the 19th century, and after generating text pieces they are slightly fragmented as well (some letters taken away and, in some pieces, replaced with blank spaces).

Topelius wrote this song at the Haralan harju, a beautiful place up on a hill in Kangasala, a rural district in the neighbourhood of Tampere, where you can see forests and lakes everywhere. Haralan harju is located quite near Haviseva, an area in Kangasala, and that's where the title comes from. Haviseva is also a place where my grandparents on my father's side used to live, back then when they were still alive, and I spent a few Midsummers up there at the Haralan harju as a child about 25 years ago so, in spite of all this text generating stuff, there's also a sort of private and nostalgic element in these fragments. Pretty imperceptible perhaps but still existent.