Mike in Finland

Saturday 25 December 2010

Midas Touch and Snow in Tallinn


I was very pleased that my copies of Midas Touch arrived just before Christmas. The last day of deliveries, actually. So I had them in time to give a few as Christmas presents to local friends. I´m really pleased with the quality of the production and the effect of the cover picture is great. A big thanks to both Adele Ward for her editing work and Mike Fortune-Wood for the artwork and layout. There are a couple of poems from the collection behind the link in the right-hand column of this blog.


Further details and orders from the publisher´s website:



We spent a lovely weekend in Tallinn last week where there was some serious snow:



Getting about in the old town was a slippery business. They can´t use machines to clear the snow on many of the streets because they´re so narrow and cobbled stoned. It looked lovely though. Great atmosphere.

And of course, I visited my favourite ceramic workshop and bought a new piece. This is by Urmas Puhkan:



Urmas explained that he made this piece early last summer, just at the end of the academic year when he was whacked after a very busy term of teaching and grading students´ work. When it was finally all finished he said that he felt exhausted and his feelings came out in the statue that he was making at that time, this one. Lovely, isn´t it?

The workshop and gallery of Asuurkeraamika is in a new location in a tower that is part of the medieval town wall round the old town. It´s a perfect location. The address, Kooli str 7, is the street behind the tower but there´s no door from the street; the entrance is from the park on the outside of the city wall. Their website has a map and pictures of several of their pieces.

4 comments:

  1. I'm so pleased Midas Touch arrived in time for Christmas. Those pics of the snow in Finland put our own 'cold snap' in perspective. This window on what's happening in Finland really brings a country into our view that we don't normally think about. You'll be tempting us all to visit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Adele. I was thrilled to get the books and I´m really looking forward to the reading on the 7th. The snowy picture is actually from Tallinn in Estonia, so not far from Finland. I´ll post some snow photos from here when it stops snowing and I´ve dug the drifts away from the doors! (Only joking.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Mike, just returned from my local cafe where I read your excellent collection, 'Midas Touch'. I really enjoyed the poems. They are so understated and I love the way you see the world slantwise, with important things happening just below the surface or at the periphery of visions. I also really enjoyed to the two more emotionally direct poems on which you end. It takes a certain discipline and restraint for you, the poet, to also stay on the edge of the poem as a type of attentive but non-intrusive observer...

    Anyway Mike, just wanted to say congratulations on the collection. It's wonderfully subtle and evocative and so natural in its rhythms and forms. Kiitos as they say where you live - at least, if a web translator can be trusted!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Noel,

    Sorry to be slow reacting to your comment - I´ve only just found.

    I´m very glad you enjoyed Midas Touch. Thanks for writing those nice things about it. Kiitos is, indeed, the word.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.