The Italian Hall Tragedy

Among the various projects I’m working on, I am very excited about one that just kind of fell together. My great-grandfather was named Eelu Kiviranta and he wrote poetry. He was a Finn who lived near Nisula (there is a road there called Kiviranta Rd) and owned his own printing press. He wrote his poetry, set it in type, printed the booklets, and then rode around the area on his bicycle selling the poetry booklets.

My mother — Eelu’s grand-daughter — has been collecting his poetry all of her life. Some of his poetry can be found in local archives but the largest collection of the poetry BY FAR is the collection my mother has amassed. I am going to get the poems translated (they are all in Finnish), write an intro and biography of Eelu, and get as much of his poetry into print as I can.

He wrote about everything: life in Finland, life in the US, current events, humor, politics, you name it. He was also quite a character, and many people in the Copper Country have heard of him. Until now, though, his poetry was not widely available.

I’ll admit that one of the reasons I want to get this project done is that a book came out recently that mentions Eelu’s poetry. In the book, his name is badly misspelled and the translation of the poem (they published one poem) was not a good one. To do him justice, I’m going to see that the translations get done properly.

Stay tuned. I’ll add more detail as I learn it.

Steve