100 runoa tunteella ja rakkaudella (100 poems with emotion and love) is a poetry collection released by Suomalaisen tangon Satumaa ry, which hosted a Finnish poetry competition for young people aged between 13 and 18 who live in Finland, on 23rd of May 2018. The theme, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the independent Finland, was “love is blue and white” (the colors of the Finnish flag). The best of the poems from this competition and other poetry competitions for young people between 2014 and 2017 were chosen for this. The illustrations inside the book are the winning artwork from a visual arts competition held in 2017 for the schoolchildren, while the covers were designed by Anne Salo.
To my huge surprise, one of the chosen poems was my own from the 2017 competition, Rakkaus on sinivalkoinen (Love is blue-and-white): Rakkauden kuoro. The English version of this poem is called The Choir of Love. I translated the poem so that the non-Finnish people could understand what I wrote, although I was unable to preserve the rhyming, stylizing and the use of the Finnish word order. My poem wasn’t a winner in the competition, but it was good enough to get chosen. This book is the first publication I’ve gotten a work of art in.
My poem is there and it’s mine, I tell you, but when I got the book to my hands, it turned out that my surname was mistyped – instead of Jokela, it says Nokela. To make matters worse, a person with the name written there does exist, according to Facebook. Although since she lives in a completely different place than I did when I got my poem to the book – the home towns/cities of the writers are also told there – and therefore the chances of being mixed up are smaller, it still does feel quite bad that such a mistake could get through especially since if I ever was to showcase the poem someone, I’d have to explain this mistype.
Anyway, getting my work to a book is still getting my work to a book, so I won’t complain much. At least as far as I could see while making a quick googling, you can’t directly order it online, though, so buying it may be difficult.
WindySilver 