In this spring as a practicant of the Finnish Institute I had a great possibility to take part of the Poetry Ride - in very interesting way. The Poetry Riders' event and party in Tallinn was a lovely happening, but the most biggest thing about the Poetry Rides for me has been to collect poems for the Poetry Rides' exhibition. Have you already listened to the poems in this blog? On the video you can hear poems recorded at the Poetry Ride, but audio clips from poets have all been collected during this spring.

In February project manager Jenni asked me if I could work out how to record poems of all the poets who have taken part of Poetry Rides in six years. Thirty-three names from four countries, poems in six languages. The easiest way to get them all seemed to be to record the poems by phone. The system gave a feeling like working in the CIA – the phone could record automatically all the calls via my work number, including my calls to Mom.

So I started to send e-mails to the poets in Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. Most of the poets answered my message very friendly and we found a time, when I could call them. It was exciting. Usually we talked only a few words before the poet started to read his/her poems. Sometimes we talked more and then it was better to make a new call to get the poems on the tape. While listening to the poems I tried to hold the handset upside down that my own breathing wouldn’t sound on the tape. I also hoped every time that the demolition and renovation works of the library of the University of Tartu wouldn't sound on the tape. However, listening to the poems was usually very peaceful and it reminded me one of the scenes in the Czech film called “Kolja” – there is a Russian child listening the bedtime story on the phone, because his „babysitter“, an old Czech man, can’t get him to sleep. The boy pushes a handset against his ear, he can hear the peaceful voice of the woman reading a story and his eyes get sleepy.

I didn't fell asleep while listening to the poems, on the contrary I was excited and felt inspired. Some of the recordings I will never forget. The Finnish poet Anja Erämaa sung one of her poems on the phone. The poem tells about the life in apartment house. It’s very inspiring how everyday life is turned to be poetry – and song.

Other Finnish poet, Katariina Vuorela read the poem she had written on the Poetry Ride, dedicated to Estonian poet Triin Soomets. Katariina Vuorela couldn't understand Estonian, but Soomets’ poem “My Estonian” had inspired her to write the poem that sounds like Triin Soomets. And it does - I could really imagine Finnish speaking Triin Soomets calling me.

With Finnish rock star and poet A.W. Yrjänä and publisher and poet Ville Hytönen it happened so that I never got their poems. They promised to send me their poems which they had already recorded, and they did, but for some mysterious reason I never got the fails. It happens.

Finnish-Swedish poet Claes Andersson's deep and warm voice made me read his books we have in the library of the Finnish Institute. I read about his colorful and melancholic life and work as a psychiatrist and parlamentarist and it helped me to understand his poems.

One recording I got almost in live. Southern Estonian poet Contra had a possibility to visit Finnish Institute in Tartu and to drink a cup of tea. After talking a while it became easier to understand his Southern Estonian dialect. I felt that in order to understand it I should keep all my Finno-Ugric channels open, because you never know whether the word is understandable via Estonian, Finnish or Karelian. Before we started to record the poems I asked if he had the poems with him. Yes. On the paper? No, he had them in his mind. Ok. I called Contra from my phone in the next room and heard his intensive voice at the same time through phone and air. And yes, he had the poems in his mind; it was a real experience of oral poetry.

Then I’d like to tell a little story about one poem written by Estonian poet fs. We had a calling time on the calendar. Before that I was talking with my colleague about the computer viruses. It seemed to be a big mystery for both of us, that there really were some guys in the world who didn’t have anything better to do than to create viruses and send them around to disturb other people's life. What kind of absurd satisfaction can those people get? I said to my colleague that for me it was actually more understandable why someone would like to harm other people by shooting them, for example - the Norwegian Breivik has been on the news recently -, because by shooting people you can see the actual result right away and get some kind of satisfaction to your hate. My college couldn't understand me. For her it was just a sick thought, not human at all, and not just one of the thoughts that slips through everyone’s mind sometimes. Then I had a look to the clock and run to my office room - it was time to call fs. He read me a poem that was describing a following situation – a person, who is laying sleepily in front of the TV, feeling unwell and sick as if being somewhere between illusion and reality, when you're absolutely not sure, what happens on TV, what is real and what just happens in your mind. On TV there was a sniper shooting, and the poet repeated, that it was the sniper on TV who’s shooting, not me, the sniper, not me. fs read this with his calm, soft voice, and I listened to it quietly, having a feeling that the poem created a dialogue with my thoughts. Everyone has their own associations and interpretations, like it always is with poetry, and in that moment in that poem I could only see the consideration about the limits of our selves – what could we do and what we couldn’t, what can we imagine and what we can’t.

The most mysterious call, though, was with the Latvian poet Aivars Eipurs. We made some calls that Eipurs described as “spiritual conversation”. I called him and could hear him answering, but he couldn’t hear me. We tried again two times, communicated via e-mail, and then found a solution at the same time - If I can hear him, so why can’t he read his poems. Then I’ll write him back and say if it sounded good or not. Deal. And the strange thing was that on the tape you could hear both of our voices – on the tape he could hear my side of the conversation. Great!

After hundreds of e-mails, tens of calls and recorded poems from twenty-five poets I want to thank you all for bringing a lot of poetry to my office days during this spring!