Lines from Karelia

Between 1932 and 1939 my great-aunt Lisi Hirvonen wrote a series of letters from Soviet Karelia to her sister in Saskatchewan, my grandma Anna Mattson. Fifteen letters survive.

These letters have been translated from Finnish into English by Iiris Pursiainen (BA Honours, DipTrans, MCIL), who lives near Bristol, England.

The cover of 'Lines from Karelia'

To bring these letters into the public domain, Lines from Karelia was published in 2011 by Arrowhead Press.This limited-edition pamphlet contains:






Lisi Hirvonen in Duluth, c. 1930


All fifteen letters in English translation  
 
 
Some of my poems responding to Lisi's letters  
 
 
Holograph copies of three of Lisi's letters  
 
 
Eight rare photographs  
 
 
My foreword explaining the historical context   
and the ultimate fate of my great-aunt Lisi   






First page of Lisi's letter from a lumber camp in northern Karelia, 5th February 1933





 
The originals of Lisi's letters are now in the Clara Thomas Archives, York University, Toronto, in the Varpu Lindström fonds, F0558. The finding aid for this important collection of Finnish Canadian immigration materials is here and the call number for Lisi's letters is 2009 025 /042 (12).
 


Women workers at Petrozavodsk ski factory, 1930s, where my great-aunt Lisi worked.
She said in her letters that she was a shock worker.

SONG OF THE SHOCK WORKER 
In 1935 at 36    I let my body go electric
shocked it into work that squeezed an extra 
 
dozen minutes out of every hour
multiple seconds out of every clock-tick.
 
Who believes arithmetic?    My body flew beyond it.     
For every pair of skis I polished off      I notched  
 
a cross on the window ledge        racked them up
like pikes in rows     threw myself into cut-short nights 
 
but sleep was full of chinks      the swing of blunt axes    
dead crows hung upside-down    from birch poles 
 
their limp wings       black flags in vast fields     
flapping through my dreams.       So I bolted  
 
life onto my workbench      hands hardened by fire   
fingers charming as  fish-hooks     with the sprung grace    
  
of ski tips    my thumbs tough as tempered steel.
My teeth sizzled     as I sharpened skis   
 
sanded them smooth along the grain for swiftness  
left them rough the other way      so skiers never slip   
 
backward.       Backward? I never go there.
My eyes always press forward     like headlamps  
 
on the car I used to own with Eino in America.
Let him clamp wooden strips on his feet     
 
race to other villages through endless trees    
cut lightning trails      through drifted snow.      
 
I’m a worker not a skier.    Smile Lizzie smile
grin Lizzie grin      the bosses say      
 
I’ll win a prize for sure.   Work is my power:   
the sweet electric therapy       of sweat on skin.
 
© Nancy Mattson



To order Lines from Karelia, please contact Arrowhead Press 

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