Leevi Lehto (23 February 1951 – 22 June 2019) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

, and programmer.

Biography

After making his poetic debut in 1967, he published six volumes of poetry, a novel, ''Janajevin unet'' (Yanayev's Dreams, 1991), and an experimental prose work
''Päivä''
(Day, 2004). He was active in leftist politics (during the 1970s) and worked as a corporate executive in communications industry (during the 1990s). He was also known for his experiments in digital writing, such as th
Google Poem Generator
Furthermore he was an advocate of the concept o
Barbaric English
an idea that all (non-English) languages influence the way English is spoken, making a non-native pronunciation of English an identifiable English

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

, similar to how New Zealand, Australian, Indian etc. pronunciations of English are termed dialects. His translations, more than forty books in total, range from mystery writing to philosophy, sociology, and poetry, including work by Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, George Orwell, Stephen King,

Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...

Josef Skvorecky Josef may refer to *Josef (given name) *Josef (surname) Josef is the surname of the following people: * Jens Josef (born 1967), German composer of classical music, a flutist and academic teacher * Michelle Josef (born 1954), Canadian musician and tr ...

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

, John Keats, John Ashbery,

Mickey Spillane Frank Morrison Spillane (; March 9, 1918July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, whose stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have ...

and

Charles Bernstein Charles Bernstein may refer to: * Charles Bernstein (composer) (born 1943), American composer of film and television scores * Charles Bernstein (poet) Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary sc ...

. Among his translations (2006) was the new Finnish translation of '' Ulysses'' by

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

. 2020 post-humously his translation of John Keats "Autum and other poems" was awarded the Finnish translators' prize, Kääntäjäkarhulla (The Dancing Bear). He taught poetry at the Critical Academy (Kriittinen korkeakoulu) in Helsinki and was Chairman of the Planning Group for the yearly Helsinki Poetics Conference, member of the Planning Group for Kuopio Sound Poetry Seminar, responsible for the "poEsia" series of poetry books (Nihil Interit and Kirja kerrallaan), member of Editorial Council o
''Sibila''
the Brazilian magazine of poetry, and Contributing Editor of US-base
Electronic Poetry Center
(EPC). Leevi Lehto's first volume of poetry in English, ''Lake Onega and Other Poems'', was published by Salt Publishing in November 2006. Lehto's last collection of poetry, in Finnish, "Handy McCoystysen's Rakkauslaulu" (Handy McCoystysen's love song", he managed to see in print at his home in Helsinki on Midsummer's Eve, 2019. He died the next morning. Lehto suffered from the aggressive multiple system atrophy for several years and died on 22 June 2019, aged 68.

References

External links

Personal site on Waybackmachine

Leevi Lehto, Lake Onega and Other Poems
- Salt Publishing, 2006
Biography at Ntamo
the publishing house Lehto formed {{DEFAULTSORT:Lehto, Leevi Finnish writers Finnish translators 20th-century Finnish poets 1951 births 2019 deaths 21st-century Finnish poets English-language poets Finnish male poets 20th-century male writers 21st-century male writers Deaths from multiple system atrophy Neurological disease deaths in Finland 20th-century translators