The Witch on a Vespa (and the case of the Kinetic Potatoes):
The Witch on a Vespa (and the case of the Kinetic Potatoes):

Nonsense strategies and translation of Kirsi Kunnas's poem "Mr Pii Poo"

Summary/Abstract: It has been suggested that in nonsense literature the form sometimes directs the events of the story (Tigges 1988, Lecercle 1994). Translation of a poem may make this even more evident,as with "Mr Pii Poo" (1956, originally “Herra Pii Poo”), a poem by the Finnish author Kirsi Kunnas, born in 1924. "Mr Pii Poo" tells a story of a magician in a conflict between rural and urban elements, a figure who is introduced also as a witch and who could at the same time be interpreted as an alter ego of the poet Kunnas. In this poem, Kirsi Kunnas binds a bizarre bundle of rhymed and free verses around the Finnish word noita (a witch) and its multipleuses as a noun, a pronoun, and a case ending. I discuss the nonsense elements of this witty and whimsical poem by describing its translation process from Finnish into English – a piece of work I has done with the help of my nonsensical colleagues. As a collocation, I present a"movable reading" of another poem by Kunnas called “Kattila ja perunat”, "The Pan and the Potatoes".

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