The Witch on a Vespa (and the case of the Kinetic Potatoes): Nonsense strategies and translation of Kirsi Kunnas’s poem ”Mr Pii Poo”

• Main Author: Sirke Happonen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies 2017-11-01
• Series: The European Journal of Humour Research
• Subjects: nonsense; translation; poetry
• Online Access: https://www.europeanjournalofhumour.org/index.php/ejhr/article/view/222

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 about 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 for 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 multiple uses as a noun, a pronoun and a case ending. Sirke Happonen discusses nonsense elements of this witty and whimsical poem by describing its translation process from Finnish into English – a piece of work she has done with the help of her nonsensical colleagues. (As a small epilogue, Happonen presents a "movable reading" of another poem by Kunnas called “Kattila ja perunat”, "The Pan and the Potatoes".)