Kajava, Viljo

Born Sept. 22, 1909, in Helsinki. Finnish poet. Son of a tailor.

Kajava studied at the University of Helsinki and began his literary career in 1935. His verse collections include The Builders (1935), Farewell, Migratory Bird (1938), The Harsh Earth (1941), Winged Hands (1949), Each of Us (1954), Unchanging (1955), and Into the Blue of the Sky (1959). The poems from the collection Ten Cardinal Points (1961) deal with the struggle of the African people against the colonial yoke. Many of Kajava’s verses and prose works have social themes. In the novel Do You Still Remember Paulin? (1943) and the collections of short stories The Lonely Women (1950), The Green Map (1951), and The Bird Seller (1957), Kajava attacks bourgeois society from the standpoint of Christian humanism.