Turtiainen, Arvo Albin

Born Sept. 16,1904, in Helsinki. Finnish poet and public figure.

From 1936 to 1951 and again from 1964, Turtiainen served as chairman of Kiila (Wedge), the democratic association of Finnish writers. From 1945 to 1947 he was editor of the literary magazine 40-luku. His first collections of poems were Change (1936) and Road From Under a Cloud (1939). From 1942 to 1944, Turtiainen was imprisoned for antifascist activity; the poems he wrote in prison express his faith in the strength of the working class. His book Person 503/42: A Prison Diary was published in 1946. His “Songs of Mourning, ” dedicated to those who fell at the fronts in World War II, appeared in the collection The Ploughman and the Stormy Petrel (1950). He is the author of the collections Barefoot Am I (1962), Verses (1964), and The Homeland of Bread (1974).

Turtiainen continues the traditions of Finnish proletarian poetry of the early 20th century. He is also a critic and translator.