Residency artists and researchers Literature Irina Javne Poet The speaker in the poems is a Polish travel trunk. It was made from a tree that was cut down on the 1st of August, 1914. The songs sung by its maker resound in the trunk’s memory as lullabies but soon the trunk travels across a rocking sea. It learns a new language, is enchanted by its eastern melodiousness and wonders about the stream of letters that begin to fill the trunk. First, there is a wet swimsuit on top of the trunk, sand seeps through to the bottom and Carelian poems fill the trunk. Soon the trunk is thrust into a dark cellar to repent and it is joined by a bloody military uniform and a light, worn-out suitcase. The long time of sorrow makes the trunk think about the wrongs of a beautiful language, its use for the purpose of oppressing those who gave it life. The tired trunk is washed and taken to a nursery. It begins to learn the literary language, western Finnish, and feels it has found justice and a way to express what it has seen and heard. Read about Irina’s work from HERE.