RunoSoul is a first-ever poetry event on stage organized by literature students at the University of Helsinki since 2004. Four wonderful poets read their works, which are then given feedback by a gentle and playful panel of experts. There will also be live music during the evening. The event is open to all those who crave literature on dark evenings, poetry lovers, and curious new listeners.
This year, RunoSoul will be held at the atmospheric Bar tÿpo (Lintulahdenkatu 3), and the debut poets are Elena Sulin, Anna Tapola, Alba Ala-Pietilä and Aatos August Ketvel. The music will be provided by the Katumankeli duo!
It is recommended to arrive at 6 pm, and the program starts at approximately 6:30 pm. Admission is free.
Elena Sulin (b. 1984) is a Helsinki-based debut poet, marine biologist, journalist and film director. In her work, she explores minorities, the themes of acceptance and belonging, and the interface of truth: the points where truth moves and transforms from fact to fiction. The main character of the poetry collection Ghost Coral / Desert Coral, 'you', travels in her memories to distant lands, the depths of the sea and old loves. The work deals with the essence of gender, reproduction and sexuality in the present in a world that is disappearing around. The collection examines the connection between nature and culture, and on the other hand, the domesticated and the wild. Through fragmentary expression, space and strange expanse are left between the poems for the reader to float around.
Anna Tapola is a Helsinki-based researcher and writer, for whom poetry is breathing, surrendering to language and its wonder, playing. Tapola is particularly inspired by the movement language of modern dance, strange positions and surprising encounters. Tapola's debut collection of poems, Trees Move at Night, was published in January 2025 (Aviador). In the prose poems of the work, loneliness, outsideness and the power of desire are expressed through dark, dreamlike visions. Pain, pleasure, loss and longing run side by side in the poems, as if a mouth were full of black bread.
Alba Ala-Pietilä is a Helsinki-based poet and critic whose debut work, Säiliö (The Container), was published this spring by Bokeh. The work explores what a container assembled from the remnants of our collapsing world would be like. And what kind of language does containerization require? Ala-Pietilä was awarded the Young Poet of the Year Award for the work, and it is a nominee for the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize.
Aatos August Ketvel is a Helsinki-based word artist whose restless lyrics dance down the paths of absurdity, playing with words on the side. His multimedia production is defined by an insatiable desire for experimentation, a non-commercial ethos, and an interest in moving images and the ugliness of everyday life. In August 2025, Puoliuni Kustannus published Ketvel's debut poetry collection, eKr. – elo kuvarunajoja. The work is a narrative weave in which extreme sincerity and reckless play are woven into a delicate whole. The poems examine alternative ways of watching film, the shaking of consciousness, and the rottenness of old age.
This time, Katumankeli will perform as a duo, staying true to their roots. The band's second full-length album is promised for early 2019. The gig will feature unreleased songs and old, familiar songs.