David Vikgren versus Antti Keksi

Abstract

David Vikgren Versus Antti Keksi: The Work of Orature in Phonemic poetry David Vikgren (1975–) has made a phonemic elaboration of an oral poem by Antti Keksi (1677). Both these poets are situated in Torne Valley in the very north of Sweden. This region was colonised for centuries. For example, the language Meänkieli was forbidden in schools. Nowadays, efforts are made to restore Meänkieli, so David Vikgren’s phonemic work with Keksi’s oral poem has political implications. However, this is also an interesting piece of language materialism, where Vikgren treats the Meänkieli text according to three principles, as antonym, as anagram, and as homophony. This article suggests a method for the signification process of homophony. The semantic meaning of words changes considerably when phonemes are allowed to dominate and reading finds its base in sound associations.

Keywords

• Phonemic poetry
• Antti Keksi
• David Vikgren