Tua Forsström is a visionary Finland-Swedish poet who has become Finland’s most celebrated contemporary poet. Her poetry draws its sonorous and plangent music from the landscapes of Finland, seeking harmony between the troubled human heart and the threatened natural world. I walked on into the forest is her twelfth book of poetry, her first since One Evening in October I Rowed Out on the Lake (2012/2015), the collection which followed her celebrated trilogy, I studied once at a wonderful faculty (2003), published in English translation by Bloodaxe in 2006. In some sense a continuation of the previous collection, her new book focuses more acutely on the themes of death and grief, and in particular the devastating loss of her beloved granddaughter. It shows her poetry’s tone of inner discourse shifting imperceptibly towards a new and harsh gravity. As Sweden’s August Prize jury commented on her work as a whole, this is poetry ‘both melancholy and impassioned’, expressing a ‘struggle against meaninglessness, disintegration, destruction – against death in life’.

"Forsström has Finland-Swedish modernism in her bloodstream but has kept a coolly timeless tone in her poetry. Her style can with some reason be called classical… What we read slowly reveals its true poetic face – the face of the lament, the elegy… It’s most beautifully and bravely done." - Aftonbladet, Sweden

"Tua Forsström writes poetry that comes stealing up on you. There is something curious about her poems, a way of adhering to the world that is hard to put one’s finger on." - Klassekampen, Norway

"I don’t know what I am going to need on the day that I have to face major loss, but I’m already writing a reminder to myself to go to the bookshelf then and pick out all of Tua Forsström's books." - Hufvudstadsbladet, Finland