Indrek Koff – intuitively in-between modes of expression INDREK KOFF (1975) is one of the most fascinating Estonian authors of the last decade. His writing stands out for its experimentation, the author’s talent for finding intriguing genre opportunities, and his methodical accomplishment of them. Koff can certainly be regarded as a poet, a children’s author, and a translator, but a noteworthy part of his writing shifts between different genres. Koff first embarked on his literary journey as a translator in the early 2000s. He has translated into Estonian an impressive amount of primarily French-language prose and philosophy: perhaps his most popular translated work in Estonia is Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles. Koff started on his own writing much later, and thus his lyric poetry debut, Vana Laul (An Old Song, 2006), stands out for its exceptional maturity. In the book, Koff applied, for the first time, his now recurring method of binding individual poetic texts to a particular motif or technique. Koff’s fame soared with his book Eestluse elujõust (On the Energy of Estonian Essence, 2010). Strictly speaking, the work does not contain a single one of Koff’s own words, but is composed of commonplace Estonian sayings and expressions. The author collected these everyday sayings, compiled them into a “hysterical treatise”, and ended up creating something unexpectedly scintillating. Koff continued his literary experiments in 2012 with the book Asjaõigusest (On Property Law), which he produced in collaboration with the writer Jan Kaus and “Raido Mürk”, by all assumptions a fictional character. Mürk (Estonian for “poison”) is a misanthrope who lives on the fringes of the capital, drinks expensive wine, and catches flies with his tongue. No one has ever captured him on film. In 2016, after writing a string of successful children’s books, Koff made a return to experimental literature, simultaneously releasing two unusual works with clearly different constructions: Saja rahva lood (Stories of a Hundred Nations) and Poeem (A Long Poem). These two books provide more than enough reason to probe Koff’s approach and method in greater detail.
Estonian Literary Magazine: One could say that with your new books, the poetry collection A Long Poem and the short-prose collection Stories of a Hundred Nations, you have
moved forward in your own particular, experimental method, subjecting the individual texts to a thematic perspective or formulaic technique. A Long Poem’s title could be seen as
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E S TO N I A N L I T E R A RY M AG A Z I N E
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SPRING 2017