In this musically accompanied performance poem, spoken word poet Kasper Salonen takes on the role of a hybrid forest creature, speaking with the voice of a primal, pseudo-human consciousness in the midst of ecological and civilizational upheaval. The poem delivers themes of animism, deep ecology, mythic etiology, othered sentience, and the search for meaning through interpersonal communion via vocal-verbal acrobatics and a tailor-made atmospheric electronic beat.
The poem’s titular ‘power animal’ is as much a denizen of the living biosphere of the Earth as a godlike entity rising from a timeless, ageless underworld. The speaker arrives on the scene to relay fiery, prophetic, and even darkly humorous messages – prehistories, warnings, dream-visions. This sentient, trickster-esque organism defies description and categorization as it monologues about its own lonely and protean nature, the magical force of language, and the mysteries of life and death.
Salonen’s poem acts as a touchstone for metaphysical, shamanistic, and psychedelic (‘mind-manifesting’) communion. The poem’s rapidly shifting rhyme schemes, imagistic metaphors, and blossoming turns of phrase – with Kasper’s naturally baritone voice further down-pitched for a subterranean effect – carry a narrative that invites the listener to sink into the depths of fantasy and fate.
This recording is the third track of Kasper Salonen’s debut spoken word album, Jigsaw EP (2014), produced by Time Piipponen (Discotech Audio Workshop). Electronic musical accompaniment for ‘power animal’ by APROX. (Julius Valve). Poetry Expo 2026 cover graphic: ‘New Eye’, drawing by the author.
The playfully colorful and almost frivolous, but still deeply symbolic visual style of this artwork is meant to act almost as an antidote to the dark tone of the spoken word poem that inspired it. The transformative experience of the poem’s speaker is reflected in the collage-based and improvised nature of the artwork's fusional and psychedelic visual language.
The bear has wings and horns, and so is a chimaera, in the middle of a rainbow. So the darkness of the world inhabited by this protean ‘power animal’ is given some color and light.
The white text almost spray-painted onto the holy creature's fur reads ‘power animal’ in Futhark-inspired runes and in the poet’s own invented script. The symbol in the center of light is the artist’s own invention, a sacred totem. The lines in the lower right represent the Cistercian numeral system, reading ‘2026’.
The project is part of the subthemes Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction, Hybrid Selves – Gender, Identity, and Posthuman Intimacies.
Author
Kasper Salonen
Kasper Salonen (b. 1987) is a Finnish spoken word poet, translator, artist, linguist, and cultural activist. His involvement with language and performance has always included a fascination with nature, voice, and consciousness itself as a frontier whose boundaries expand and shift through personal adventurousness as well as interpersonal communion. Salonen's work includes original published poetry collections, anthologies and translations, as well as spoken word albums and other audiovisual productions. He is bilingual and speaks both Finnish and English natively.
