“He was a genius” – close friend Ville Ranta remembers Miki Liukko

Miki Liukkonen Iltalehti filming in 2022. PASI LEISMA

Cartoonist and cartoonist Ville Ranta remembers the writer Miki Liukko, who died suddenly. Ranta says that he met Liukkoen in 2011 in Oulu, where both were born.

– We were very close friends for more than 10 years. Liukkonen White poems had just been released and I thought it was really great. When I saw Liukkonen in the bar, I was going to say that he seems like a person who takes art seriously.

Ranta was right, and the feeling grew stronger over time. White poems was Liukkonen’s first work.

– Literature and art were more important to him than life, says Ranta.

Over the years, they read each other’s works.

– We agreed that we always gave each other the harshest possible comments, without pleasing.

In 2022, the friends made a joint book project Johnny Mitten & Ville-Valle on the edge of the gorge. Liukkonen wrote it, Ranta was the illustrator. However, he told the author right from the start that he was not going to implement only Liukkonen’s vision.

Ranta describes the project as exceptionally fun. In Liukkonen, Ranta sensed enormous sensitivity, but also insecurity.

– His enormous creativity and sensory intensity have remained in my mind. Miki saw words and letters as colors, colors as words and the surrounding world as music. Linguistically, he could do anything, says Ranta.

– He was talented, a downright genius, in writing, pictorially, musically and aesthetically.