Kaisa Saarinen is a researcher, freelance writer, poet and novelist. She grew up in Finland and is currently based in London.
She is the lead researcher of Rubber Dreams of Its Lifetime, and co-author of the artworks produced under the project. She also works in climate policy research, with a focus on forestry and biodiversity policies in APAC. Saarinen is also an author, with one published novel (Weather Underwater, 2023) and two collections of poetry and short fiction (Voideuse, 2022 and Maitonaut, 2024). Her writing has also been featured in many other publications including the Rialto, Footprints: an anthology of new ecopoetry (Broken Sleep), Away With Words V (Toothgrinder Press), and SARKA. She was a participating artist in Ghost:2568 at the Jim Thompson Art Center (2025).
She is also a literary translator currently focusing on the poetry of Japanese artist-filmmaker Terayama Shuuji. She has introduced Terayama’s work in MUBI Notebook and The Poetry Review, and curated a hybrid film-performance program commemorating the 50th anniversary of his Pastoral: To Die in the Country at the ICA London in 2024.
Saarinen’s writing often focuses on the underdogs; country girls lost in the dazzle of big cities; climate politics as in the absurd pleasures and frequent horrors of living through an ongoing apocalypse; painful transformations; strange desires; and false dichotomies of various kinds.