The Finnish poet Katri Vala (born Karin Heikel) was a key figure in the Tulenkantajat avant-garde that shaped modernism. Her debut Kaukainen puutarha (1924) revolutionised poetry with its free verse and symbolism. Politically engaged against fascism and nationalism, she was marginalised in the 1930s. From 1941, suffering from tuberculosis, she lived in exile in Sweden, where she metaphorically dealt with wartime atrocities in Pesäpuu palaa (1942). She died in 1944, but left behind a legacy as a pioneer of feminist and formally innovative poetry that had a lasting influence on Finnish literature.