With a swish! Team Dublin advance to finals.

Today I will try to keep my blog post in English to inform my international Twitter-contacts about the blog and The Poetry Slam Team Contest.

The blog "Poetry with Blues" is managed by me, Roland Lundberg, a school-librarian from Sweden. The main purpose is to spread the joy and beauty of poetry and encourage young students to write themselves. 

From start (May 10th) I produced blog posts within different headlines.
Mondays: Beautiful phrases and interesting quotes
Tuesdays: I educate my young students in "Poetry School"
Wednesdays: Small portraits of three chosen poets
Thursdays: Poetry News in the world
Fridays: Poetry in Lyrics
Saturdays: Poetry Alphabet
Sundays: Book Reviews

Since school semester ended in middle of June I transformed my posts into new projects. The biggest I call "Poetry Slam Team Contest". During six qualification weeks I will publish and grade 168 poems from 168 poets. The writers are divided into teams. It can be poets from cities, regions or small countries. Two heats have already reached their goal line.

Heat 1:
1) Team Vancouver 28 points
(Evelyn Lau, Lisa Robertson, Chris Hutchinson and Brad Cran)
2) Team Zuid-Holland (the region of South-Holland) 27 p.

Second heat got their final score today. And just like yesterday Team Dublin received maximum 11 points. This time it was Simon O'Faoláin and his poem "Underwater contact" which got awarded.  I really liked the animated language in his poem, describing poetry reading as a dive into a liquid beat.
"The liquid beat of a tiny heart
Exactly like a swishing prop,
And I am a diver once again
Sensing mysterious vessels glide
Upon the surface overhead."

Fountain in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin

Final score of Heat 2:

Team	Content	Language	Day 4	Total Heat 2
Dublin	7	4	11	34
Basque	5	0	5	27
Galicia	6	0	6	26
Yorkshire	1	0	1	22
Puerto Rico	4	4	8	20
Harlem	2	3	5	19
Faroe Islands	3	1	4	17

As you can see, I rank the seven poems from 7 points to 1 point. And I award them some linguistic quality points, 4-3-2-1 or 0. One poem can score 11 points. After four days a team maximum score is 44 points. Each competition day has a theme.

In end of August the finals will take place - with six heat winners and one runner-up. 

All my blog-readers and Twitter-contacts are welcome to suggest poems for the finals. But of course it should be poems written by the qualified authors. So far we have two qualified teams.

Vancouver: Evelyn Lau, Lisa Robertson, Chris Hutchinson and Brad Cran.

Dublin: Eavan Boland, Patrick Kavanagh, Harry Clifton and Simon O'Faoláin.

Final four team poems should handle the following themes:

a) landscape

b) music

c) memories

d) travels

For the finals I will recruit external judges.