A straightforward curve for top spot

PSTC 2014 Finals.
The jury was almost unanimous in their assessment of the first day's poems. The poem that won the round received the highest rating of four out of five members of the jury. 

**

Rules
The jury assessed the poems based on a scale of 5 to 1 with five being the best. Then I ranked the poems after the jury's total score for each text. The jury's favorite gets 8 points, their second choice gets 7 points, and so on. The poem they liked least get one point.
In addition to the jury's point receives the poem a linguistic rating, set by a language teacher along the scale from four to zero.

**

Back to the results of first day's challenge. In the top with 23 jury points (converted to 8 ranking points) ended Marie Silkeberg's poem excerpt from the poetry collection "Till Damaskus" ('To Damascus'). 

I quote Alice, one of the members of the jury [my notes in brackets]:
A poem with a strong sense of presence, both in the physical [body] and in the big world [around us].

So the team from Copenhagen/Malmoe takes the lead.

The Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmoe.

Score:

Team	Content	Language	Day 1
Copenhagen/Malmoe	8	3	11
Sachsen (Saxony)	7	3	10
Iceland	5	4	9
Amsterdam	6	2	8
Zuid-Holland	4	3	7
Vancouver	3	3	6
Utah	2	3	5
Dublin	1	3	4

***

Day 2: "Travel"

Tätt intill / Judith Herzberg (excerpt)
(Från Dagsrester. Urval, översättning och noter: Lasse Söderberg. Lund : Ellerström, 1995.)

Team Amsterdam

Att veta att det växer rhododendron på

       Himalayas sluttning

är inte nog. Att se en grön skalbagge krypa

på ett glänsande löv, se den falla av,

i skuggan nedanför känna igen jordens färg

inte bara en eller två gånger

utan år efter år, inte på Himalayas sluttning

utan här med detta gräs, denna jord

och på så vis lära känna ett litet stycke av ett större

land, så väldigt att det kunde kallas moderland,

moder Ryssland, moder Europa

på vintern, när molnen står stilla

i fönstret, hemlängtan i detaljerade bilder,

löv med nerver och allt.

***

Cosmopolite / Durs Grünbein

Team Sachsen
(Saxony)

(From Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems. Translation: Michael Hofmann. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.)

The day after getting back from my longest journey 

I realize I had this traveling business badly wrong.

Penned in an airplane, immobilized for hours on end, over clouds that bear the appearance of deserts, deserts that bear the appearance of seas, and seas that are like the blizzards you struggle through, on your way out of your Halcion-induced stupor, I see what it means to stumble over the dateline.

The body is robbed of time, and the eyes of rest.

The carefully chosen word loses its locus.

Giddily you juggle the here and the hereinafter, keeping several languages and religions up in the air. But runways are the same gray everywhere, and hospital rooms, the same bright. 

There in the transit lounge, where downtime remains conscious to no end.

The proverb from the bars of Atlantis swims into ken:

Travel is a foretaste of hell.

***

On Indian trains / Harry Clifton

Team Dublin

(From The holding centre : selected poems 1974-2004. Highhreen, UK : Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2014.)

Disoriented, travelling out of the night

In a lone compartment, sun dissolving the mystery

Of imagined whereabouts, I find myself in the sight

Of people, stations, a vision of history

Metal shutters disclose, where the living dead

On the platforms are going nowhere, begging bread.

Behind me the mountains, the cold railheads

In the Himalaya, where meditation

Fed on itself, and the compromised beauty,

The peace. I want to go on in the dark,

To sleep through chaos, at least to Calcutta Station

In the hands of stationmasters, Hindu clerks

More reconciled than I am, to their duty

In a disconnected wilderness, dharma without destination.

***

A Hotel / Lisa Robertson (excerpt)

Team Vancouver

(From Magenta soul whip. Toronto : Coach House Books, 2009.)

(after Oscar Niemeyer) 

I will take my suitcase into a hotel and 

Become a voice 

By studying stillness and curtains

I will take my stillness into a hotel 

Careening, not flowing, through 

Cities become his voice

Into a hotel I will take my city 

And roads

And the entire moving skin of history

***

Historia / Einar Már Guðmundsson (excerpt)

Team Iceland

(Från I oredans öga : dikter / Einar Már Guðmundsson ; i urval och tolkning av Inge Knutsson. Stockholm : Natur och kultur, 1998.)

I avlägsna slott

bor de sju underverken.

Han ror över havet

och vandrar från land till land,

men de fjärran slottens underverk

är en lort på en pinne jämfört

med undren i de grå molnen

och i de svarta klipporna.

Och öbon vänder om

och reser över de väldiga haven,

nu med avståndet som del

av sinnets resgods.

***

Sailing to Antarctica / Katharine Coles (excerpt)

Team Utah

(From The earth is not flat : poems. Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, 2013.)

I can’t get out of my head. On the bridge, the captain’s playing

“Break On Through”; he’s been

Playing “Stormy Weather.” Go ahead, Google World’s 

Roughest Crossing. Google 

Shipwreck, and Lost at Sea. Meanwhile, the ship 

Is tearing itself

Apart beam by steel beam; the ship is gnawing its own liver

And the sea is eating 

Its heart out and wants me to sashay right on by and take 

A look. Lean over

The rail, little one, lean a little farther. The problem is the voices. Sea,

Sea, you’re all foam

Vanishing, cry of shearwater and albatross wing knitting

You to sky; you are height

***

Sailor’s home (5) / Arjen Duinker 

Team Zuid-Holland

(From Sailor's home : a miscellany of poetry by Arjen Duinker, W. N. Herbert, Uwe Kolbe, Peter Laugesen, Karine Martel and Yang Lian. Arjen Duinkers poems translated by jeltje. Exeter : Shearsman Books, 2005.)

Suddenly the elements let go of their entrails.

Tremendous flashes of light mark the route to the harbour.

The perfume of loose hair is fabulous and inescapable.

The ship sails to where realities split asunder,

Sails through quiet facts and facts that gurgle.

All facts have gathered here to choose words,

All words have gathered to make dreams,

So good that there are no more flapping sails.

***

Orfeus i underjorden / Morten Søndergaard (excerpt)

Team Öresund
Copenhagen/Malmoe

(Från Ett steg i rätt riktning ; översättning och efterord: Jonas Rasmussen. Malmö : Rámus, 2012.)

Hermes, precis bakom honom, blåser honom fram mot Hades,

på flyget, på tåget, på bussen

hur är det möjligt att få tillbaka det som inte kan tas tillbaka?

Han samlar ihop sina ord

och sätter livet till, han brinner i flygplatsens sterila lugn, han

brinner och utlöser brandlarmet,

vilket spektakel.

Nedgången till Hades, dödsriket, leder som alla vet

genom Tainarons port,

tre timmars bilväg från Sparta. Flygbussen sjunger vidare på

sin dammsång, och han låter den gröna kofferten

stå kvar på sätet, vad ska han med den till? Det finns ändå

ingenting i den längre.