It has been a great pleasure to provide this project for my blog-readers. It has not been easy to find suitable poems for each theme and team. But I have learned much about poetry and I have found many new favorites along the road.
I'm very pleased with the help I got from the members of the jury. It is never healthy when a judgement is based on, one person's subjective opinion. Therefore, I wanted to have a jury for the final. And what a jury I got!
Mats O. Svensson, a young and very talented literary critic. He writes for different newspapers and he also shares his views in naknanerver.wordpress.com.
Johanna Bengtsson, editor of the music lyrics in Populär Poesi ('Popular Poetry'), a webzine and a paper magazine.
Her latest piece can be read here.
The webzine is celebrating their five years of existence by publishing an exclusive e-book with articles. For poetry lovers who understand Swedish, I have only one call:
- Ladda ned och läs!
Anders Svensson, editor of the most valuable magazine for schools and libraries, Språktidningen (a magazine about languages, not entirely about the fabulous Swedish).
Mathias Löf, a reviewer and a literary scholars. He has also been "Book-Ambassador" for The Book Fair in Gothenburg, 2013. He has a really interesting blog, Ordförrådet (in Swedish), where he writes about books and reading experiences.
Alice Thorburn, an eminent colleague who works at Stockholm Public Library, where she is responsible for the project Poesibazaren ('Poetry bazaar').
I have also had two language Consultants.
Agneta Myhr - teacher at Carlforsska Gymnasium in Västerås, where she teaches in Swedish, English and French.
Inger Andersson Berezan - teacher at Engelbrektsskolan in Stockholm, where she teaches in English and German.
***
And the winner is ... or should I say "Meister in Fussball und jetzt Meister in der Poesie" ...
Das Team aus Sachsen
Christian Lehnert
Durs Grünbein
Volker Braun
und Barbara Köhler.
In the last episode of competition, the highest score went to Team Utah and Sam Hamill for his "R.I.P.". That excerpt got the second highest score (21 jury-points) in the whole competition. I quote Johanna (member of the jury), she puts it like this when she describes Hamill's poem.
The poet not only leaves great room for an implied narrative, but also succeeds with small means to convey that this story is amazing.
With Barbara Köhler's 19 points (converted into 7 rank points), the team of Saxony emerged to the winning position.
Final score of Poetry Slam Team Contest, 2014.
| Team | Content | Language | Day 4 | Total |
| Sachsen (Saxony) | 7 | 3 | 10 | 35 |
| Iceland | 2 | 3 | 5 | 33 |
| Amsterdam | 4 | 3 | 7 | 32 |
| Copenhagen/Malmoe | 6 | 3 | 9 | 32 |
| Utah | 8 | 3 | 11 | 30 |
| Zuid-Holland | 5 | 3 | 8 | 30 |
| Vancouver | 3 | 3 | 6 | 27 |
| Dublin | 1 | 3 | 4 | 18 |
Before the final week I tried to make odds for the team's chances. I checked the amount of references the poets have in Nobel Library's catalog respectively WorldCat. And I got this table:
1) Amsterdam
2) Saxony
3) Copenhagen/Malmoe
4) Dublin
5) Utah
6) Iceland
7) Vancouver
8) Zuid-Holland
As the final score show, Iceland surprisingly got silver and Team Dublin became the "upset" of the Final. Personally, I had Team Amsterdam as my favorites. And I must add that Katharine Cole's poem "Sailing to Antarctica" (from Day 2, Team Utah) was worth more praise. I recommend you to buy her collection "The Earth Is Not Flat".
With those words I end the big summer project. Maybe there will be a PSTC 2015.
From now on the blog returns to normality, written in Swedish and with the original headlines.
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