PSTC 2015: Teresa played a keynote

  In second heat of the final the judges were a little bit more divided. A couple of them had Mark Abley's "The almost island" as their primary choice. That one was my favourite as well. But most points went to Teresa Scollon, Team Chicago, for her piece "Family music". This time ended Team Iraq in the bottom. So new leader is Team Chicago with 11 teampoints.

Family music, by Teresa Scollon

Banging on holidays like a piano tuner -
this tone, tone, tone, then the octave, then
the triad, then another note – we work
around the calendar of keys, muscling
swollen pegs and frayed wires into tune.

We forget how all this internal weather,
this spitting turbulence, warps the fine grain
of wood, how wood is a living material,
breathing and absorbing even after it’s cut
and fashioned into a living room shape.

If we chopped it up and lit a fire, we’d hear
water hiss and wail as it heats and escapes
each cellulose room – each ring another year
of growing in concentric direction – all of it
finally released. That would be music.

Quote from Annika Meijer (jury member) about "Family music":

Very comfortable rhythm in harmony with the language and theme, which combined with interesting pictures and parallels it gives a poem which I wish I had heard read by the author herself.

***

Standings

Team	Score Heat 2	Total Score
Chicago	8	11
Latvia	4	10
Canada	5	10
Iraq	1	9
Poland	6	7
Ireland	3	7
China Blue	2	4

***

Poems in Heat 3

[I called it life, but there was no life] / written by Dariusz Suska, Team Poland

I called it life, but there was no life.

In the fading sunlight hurriedly paying for gas,

I saw: it was not me. Something was living instead of me.

Organic metal rods rose from lush artificial grass.

A hedge of flowering forsythia did its best

To shield the gas station’s damaged flesh.

And this was life? Dark yellow blooms,

Soaked in light, compressed in the windshields

Of moving cars?

**

Reading Anglo-Saxon when spring comes early / written by David Manicom, Team Canada

Aquiver after the downward plunge, firelit silver -

A dagger in a table top, rude trestle, mead -

The feasters sheered into vision from their venison

And victory songs by the sight of one slight sparrow

Passing from snowing darkness through their narrow hall

And into the night again. A life.

One winter evening, pinioned on the bus from work,

I wrote: So arrival of each hoped-for future

Means a hoped-for future lost -

Closing the phrase behind me as an awkward wing,

The lurching muteness, the bus like the apostrophe

Before possession, that still walk home.

**

Cotton Candy / written by Edward Hirsch, Team Chicago

We walked on the bridge over the Chicago River

for what turned out to be the last time,

and I ate cotton candy, that sugary air,

that sweet blue light spun out of nothingness.

It was just a moment, really, nothing more,

but I remember marveling at the sturdy cables

of the bridge that held us up

and threading my fingers through the long

and slender fingers of my grandfather,

an old man from the Old World

who long ago disappeared into the nether regions.

And I remember that eight-year-old boy

who had tasted the sweetness of air,

which still clings to my mouth

and disappears when I breathe.

**

A world of lightning / written by Mahmoud al-Braikan, Team Iraq

A blue world,

bursting out of black nothingness,

radiating into the abyss of night

A curving horizon,

flash of sword sharpened by cold flame

A lone tree,

long branches

drooping into stretches of emptiness

A minaret,

dome defined by glow

Roads erupting

like beams into the heights of heaven

Clouds burning as they collide,

sky cutting sky

**

Nomad heart / written by Paula Meehan, Team Ireland

Sometimes looking to the cold wintry stars

you can feel the planet move as it whirls

in the flux of the galaxy, the whole

path of the milky way buzzing like a hive.

They say it’s better to journey than arrive -

halting being the usual rigmarole

of move-along-shift. Sometimes the soul

just craves a place to rest, safe from earthly wars.

The city lights come on in twos and threes

and leaves are freezing hard in mucky pools,

cars are stuck in jams or droning home.

If we’re not brought to our knees, we’ll fall to our knees

in thanks, in praise, in trust, in hope – the rule

of law mapped clear on heaven’s ample dome.

**

[I am given ten cubic meters of darkness] / written by Peters Bruveris, Team Latvia

I am given ten cubic meters of darkness

every night I pace over them obediently

until the Sun presses its golden electroset to the panes

and the garden is covered by compassionate mist

the floor long since worn out boards bleached white

like the bones of saints submissively rest side by side

disintegrating in corners are unworn violet wings

above which the carousel of moths is silent

**

Carrying my son piggyback in the mountains / written by Song Lin, Team China Blue

Our skin was the friend of mountains and of air,

our sense of smell was a friend to the antelope -

on a little oak it left its scent behind;

we sat down to rest, the village out of sight,

the hermit’s house was hushed,

there in a cleft on the snow line lay the tiny skeleton of a bird.

Square chimneys, blue windows,

a small cabbage leaf was hearth for mole crickets and bees,

on rough clay walls were human handprints.

Towards the lake district we walked, and the mountains did too,

with the rising of the sun, the mountains grew taller still,

their haloes like wheel after wheel, rolling on the leaves.

Superfine crystal poured down, and with it colours of dense cloud

colours of thundering, inspiring, cascades,

roaring like beasts we shouted at the caves.