One sonnet out of many gave triumph to Raymond.

Det verkar som om fullpoängarna oftast lyser upp bloggen på den tredje tävlingsdagen. Jag vet inte vad det beror på.

Den här gången stämmer vi upp i körsång för Raymond Queneau, Lag Normandie. Hans sonett kan göras om till flera. Det är ett enastående och ambitiöst språkexperiment som han genomförde i början av 60-talet. Det fullständiga verket består alltså egentligen av 10 sonetter vars rader kan sättas ihop på valfritt sätt, helt slumpvis om man så vill. Det går att läsa mer om verket här.
Det var helt givet att ge honom fyra språkpoäng. Jag funderade faktiskt på att bryta normen och tilldela honom fem språkpoäng, men det stannade vid en tanke. Så här lät det i Sonett 8:

"he writes reviews that read like journalese
which freshens up the tribal rumbelow"
...

"Th' inspiréd poet isn't polyglot
in his brain one tongue is all he's got"
...

"O bard your solo readings make me mock
I nominate you as a gapingstock"

De elva poängen förde upp Lag Normandie i ledningen inför sista tävlingsdagen. Förra ledarlaget, Sachsen, föll till tredje plats.

École de Management

Score:

Team	Content	Language	Day 3	Total
Normandie (Normandy, France)	7	4	11	22
Sussex (in England)	3	2	5	19
Sachsen (Saxony, Germany)	2	0	2	18
Rogaland (in Norway)	4	1	5	16
Yukon (in Canada)	1	0	1	14
Själland (Zealand, Denmark)	5	0	5	13
Jamaica	6	1	7	10

***

Dag 4: Vi belyser de återstående stroferna i ett - Historiskt perspektiv.

ROGALAND : Airborne / Öyvind Rimbereid

In the Lufthansa flight on her way home from Milan

seven thousand metres above the Alps

she rests her head against the window,

worried about her first assignment for Nortrade.

Soon she dozes, and half-dreaming

she is already over Skagerrak. 

But in the handbag under her seat

lies the rose

the Italian contact

bought for her at dinner the night before.

It lies protected

inside Monday’s Milano Finanza

she had hoped she would manage to read. 

*

SACHSEN : "Inner unrest as protection against clocks."
/ Durs Grünbein

What is childhood anyway, after years
Of running away, an extorted wish
Quivering on your lips, a nursery chant
Like home and belonging.
Spat over your shoulder the deadly look
Back was a poor exchange
For the shinking of both day and night.
The colors washed out, the pink idyll
Of lambskin. That was it: the whiff
Of regurgitated milk, the conspiracy
Among the growns to feed and stifle you,
Great clouds of hysteria
Where you learned to walk, and to fight back.

*

NORMANDIE : From Broken Line / André Breton

We are the bread and water in the prisons of the sky

We are the pavements of love all the stopped traffic lights

That personify the charms of this poem

Nothing speaks for us after death

In that hour when night puts on 

its shiny ankle­boots to go out

We take the weather as it comes

Like a wall adjoining one of our prisons

The spidery grapnels bring the boat into the road­stead

All you can do is touch there's nothing to see

Later on you'll find out who we are

*

YUKON : Learning Lorca / Erling Friis-Baastad

Too much history here

I cannot sleep

Cold lightning

to the west

over the Sierra Nevada

tonight

startles the centuries

awake and back

into hunger—

*

SJÄLLAND : from Arrival / Thomas Boberg

When you came the dream coincided with memory

and became reality

your name became your mouth, your face

and your face the moment

fused by the glow of your voice, your joy

that illuminated the whole house

and I knew that I had been here before

*

SUSSEX : from I cry out to the rock / Maureen Duffy

Thou has become a bulwark,

A symbol of fortitude,

An icon of stability,

The metaphor for firmness,

Unchangeability,

Those things which must BE.

I say unto thee now,

It is time to change that.

It is the time for you

To crumble, to become sand,

To give in to the vicissitudes

Of time, and wear, and growth.

*

JAMAICA : from “Morning Tableau” / Ishion Hutchinson

 

Intermittent drizzle on the orange roofs;

a barge slides russeting water, I awoke

and heard brass music from another century:

carriage tinkles and princes and parasols

the white of souls promenading by the river;

no tankers, no allies, just rows of lindens,

“without the broken crucifixes of swastikas,”

and a cortège of starred-arm people, clasped-hands,

shuffling to the prick of spires, by rote,

a voice terse script silting the sky.

Hängivet ledarlag

Efter andra rundan av heat 4 ökade Lag Sachsen sin ledning med en poäng. De har nu två poängs marginal till Lag Sussex som ligger på 2:a plats. 

Sjupoängaren i omgången gick till Jude Stéfan, Lag Normandie, för diktfragmentet "They go heads bowed". Men högst totalpoäng tilldelades Claire Booker, Lag Sussex, för sin fantastiska skulpturmonolog. Medan språkligan toppades av Clea Roberts, Lag Yukon. Hennes formulering slog rot hos mig.

And love, it waits in the cupboard
with the potatoes
its eyes exploding with flowers.

Score:

Team	Content	Language	Day 2	Total
Sachsen (Saxony, Germany)	4	3	7	16
Sussex (in England)	6	3	9	14
Yukon (in Canada)	1	4	5	13
Normandie (Normandy, France)	7	1	8	11
Rogaland (in Norway)	3	0	3	11
Själland (Zealand, Denmark)	5	0	5	8
Jamaica	2	0	2	3

Friedenspark in Leipzig

***

Tredje dagen tar vi sikte på Språktemat.

ROGALAND : from A human being is here / Jon Fosse

But it is 

in all past and it is in all future

and it is

in something 

that doesn’t exist

in its vanishing border

between what has been

and what shall come 

It is infinite and without distance

in the same movement 

It clears up 

and disappears

and remains

while it disappears

*

SJÄLLAND : from collection Shaken Mirror / Sören Ulrik Thomsen

The radio has picked up a distant station 
where a chorus of children 
in a language that must be Russian 
reads something that must be poetry 
and could sound like a translation 
of the poem I've always dreamed of writing.

*

YUKON : from Suskwa / Jamella Hagen

Naked
as young animals we made it
through the burning cold to the other side,
to the beaver ponds where we balanced
on wet logs and swam until our lips
were the colour of saskatoons.

On the way back, our muscles
awkward from the cold, words
mangled by freezing cheeks, we laughed
because we couldn't speak, because we
didn't need to, bushwacked back
to our clothes, which we could hardly
put on, then shivered our way
up the trail to stand wringing our hair
by the hot wood stove, telling stories

*

NORMANDIE : Sonnet 8 (from One hundred million million poems) / Raymond Queneau

So now the bard spurns iambs and trochees

to aggravate the layman and the shmo

he writes reviews that read like journalese

which freshens up the tribal rumbelow

 

Just one was right and not those SOBs

the mob demands that verse be comme il faut

both are right not that vague congeries

most people like to read the words they know

Th' inspiréd poet isn't polyglot

in his brain one tongue is all he's got

e'en stol'n from th' celts his muse remains his queen

O bard your solo readings make me mock

I nominate you as a gapingstock

the metromaniacs outdo Racine

*

JAMAICA : from Talk / Kwame Dawes

You, August, have carried in your belly

every song of affront your characters

have spoken, and maybe you waited

too long to howl against the night,

but each evening on some wooden

stage, these men and women,

learn to sing songs lost for centuries,

learn the healing of talk, the calming

of quarrel, the music of contention,

and in this cacophonic chorus,

we find the ritual of living.

*

SACHSEN : Entpuppung / Barbara Köhler

Ich habe das Sagen nicht. Ich lasse es

mir gesagt sein mir gefallen Wendungen

die verwandeln die EinRichtung zwischen

verrückten Wänden in ungehörige Räume

eine Fremde in der ich die Fremde bin

eine Stimme die sich der Sprache gibt

Klangkörper beim Wort genommen wachsen

mir Hände zu begreifen beschwören wenn

ich zum Wort stehe steht es mir zu dir

entgegen kommt es und geht zwischen uns

die Rede die Stille ein Raum, gelassen.

*

SUSSEX : from Rhetorical questions / Hugo Williams

And how do you think I like it

when you tell me what to do

and your mouth opens

and you look straight through me?

Do you think I mind

when the blank expression comes

and you set off alone

down the hall of collapsing columns?

Kärlek är inte lika med symmetri

Sista filmkvällen inleds med skratt och igenkännande. Det är inte min favoritfilm men många uppskattar den, inte minst för huvudrollsinnehavaren Renée Zellwegers insats.

To Autumn, by John Keats (1795-1821)
(From The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition). Harmon, William, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.)

(Förekommer i Bridget Jones's diary från 2001. Regi: Sharon Maguire.)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 

  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease,

    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 

  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

  Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? 

  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

  Among the river sallows, borne aloft

    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 

    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

***

Vi fortsätter med en småmysig film i katolsk skolmiljö. Den lockar till skratt men innehåller även en del allvar.

The Tyger, by William Blake (1757-1827)

(From Collected poems ; edited by W.B. Yeats ; with a new introduction by Tom Paulin. London :Routledge,2002.)

(Förekommer i The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys från 2002. Regi: Peter Care.)

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp, 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 

In the forests of the night: 

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

***

De fem veckorna med poesi ur filmer, avslutas med ett kraftfullt och välspelat ödesdrama. Den är värd att engagera sig i.

The earth turned to bring us closer, by Eugenio Montejo (1938-2008)

(Förekommer i 21 grams från 2003. Regi: Alejandro González Iñárritu.)

“The earth turned to bring us closer,

it spun on itself and within us,

and finally joined us together in this dream

as written in the Symposium.

Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;

time passed in minutes and millennia.

An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh

arrived in Nebraska.

A rooster was singing some distance from the world,

in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.

The earth was spinning with its music carrying us on board;

it didn't stop turning a single moment

as if so much love, so much that's miraculous

was only an adagio written long ago

in the Symposium's score.”

Einen Schub für Sachsen

PSTC 2014, Heat 4 - "Ett lyft för Sachsen"
Jag delade inte ut någon språklig fyra den här gången. Däremot gav jag Torild Wardenaer, Lag Rogaland, 3 språkpoäng för dikten "Av nåde". I den lyckas han länka samman raderna genom alliterationer på bokstaven N.

om natten

et mørkt nedfall

av nåde,

av uglers nærvær

...

i en hvilende trekkfugls nebb

Gårdagens sjua och den högsta totalpoängen gick till Christian Lehnert för den vackra dikten om en vårvinterdag. Tyska språket blir som allra mest poetiskt när rim, rytm och betydelse finner samklang. Det var Goethe en mästare på. Lehnert lyckas väldigt bra.

Därmed tog Lag Sachsen (Saxony in English) ledningen i heat 4.

Vapen för Freistaat Sachsen

Score:

Team	Content	Language	Day 1
Sachsen (Saxony, Germany)	7	2	9
Yukon (in Canada)	6	2	8
Rogaland (in Norway)	5	3	8
Sussex (in England)	4	1	5
Normandie (Normandy, France)	3	0	3
Själland (Zealand, Denmark)	2	1	3
Jamaica	1	0	1

***

Andra dagen tar kärlekstemat vid.

SUSSEX : from Model in love / Claire Booker


There will be time enough to tell him
that she has let herself go.
From her billowing window she dreams
of a cluttered atelier:
turps, clay, clatter of wire-cutters,
plaster of Paris, misses
how he came again and again
simply to touch
the intelligent slope of her shoulder.

Other arms have circled her since.

Though lovers pluck her

as they might a courgette flower

(for taste and decoration)

still she knows that a girl should be free

*

SACHSEN : aus Hingebung / Volker Braun

Wie der Sommer kommt!

Die Abende sind warum und lang.
Ich bin ganz ruhig. Wir sitzen im Gesträuch

Reden uns aus uns heraus.

In seinen Gedanken plötzlich

Finde ich meine.

Die Wiesen liegen in ihrem Duft

Der strömt durch uns durch.

Die Bäume stehen in seltsamen Gruppen

Wie Liebende. Sie werden ganz dunkel.

Ich küß ihn, er küßt mich vom Fuß zur Stirn

Nehm ich nun ein.

*

NORMANDIE : from They go heads bowed / Jude Stefan

They go heads bowed on their agreement

            they exchange gestures

            press each other's feet in secret

            and sleep for each other

from the height of their tears to their forgiveness

                     they enchant each other

each Tuesday with a path of ivy and slowness

                       barely touching

                       then madly mouth to mouth

pressing her lips he tightens her scarf

             black as sex and blood red

*

JAMAICA : from From Aunt Rose’s Honey Advice / Lorna Goodison

Feed it to your love

from a deep silver spoon.

Throw open the curtains

draw free honey from the moon.

Use it to lend a gold glow

to wan lustreless skin.

Fold it into honey cakes,

drizzle it into honey drinks.

Add a satin honey glaze

to the matte surface of everydays.

Voices sing polished

with honey’s burnishing.

*

YUKON : Seasonal Adjustments / Clea Roberts

So many things grow 

unasked.

Garlic in the kitchen.

Crocus in the compost.

And love, it waits in the cupboard

with the potatoes

its eyes exploding with flowers.

*

SJÄLLAND : from Human Arms / Marianne Larsen

"We put our arms around each other

a pair of ordinary tax-paying human arms

not to rest them

but to harden them

a pair of ordinary concrete-accustomed

and marketed human arms

a pair of ordinarily needing

a par of ordinarily hugging

human arms

we put them around each other

they are health-insured and ordinarily dressed

a pair of ordinarily love-interpreting

human arms

*

ROGALAND : from Tir n'a Noir (in english) / Kolbein Falkeid

It’s a cold November

As the sea crashes in 

But I still do remember 

Though the memry grows dim 

To a magical summer 

With sweet Mary McKear 

In the west in Tirna Noir

Were you there as a dream 

Though it all seems so real 

With the laughter I hear and the touch I can feel? 

Far beyond the horizon 

Where the fog disappears 

You were mine dear Mary McKear

Poetry Slam - Team Contest, Heat 4, Day 1

Då har vi kommit fram till heat 4 i sommarens "poesicup". I det deltar två nordiska lag, ett kanadensiskt, ett engelskt, ett tyskt, ett franskt, och så Bellman. Ah, det sista var ett skämt - förstås. Det ska vara Jamaica.

*

Vi börjar med Djur-tema.

SUSSEX : from Dawn chorus / Sasha Dugdale

And once I rose and twitched the curtains apart
Expecting the birds to be pressing in fright
Against the pane like passengers
But the garden was empty and it was night

Not a slither of light at the horizon
Still the birds were bawling through the mists
Terrible, invisible
A million small evangelists

How they sing: as if each had pecked up a smoldering coal
Their throats singed and swollen with song
In dissonance as befits the dark world
Where only travelers and the sleepless belong

*

YUKON : Glimpse / Michael Eden Reynolds

Sight is a bird 

atop the spine.

Sleep is the twittering 

of the closed eye.

There comes a river of fish 

caught in dream’s light.

The bird spreads its wings.

Let it be a kingfisher, 

to carry this body of dream into memory.

Let it be a tide of swifts in the gathering dusk 

to dive like stars into that black cave.

*

SACHSEN : Vorfrühling / Christian Lehnert

Die Amsel zögert noch in einer Welt, 

die innen stumm ist, außen kaum zu fühlen, 

im Schnee. Als hätte sie sich vorgestellt, 

zum Fliegen sei ein Ton herabzukühlen,

der Wind sei ein bestimmtes Intervall, 

so klar wie Eis. Im Schwarm allein, das eine

gefiederte Erwachen, Widerhall -  

wie Schatten gleiten Vögel über Steine

in gläsernes Gezweig, in hartes Moos. 

Noch scheint die Sonne aus der Luft gegriffen, 

noch wirkt die Scheune völlig schwerelos, 

fossiler Zahn von Zeit und Traum verschliffen.

*

SJÄLLAND : ur Flugten / Christian Winther 

Han sagte lod sig glide  Fra Dyrets brede Ryg,

Ned sank han ved dets Side  Paa Mosteppet tryg.

Dog knap sig følte Hjorten  For Baand og Byrde qvit,

Udstødte den et Brøl,  Sprang op og kneised frit.

Med Bragen brød den gjennem  Den tætte, mørke Skov,

Den vækked de smaa Fugle,  Som sad der og sov;

Og længe hørte Svenden  Hver raslende Busk,

Og hvor Grenene de knaged  Ved de voldsomme Rusk;

*

NORMANDIE : Face the Animal / Jean Follain

It’s not always easy

to face the animal

even if it looks at you

without fear or hate

it does so fixedly

and seems to disdain

the subtle secret it carries

it seems better to feel

the obviousness of the world

that noisily day and night

drills and damages

the silence of the soul.

*

JAMAICA : From Yard Fowl / Olive Senior

Some find you loud mouth and simple, 

for every egg laid a big announcement 

a cackle, some find you 

the broody hen, not knowing all 

is meant to throw spies off the scent 

of your blood’s secret: you know 

the sky isn’t falling, geese don’t lay 

golden eggs, superior knowledge 

resides in the feet. 

You are mistress of maps to the under 

layer, to buried treasure. Why else 

do you nod your head and give thanks 

as you sup? With every scratch, 

woman’s luck you turn up.

*

ROGALAND : Av nåde / Torild Wardenaer

I skogen

om natten

et mørkt nedfall

av nåde,

av uglers nærvær

og av englers

Jeg

er en gylden dråpe

i en hvilende trekkfugls nebb