Sue carried Team Canada on her shoulders

  It looked as if Team Chicago had everything going for them and they should just wrap it up in the final round. Their chests were filled and ready for some "star-spangling" singing, but they had forgotten the importance of collar bones. Specially those connected with a girl named Sue.

Collar bones, by Sue Sinclair

Why do they make us think
of birds, the spreading of wings?

Only the mind is more in love
with flight. Desire

rises, hinges at the throat:
here is where we glimpse

one another, in the aerodynamics
of bones that skim the neckline, glide

from shoulder to shoulder, two halves
of a single bone healed

separately. Through us
they wish for a lost

amplitude, hint at a symmetry
that might have been.

***

  Again the jury surprised me. My absolute favourite poem among the twenty-eight finalists was Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's tribute to Agnes Bernelle. The kinship in the form of a spider was fantastic. But I chose to have an impartial jury for the final and Sue Sinclair became their rated choice.

  This is Annika Meijer's justification:

  The poem is straightforward in its contexture. It's about human beings and the absence of what we could have had. The text is a skillful balance between the metaphorical, the poetic and the mundane physical.

  The judges decision in fourth round gave us a photo-finish between Team Chicago and Team Canada. Both teams achieved a total of 22 points. But when we count the individual scores of each poet we find that Team Canada got 67 points compared to 62 for Team Chicago. 

  Therefore we congratulate Mark Abley, David Manicom and Sue Sinclair and remembers Diana Brebner who passed away fourteen years ago. 

  They were, at least in my expectations, not among the favourites. But I'm happy that i own "The new canon - An anthology of Canadian Poetry. It is a great book.

***

  I really appreciated the work of the jury. Without them it would only have been my subjective guidelines, not exciting at all.

  My thanks go to:

Karolina Jeppson - she is a freelance journalist and anthropologist whose special expertise is in the culture of West Africa and the Middle East.

Agnes Gerner - she grew up in Stockholm and has studied literature at Uppsala University, where she wrote both bachelor's and master's theses on the British poet Ted Hughes and his interest in the animal world and ecology. She is a trained librarian working at the Royal Library. And she made her poetry debut last year with the collection "Skall" ('Bark').

Annika Meijer - she is a book editor, translator and copywriter. She was responsible for the Swedish release of Ally Condie's Matched trilogy (2010–2012), a science fiction dystopia. She was not only editing, she actually translated the verses from Emily Dickinson that appear in the books.

Jan Karlsson - cultural journalist who writes for several newspapers in Southern Sweden.

Johan Alfredsson - works as a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg. His main research interests revolve around contemporary poetry, children's literature issues and literature didactics.

Final standings of PSTC 2015

Team	Score Heat 4	Total Score
Canada	8	22
Chicago	3	22
Ireland	6	18
Latvia	5	17
Poland	2	15
Iraq	4	14
China Blue	1	8

***

We end the last report with two more poems by Sue Sinclair.

Poem, by Sue Sinclair

(from Mortal arguments. London, Ont. : Brick Books, 2003.)

The poem wants to be an extra bone

in the body. Lonely,

it wants the day to come back for it:

a jacket left at the coat check,

the dance floor deserted.

There is no wisdom in the poem,

but it repeats its small life as many times

as we ask. The poem is everybody's

mother, remembering what can't be found,

remembering who you are, remembering

what hasn't even happened yet.

**

Lilacs, by Sue Sinclair

(from The drunken lovely bird. Fredericton, N.B. : Goose Lane, 2004.)

For those who have lived 

where lilacs bloom, who have lost

their immunity

to idleness and wander through

doorway after doorway

when the lilac trees open their infinite

mauve rooms. For those 

who give in and glide a little behind

their lives, a hand trailing

in the water

behind a rowboat. 

Nostalgic sweetness - a taste of victory

  A couple of the judges looked upon the third heat and said it's the best in the competition. I'm not sharing their point of view. I'm also much surprised with the jury's choice of winner, even though it was a close call. They rated Edward Hirsch poem "Cotton Candy" as number 1. I would probably have put him in fourth place. My favourite was Nomad heart, by Paula Meehan. Edward's win gives Team Chicago a big lead before the last stretch.

Cotton Candy, by Edward Hirsch

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.

***

  Johan Alfredsson, member of the jury, shared these thoughts with me. 

"I believe this group of poems were the best in competition, and I specially liked "Cotton Candy". The author has chosen a delicate motif, the memory of a past childhood. And he succeeds in keeping the balance without ending up in clichés. By using the cotton candy as the main image in the poem he reflects gently over the transience of life."

***

Standings

Team	Score Heat 3	Total Score
Chicago	8	19
Canada	4	14
Poland	6	13
Latvia	2	12
Ireland	5	12
Iraq	1	10
China Blue	3	7

***

Finally Heat 4

Creature comforts / written by Inga Abele, Team Latvia

I am a city creature, digging dens in the damp air of

streets and harbors, where it smells of river boats and

foreign love, if love can be called foreign.

Warm crumbling lairs, that fall to ruin just beyond me,

taking away the opportunity for a stranger to

unexpectedly

touch me on the shoulder.

I am a city creature, screened in ephemeral dances by bare

lantern light, when it’s night and the rain has subsided.

Plums and rye bread abraded on cobblestones, so the

nectar floods over fingernails – every paving stone in

Riga shines in our juice, city dwellers.

**

[To Agnes Bernelle, 1923-1999] / written by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Team Ireland

There is no beast I love better than the spider

That makes her own new centre every day

Catching brilliantly the light of autumn,

That judges the depth of the rosemary bush

And the slant of the sun on the brick wall

When she slings her veils and pinnacles.

She crouches on her knife edge, an ideogram combining

The word for tools with the word for discipline,

Ready for a lifetime of cold rehearsals;

Her presence is the syllable on the white wall,

The hooked shadow. Her children are everywhere,

Her strands as long as the railway-line in the desert

That shines one instant and the next is doused in dust.

If she could only sing she would be perfect, but

In everything else she reminds me of you.

**

The ghost hand / written by Susan Deer Cloud, Team Chicago

Sunrises when you opened eyes,

      stared at river stone fireplace

some former owner’s dream …

After you moved into the cottage,

      built a fire in it, the rooms

billowing with phantoms of smoke …

And so placed many colored candles

      on mantle slab, hearth, where before

you placed logs, twigs, crumpled poems …

Awake in the witching hours,watching

      tiny wavering fires, your numbness

freezing into sleep …

Dawns of divorce, waking, 

      not wishing to wake,

face a pond of tears …

**

Hon / skriven av Marzanna Bogumiła Kielar, Team Poland

Hon som är ett hus i mig med dubbel hud av glas.

Som lägger mig mot läpparna likt en frusen flod.

Slickar svett från stenarna.

Hon som har läppar som vitnat av anstormande kastbyar,

i ögonen stålljus, bort till horisonten.

Hon som har vargens päls tar livet av sina skadskjutna

                                                             ungar, tittar på

hur jag kryper ned i vattnet –

det skarpa skinande havet slår mot stranden

och splitter av liv fastnar som skum på graniten;

minnet, denna bränning, bär inom sig lösa

                                            ruiner: spillror, skärvor,

stoft.

**

Hymns to pain, part II / written by Nazik al-Malaika, Team Iraq

Why does this pain come to us?

Where does it come from?

From old it has dwelled in our dreams

and nurtured our rhymes.

For we are a thirsting mouth

by which, thriving, we are satisfied.

At last, we dragged it to the lake,

shattered it and scattered it to the waves,

leaving neither a sigh nor a tear,

thinking it would no longer afflict our smiles with grief

or hide the bitter wails behind our songs.

Then we received a lovely scented rose,

sent by loved ones from across the seas.

**

Collar Bones / written by Sue Sinclair, Team Canada

Why do they make us think

of birds, the spreading of wings?

Only the mind is more in love

with flight. Desire

rises, hinges at the throat:

here is where we glimpse

one another, in the aerodynamics

of bones that skim the neckline, glide

from shoulder to shoulder, two halves

of a single bone healed

separately. Through us

they wish for a lost

amplitude, hint at a symmetry

that might have been.

**

The heart of the plateau / written by Zhang Zhen, Team China Blue

The encounter has shocked me

Seawater flows through my body

Prostrate with my limbs sprawled out

I feel that I am playing chess

With the mountain’s shadow

Have met my match

And am heading for a checkmate

Remoteness is like a disease

But remote places no longer appear

I install my heart in clumps of green algae

As horses’ hooves ring out all at once

On the tip of this lax tongue

Boats and nets are in full bloom under the sky

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.

PSTC 2015: No way out in winner's poem

  Tonight, I give you the results of the first heat. Every member of the jury has rated the poems, from five (highest) down to one point. The poem with the highest total score became the winner of the heat, and the team was awarded 8 teampoints. The judges were rather unanimous in their judgement of the first heat. Their favourite was the poem "Wars" by Sinan Antoon, competing for Team Iraq. In second place came "Mist on the Daugava" by Andris Akmentis, Team Latvia. To my surprise the famous Bei Dao ended up in sixth place with his "Black Map", a small upset for Team China Blue.

Wars, by Sinan Antoon

When I was torn by war

I took a brush

immersed in death

and drew a window

on war’s wall

I opened it

searching for

something

But

I saw another war

and a mother

weaving a shroud

for the dead man

still in her womb

Quote from Agnes Gerner (jury member) regarding "Wars":

It is the simple, expressive images of the poem that makes it captivating. The writer embraces the sentimentality, and speaks with a sincere voice. With a pure, natural phrase and with metaphors which at the same time are restrained and forceful, a dramatic situation is depicted.

***

Standings after Heat 1

Team	Score Heat 1
Iraq	8
Latvia	6
Canada	5
Ireland	4
Chicago	3
China Blue	2
Poland	1

***

Poems of the second heat

Lunatic / written by John Montague, Team Ireland

Screwy, or Nuts, they called me,

Because of my hawk, or handsaw, stance.

I would treat nothing seriously

Where all was harsh, boorish, ignorant.

Sated with small cruelties, I soon learnt

To sing dumb, or pull a loony face;

An antic disposition, my best defence.

My best advance, to leap exams like hurdles

Towards the fabled world of films and girls.

Once I doffed my jester’s cap and bells

To front a hunger-strike, a mute rebellion.

To see the Dean flinch was brief recompense,

The soon palling pleasure of the dark accomplice:

Good pupils, grown just as mean as them.

**

Miracle Maker / written by Fadhil al-Azzawi, Team Iraq

I am the magician, agent of lost souls,

the flock and the shepherd,

the dead and the funeral.

I cross the sky to reach earth.

I spoon embers in my palms from the god’s inferno.

And I steal the temple’s pearl

from under the pillow of the dying priest

with the fingers of an expert thief.

I am the miracle maker.

I always drink my toast alone

and I go on my way.

That’s me.

**

The almost island / written by Mark Abley, Team Canada

                                     Rising

and rising as the planet's crust

buckles and two continents shuffle closer,

inching up like a secret Ararat from

a ridge on the ocean's turbulent floor

through miles of lightening water, each crag

within view of the surface explored by dolphins

and sharks, reconnoitered by petrels:

immune to the force of rain and fog:

all prepared for some radiant Thursday morning

when the sea recedes with grudging compliance

from a peak that has become dry land.

**

It's late / written by Amanda Aizpuriete, Team Latvia

It’s late. War lies at the roadside, and as a pillow

has a sack of lives.

So late, that the poets are waking up.

And the cart, calmly drawn by the wind,

pulls up here. Gypsies leap from the cart

and leap directly into dance. War

sleeps, sack under head, doesn’t wake

and becomes covered with the dust of dancing.

The gypsy children’s finger cymbals clatter

like cheap echoes, for which poets

pay so dearly. War under dust,

but not buried, still can wake.

Those poets and gypsy children – they,

as always, sense it. Late.

**

Family music / written by Teresa Scollon, Team Chicago

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.

**

In the forest / written by Zhang Zao, Team China Blue

A few default matters of yours,

like thunderclouds, they call you to the hilltop.

Gliders of falling leaves,

a few small distant parachuting question marks wriggle and gently fall into the bottleneck of scenery. It seems somebody in the weather is performing a mathematical calculation.

You burn with anxiety.

Rings of the bell, rings of the bell throw headless golden armour

into the depths of the forest. There, mist

is operating in the corner of the Autumn wind, starting up

a discarded picture,

a warm generator room shaped like the insides of an alarm clock.

There, you walk about.

**

Aesthetics of the word / written by Adam Wiedemann, Team Poland

This poem joins the one before. The sun has no face,

especially today. Before, it would go on leave

and we could leave work, look straight into darkness.

Work wasn’t so bad. Nothing to do,

so we gave ourselves to the spoken

word. It’s so simple: you open

your mouth and something leaves it, by no means the tongue

in its pure state. To think that so many lovely

creatures do without a word, as this gentleman

putting key chains on tables to pick them up again.

Embodiment of hopes for a pleasant afternoon

with a glass of spirits.

Poetry Slam Team Contest 2015: The final

  Today starts the final stage in the PSTC Championship 2015. Last year, a couple of my readers called it World Cup in Poetry. I see it more like a fun way to promote modern poetry. An exciting team competition between poets from all over the world. Germany can't defend their title (last years winner were Team Saxony), because they didn't qualify for the final this year. Instead we have the following seven teams:

Iraq
Ireland
China Blue
Canada
Poland
Chicago
Latvia

  I started with studying 80 anthologies in my search for interesting poems. Finally, I put together 36 teams for qualifying. From the first competition four teams advanced to the final. Nine teams were given a second chance, with new poems, to move on from the semifinals. Three additional spots in the final were at stake. 

  We can now look forward to read 28 poems (26 of them in english and two of them in swedish), written by 28 different poets. And they will be judged by a jury of five chosen members with great literary skills. 

  You are welcome to send comments about the poems in each heat. Which one is your favorite?

  Today I give you the poems in the first heat. On Tuesday (22nd), I will reveal the jury's verdict, and you can then follow developments during the 25th , 28th and 30th of September.

  Now I blow the whistle for Heat 1:

Wars, part 1 / written by Sinan Antoon, Team Iraq

When I was torn by war
I took a brush
immersed in death
and drew a window
on war’s wall
I opened it
searching for
something
But
I saw another war
and a mother
weaving a shroud
for the dead man
still in her womb

**

Harvest / written by Ciaran Carson, Team Ireland

a swathe
of honeyed light

cuts through
the gunsmoke

swarms
of men and horses

crawl
all over

the wheat
and barley fields

like mutilated
bees

**

Black Map / written by Bei Dao, Team China Blue

in the end, cold crows piece together
the night: a black map
I’ve come home – the way back
longer than the wrong road
long as life

bring the heart of winter
when spring water and horse pills
become the words of night
when memory barks
a rainbow haunts the black market

my father’s life-spark small as a pea
I am his echo
turning the corner of encounters
a former lover hides in a wind
swirling with letters

**

The trout / written by Diana Brebner, Team Canada

Patient, Poetry is waiting for the
fish to jump, the body arced
over, or for Mister Right

to appear. When you least expect
it happens: your heart stops,
the fish curves space; the world,

for a moment, is perfect &
good enough. At the bottom
of a pail, a lake, a life,

something squirms and moves
upwards, a stay against
indifference is no match

for trout (caught or free)
or for the luminous whorl, or
Poetry, regular & white-capped

as a lake.

**

Nostalgi? / skriven av Ewa Sonnenberg, Team Poland

Rymden solkar naglarna
Det blå flyter bort på ögats skuta
Två dystra kolibrin hälsar med avsked
Natten tagen från munnen
Stjärnorna – tomma lägenheter med slocknade hjärtan
Himlens stålblå fönster stängt med ordets nyckel
Katedralerna – rymdskepp hejdade på vägen
Månens gripande tillförsikt om att solen finns nånstans
Min sol?
Min onda sol
Så förströdd att den glömt knacka på

**

New Year’s Eve / written by Lucien Stryk, Team Chicago

Seeking no oracles
on mountain tops,
the vagrant shambles
through rough-tumble

of the revelers.
Dodger of gutters, he
plies an art absurd
and desolate. His

quirky lamentation
divides me from myself,
chills the mind to
brittle-heel me by.

**

Mist on the Daugava / written by Andris Akmentis, Team Latvia

Mist on the Daugava
like a Dutch painting
a skater’s shadow slowly
glides over it

Let go my hand
push off and slide away lightly
most don’t know how to do this
to beautifully let go

What light mist
rays out today
the eyes thaw
and crystal ice is silent

Somewhere can be heard
a little tink
when the heart breaks up