A lot of young people are engaged in cultural activities. They compose music, create computer games and websites, they immerse themselves in role-playing ga- mes and theatrical activities, design jewel- lery and clothes. And these are only some of the areas in which young people com- municate their creative talents. As for lite- rature they express themselves in lyrics, fanzines, poems, novels, short stories and will on occasion perform in poetry slam competitions, monologues and other kinds of performances.

Since the early 1990s Stockholm Public
Library has arranged creative writing
courses under the tutelage of an author
for people in the age category 11-15.
Those teaching feel that a week of
intensive creative writing improves
everyone’s level of standard, regardless
of previous linguistic or literary ability.
But then what? Young people want
their efforts to be read, yet are seldom
considered good enough to be published.
There are several websites where
young people (and adults) can place
their texts, but a text on the web has
yet to reach the same status as seeing
one’s own text in print. A printed text
has been read and edited and considered
to be of sufficient value for it to
be printed. Occasionally young people
will have poetry published in the local
press or certain periodicals, and then
there are the publishing houses who
with even less regularity might release
an anthology of debutants. But such
possibilities are few and far between
and require young people to stay well
informed and well connected.

Ponton is a periodical managed by
young writers and with young writers,
giving these writers in the age category
15-21 the opportunity to have their
texts published and read. The initiative
was set in motion by two library consultants
at the Stockholm Public Library
in 1997, the year when Stockholm
was designated European Capital of
Culture. A formal organisation came
into being as a result of this, and for
the past ten years it has published the
periodical. Ponton is published on a
quarterly basis and has its own website,
www.ponton.nu. It is reliant upon
government and municipal subsidies,
yet has attracted subscribers and sells
single copies.

In many respects Ponton has become a
culturally creative hotbed for young
people. The editorial staff consists of
about fifteen young people, also in the
age category 15-21, and is placed at the
young people’s library punktMedis at
Medborgarplatsen public library in
Stockholm. Poems, but also short
stories and novels, are submitted to the
editors of Ponton from all over Sweden.
The editorial staff is led by two parttime
employed editors, and under their
guidance texts are read and about 15
are selected for publication in each
issue. Under the heading “Profil”
(Profiles) the authors are given a more
personal presentation. A text can, with
the consent of the author, receive comments
by one of the editors. Ponton
also contains articles and interviews by
and about young as well as more established
authors, written by the editorial
staff. Book reviews are a recurring
fixture. Young people also contribute
photographs, drawings and comics to
illustrate the texts.

Ponton arranges release parties and
readings at punktMedis in order to
reach out to a wider audience. Each
year members of the editorial board
partake in quite a few cultural festivals
in and around Stockholm, creative
writing work shops and are given
support slots at poetry readings to
headlining established authors. The
publishing house ‘En bok för alla’ has
published an anthology containing
poems from the first seven years of
Ponton. Ponton has also sent a voluntary
member on the editorial board to
Spain as part of the EU Youth Programme.

Ponton is of value for those young
people interested in cultural activities.
They learn to read and discuss literary
texts, write articles, work together with
other young people and adults. They
learn to manage a magazine, respond
to the responsibilities that come with it
and to its form and content. There is
also the added bonus of seeing so many
of those who had their first literary
efforts published in Ponton or were
members of the editorial board, to have
gone on and made their debut as
authors of fiction or have become journalists
in the media business. There are
even those who have moved on to
stand-up comedy.

Reading and writing are well suited to
each other, and there are several Swedish
public libraries involved in work
shops for creative writing, poetry slam
competitions and who publish local
literary anthologies. In 2003 the Swedish
Library Association approved new
recommendations regarding public
library activities for children and
young people, based on the terms
stipulated in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. In the
first paragraph it is stated that libraries
should offer children and young people
the opportunity to express themselves
creatively. Not all libraries have the
necessary funding to publish books or
periodicals, but all libraries can encourage
the imaginative writings of
young people by organising creative
writing work shops and readings and
inform them as to what kind of possibilities
there are in getting published.
Libraries can also collect and make
accessible what is being written and
produced by young people. The library
can make a difference, make it visible
and that information, encouragement
and exposure can be crucial to a young
creative person.

Love:

Can you shoot up my trouser leg
And eat me out like chocolate?

Could you please be my ticket-tray,
I am so earnest,
More than that play.
(By the dollar-green man.)

I want you to get me:

Five sweet smelling packs of Marlboro 90s,
One vanilla latte in a claret cup,
Two bags of Doritos, a plump heart, some self-esteem,
And a record deal.

You think you can handle that?

An O & A

Oranges I eat, since a young toddler bundle,
Fruits I’ve picked like parcels off my tablet,
Smacking my lips
In drawn content,
Silent fulfilment.

It never got any better than that.
The melancholy gloss around the apple’s orbit could
have foretold it;
I’ve always been an easy-goer, long-shot thrower,
A procrastinating queen of lock-jaw despair...

Georgia O’Keefe Riddle

Purple petals,
Suggestively scattered on an opaque landscape,
Scheduled to drop on Friday the 30th.

Vague portents where there.
Where there?
The Alice who seeks shall find the hare.
As malevolence is bypassed by benediction,
To my surprise I’ve turned into fiction.

Dési, give life a serious gaze,
Chance you loose your grip and get stuck in this haze.

Désirée Wariaro

Lena Lundgren
Treasurer for the Association tidskriften Ponton
lena.lundgren@kultur.stockholm.se

Translation: Jonathan Pearman