Biographical Note:

Susan Steudel lives in Vancouver. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals including The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead and Prairie Fire.

Honourary Mention

Susan Steudel

"Theory and Practice"

To classify a mushroom
at twenty yards
the past crowds into the present.

What we know of systems
readies the mind. 

As Darwin would
say. Love is not a matter of the distant future,
a painting or icon

but the magic of intersections: street crossings, 
intersecting lines
converge momentarily and go streaming off.
We could say Mendel. What

are the habits of love?
‘The boldest steps forward
taken in a field
which had long been reserved for theoretical study.

‘Which had been cultivated and maintained
almost exclusively in theory.

‘Contradictions between trends which work to exploit the old
and the abstract striving for the new.’*

Love continually
presses up.
At times while walking
fields of wet mushrooms bloom suddenly in me.

*Lenin's last article