Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024

Hi Poets! Before we talk about last week’s show, please note that this week’s show (on 10/30) will take place at THE CENTRAL SQUARE THEATRE at 450 MASS AVE! This is only three blocks away from The Cantab/Central T stop. It will be inside and it is ALL AGES. We will be back at the Cantab the following Wednesday.

Last week’s open mic brought us a lot of extended work (the three-minute poem barrier was challenged all night long) and there were many highlights. We heard the ending of Nick Roberts’ long running “Letters To Rilke” series, Meredith’s fascination with overgrown skeleton decorations, March Penn on “Hell-th” Care, the audacious spectacle of Cameron’s persona piece as a bathroom attendant, and a moving tribute to Ilse’s mother. Sue Savoy also brought a devastating poem based on the prompt, “What was the last straw?”

Our feature was the instantly likeable Mason Granger, who interspersed his poem suites with life and writing tips disguised as friendly banter. A poet with a gift for not only rhyme, song, and extremely deft wordplay, Mason also went on numerous deep dives dissecting popular phrases and idioms, proving that you can lead a poet to water, and while you can’t make them drink, they can still write an amazing poem about it! Mason also did a fun experiment where he asked everyone in the audience to text him a word, which he then incorporated—mad libs style—into one of his poems. Thanks Mason!

This week! It’s the 👻 HALLOWEEN SLAM 💀 !!!!! Hosted by the fantastic Nayeli Mzîn, slammers should come with TWO POEMS prepared and be sure to show up IN COSTUME! Both poems should be connected to the costume in some way, shape, or form. Props are encouraged as long as they are relevant to the costume/poem. Non-slammers are also encouraged to show up in costume!

To make it extra special and spooky, we won’t be having the slam at our normal haunt. The location will be at THE CENTRAL SQUARE THEATRE at 450 MASS AVE!! This is only three blocks away from The Cantab/Central T stop. The show will be inside, and it will be ALL AGES.

Accessibility information: Audience members will enter at street level. The theater is on the second floor. There are automations to open the doors. Inside the building, the Box Office is located on the ground floor with a half-door used during business hours. There is an elevator on the ground floor that accesses the second floor where the theater is located. Guests in wheelchairs have regularly enjoyed productions at Central Square Theater. There are two gender neutral bathrooms available. Both bathrooms are wheelchair accessible. All seats at Central Square Theater are removable. Accessible seats are placed on the floor level of the theater in the front row. The seats are cushioned and do not have armrests. The seats are approximately 18” wide. Seats are connected with no space in between, except for our accessible seating, where there is extra space. Other than the first row, the total depth of the rows are approximately 36 inches with 18 inches of legroom.

We are so excited for this show – see you then!!! 🎃

– The Ghosts of Amy ✈️ and MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Happy Wednesday! We had a smaller-sized but potent (in terms of quality) Wednesday crowd last week at the Cantab! There was talk of band kid culture (Ben Tolkin), the crossover between gender and the TSA (River) and an explosive written-at-the bar express lane poem that drew from the one and only Beyoncé (Arabella). Cameron did an abbreviated cover of “Moshe Feldstein, Icon Of Self-Realization” (alternate link) (aka “Imagine This Scenario”) by Cantab alum Alexander Nemser, which provoked Michael F. Gill to do a response poem that referenced many other poems on the open mic! Other highlights include Maura’s tales (tails) of Jessica, her rat-shoplifting friend, Max’s Sisyphus poem, and several references to the impending Harvest Moon, to which we can all say, “Full moon in Aries, fuck me up fam.”

The Line of the Wednesday is from Iman, with “I’ve kissed strange and convenient lips / Because they presented themselves / Like candied apples, / Hiding bruises with gloss

Our feature was our splendid neighbor, Mike Linehan! Mike gave us a wonderful set that covered teaching, tolerance, and of course, his beard. The SFOD Slam Team member showed us his skill and expertise on a range of topics, from heartfelt poems about his passion as a teacher to energetic, but still heartfelt, poems about heavy metal! Mike’s poetry was narrative, beautiful, and left us feeling inspired to write about what we are passionate about.

TONIGHT! We have MASON GRANGER!! Mason Granger (he/him) is a spoken word artist with over a decade of experience on stages & in educational settings across all 50 states and nine countries. His work centers around matters of class, nature, and sustainability– both of ourselves as human beings and the world we share– all from an imaginative and forward-thinking perspective.

As the inaugural Poet in Residence of the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC and an LA-Paris 2024 Poetic Games Olympic Showcase Awardee, Mason is one of Southern California’s most engaging poetic voices. Whether inhabiting a stage himself or making space for others’ voices to shine, Mason’s approach to the craft of spoken word poetry emphasizes engagement, connection, and creativity. He has been featured on ESPN (2011) , PBS (2018), the Golden Globes (2021), multiple national magazines, and founded a spoken word YouTube channel (2014), SlamFind, with nearly 100,000 subscribers. Mason also created poetry exchange programs in Romania (2019) and The Netherlands (2024), performed at the Austrian World Summit (2024), and did a backflip once (2003).

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 9th, 2024

Amy: We had quite the Wednesday last week, with a TON of first timers on the mic showcasing their work. We even broke a small 2024 record for most first timers in a row! Benny Alexander (all the way from Canada) read a beautiful poem about love and acceptance and relying like an outsider. Johnathan read about incarceration and his relationship to his father. Bailey was on FIRE, reading a very hot poem … about fire. From the regulars, Maura read poems from postcards, Eli Kane read from his Instagram post caption (which was in fact a beautiful poem about pie and gender), and Lys McGuire read a poem, I mean, meop a daer, that kept reversing direction, but took us on a wonderful beautiful journey nonetheless.

The ✏️ Line of the Wednesday ✏️ is from Lina with “Maybe our whole lives are about sculpting empty promises into a sky”

Colin Killick’s farewell spotlight feature was heartwarming, hopeful, and even occasionally harrowing, or hectic. We heard some classics, some older poems, a more recent poem, and more as he took us on a journey through his time reading at the Cantab Lounge. It was a great showcase of all of his talent, and a bittersweet reminder of why we will miss him so much as he goes on to do great, change-making things in DC.

That’s all from me, but I’m going to pass it to Michael with an electric recap of the haiku slam!

Michael: Thanks Amy! The 2nd annual haiku tournament was indeed one of the rowdiest and most fun slams of this year! As the neutral host of the slam, I was not able to comment in real time about the haiku (including several haiku that were about me) or the audiences’ heckles, but I can now say that everyone brought some incredible and/or wildly WEIRD material to the stage! There were too many highlights to mention, but let’s start with Will Leonard, who stepped in at the last minute to read the seductive and sinister haiku of finalist Arielle Gray, and also give a nod to Cam Salvatore, whose thoughtful and hilarious haiku left him inches away from the final round. After that dirty haiku round, we’ll never think about a pencil sharpener the same way! Speaking of the dirty haiku round, it had brazen work from Kai and Kat, as well as prop comedy from Logan, but it was Sam Bucci who had everyone on the floor laughing with a long “preface” to her series of cartoon characters she’s like to sleep with. The experimental round featured last year’s runner up March Penn placing groceries on chairs across the entire bar, as well as Aparna’s “costume change,” and Logan’s endless supply of hats. In the final head-to-head round, Logan and Aparna went 15 out of the maximum 17 rounds before Aparna successfully defended her title, 9 rounds to 6! Logan and Aparna also qualify for our 2025 team selection slam.

Final Standings:

1st Aparna Paul
2nd Logan Lopez
3rd (tie) March Penn
3rd (tie) Sam Bucci
5th Cam Salvatore
6th Arielle Gray (read by Will Leonard)
7th Kai Wallin
8th Kat Anderson
9th Amy Argentar
10th Sarah King
11th Cameron Vanderwerf
12th TJ Jones
13th Lynette Ramsay
14th Allie Burke
15th Chris Rye

Amy: Thanks Michael!

Now, TONIGHT! Our feature, hailing from the Slam Free or Die community in NH, is MIKE LINEHAN! Mike Linehan is a writer and educator from southern New Hampshire. Since 2011, he has performed poetry at local open mics and has since become a passionate member of the community. In 2018, he was a part of the Mill City Slam team from Lowell, Massachusetts, and competed in the National Poetry Slam in Chicago. As of 2023, he has joined the staff and organizers of Slam Free or Die based out of Manchester, New Hampshire. He self-published the poetry collection The Porch Light in 2023. When he’s not writing or speaking in front of a microphone, he likes engaging in Netflix binges, promising himself that he’ll practice guitar every week (he won’t) and he’ll work on that ever-growing pile of story ideas (don’t rush him, he’ll get to them…eventually). In the classroom, he likes striking up conversations with students, working tirelessly to convince them that literature and poetry are, in fact, cool.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was another great night with a lot of highlights to report on! Shout out to our first-timers Flora, Casey, and especially Matt, who read two poems about that same person, but written ten years apart from each other. We had showstopping work from Erica Garcia and Jack Chasse, mournful work from Brynna (re: Marcellus Williams) and Cam S (“I sweep and I sweep and the face still reappears”), and a great piece from Isaiah that was simultaneously about not wasting your vote, sending audition videos to the show Survivor as a means of survival, and how “the heart is survived by its own betrayals”.

It was also a night of notable cover poems: Cameron V did Daniel Ortberg’s “Male Novelist Jokes“, Ed Wilkinson covered Omoizele “Oz” Okoawo’s classic piece “The Beast:1944“, and Myles Taylor covered Cantab alum Jess Riz. All of this plus we had our last chance haiku slam, which featured stunningly sensual work from Arielle Gray, and surprisingly-hilarious haiku by Cam S, who took the big win!

A final note: the smoking section also featured longtime Cantab bartender Chris reading a farewell poem to the room. Chris has always been one of the biggest supporters of the Boston Poetry Slam for over a decade, and he will be greatly missed!

Our feature was the great Ayokunle Falomo, who came straight-off-the-plane to read for us. He read from his two books, “Autobiomythography of” and “AFRICANAMERICAN’T”, and his set perfectly mashed up performance and page poetry. His work intensely interrogated what it is not only to be a Nigerian and a Nigerian-American, but what it is to be a human who truly knows who they are, and what the next phase of one’s life journey should be after realizing that. He ended with a poem based on Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” that got a standing ovation! Thank you Ayokunle!

Tonight: it’s our second annual HAIKU TOURNAMENT, featuring a year’s worth of past haiku slam winners and runners up! There will be a haiku suite round, a themed round involving dirty and experimental haiku, as well as a head-to-head final round! The winner gets $170 (!), the runner up gets $30, and both finalists will be invited to our 2025 Team Selection Slam. You don’t want to miss it!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

Hey Cantab! We had a lovely fall evening this past Wednesday, with a somewhat serene evening setting up a bombastic speed slam!! Several first timers stunned on the mic, with Victoria reading a touching and vulnerable poem, and Lily K with a fresh new and unique tone! Serendipitously, our host Katya began a tradition of saying “Welcome Home” to everyone she introduced, and when she said so to Lily, we learned that Lily had just moved to Boston! We also had a couple people hit the three-minute mark, but all of them demonstrated the correct practice of 1) noticing they’re about to get kicked off stage and 2) dropping one last fire line. One of those people was Nick Roberts, who gave us an epic poem of sorts, taking us on a literary journey. Lastly, we got a great gaming poem from our gamer/regular Kai about mortality.

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to Maura, with “No longer a puppy love that needs to be taken out every once in a while

Then, we had our speed slam! Consisting of one-minute, two-minute, and four-minute rounds, ten slammers took to the stage to not only showcase their talent, but their range. We saw powerful short pieces from Colin Killick, a one-minute classic Kelsey Kessler poem on Persephone, and Kaitie D blowing us away with so much packed into their one-minute slot it hit us like a car! We saw Logan trim their firehouse slam piece down to two minutes in a display of versatility and Cameron show all his comedic, sincere, and sardonic sides. Ultimately, 2024 slam team member Jennifer Martinez took home the $50 AND a purple typewriter (thanks Eli Kane!) with an incredible performance of her Love Island slam piece, beating Mary by 0.1 of a point. Thank you to our judges and to our wonderful host!

This week we have a feature AND a workshop! Our feature is Ayokunle Falomo. Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), a recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.

Our First Wednesday Workshop will be about assembling a manuscript for publication, led by local poet Yena Sharma Purmasir! As always, the workshop will start at 6:30, and workshop attendees get first access to the open mic list.

Also, if that wasn’t enough, we will have the last chance open haiku slam! This is in preparation for next week’s Haiku Tournament, which has a grand prize of $170, with the top 2 finalists also qualifying for our 2025 Team Selection slam.

See you soon!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

It was another eventful evening this past Wednesday at The Cantab Lounge, and it was proof that you never know who will show up to our show, and what amazing pieces could happen for one night only! Where to start!? Ash gave us an excellent Golden Shovel two poems into the night, which was based on this Sloppy Jane lyric:

But my heart is like a claw machine / Its only function is to reach / It can’t hold on to anything / No, I can’t hold on to anything”.

A few poems later Saloni wowed us all with their poem that contained the refrain I want to f%*k like a Punjabi Grandma“, and soon after that Cameron V, who had signed up under the name “Sigrid,” took the stage dressed as a grandma (!) and delivered a hilarious guided meditation poem that had lines like “Imagine you are on a train. And there is a frog on the top. Then imagine the frog has a gambling problem, and it is on the run from the mafia.” Later on, the unpredictable and multilingual Ben Tolkin went deep into Norse mythology and etymology, and during the Express Lane portion of the show we had the surprise return of mythical Cantab poet Rudolf Stueger! Known for his English translations of little-known German poets, Rudolf once read us one-half of a translation back in 2016, and then came back to read the second half seven years later!

Our feature was the renowned Crystal Valentine, who brought us a diverse set of work from a manuscript that explores the loss of her mother. These were large, expansive poems that felt like streams of consciousness growing into small sets of mountains, a series of mini-epics that grew taller the deeper you got into them. Poem titles included “My Mom Feeds My Dad A Strawberry Danish After Using It To Mop The Floor,” and “My Father Confesses His Sins To Tina Turner,” while the final piece had Crystal’s mother turning 64 and speaking to a god that she didn’t believe existed. What a show!

Tonight! We’ve had to postpone Gia Kagan-Trenchard’s scheduled feature, but in its place there will be an open speed slam! The top 2 from the speed slam will qualify for our 2025 Team Selection slam and the winner will get $50.

See you there!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

Hey Cantab! What a week! We had our wonderful team showcase last week as a bittersweet end to the 2024 slam season, but more on that later. It was a more “chill” night than normal this week, but still a full open mic and one first-timer! We had beautiful poems from Sarah, Kai, March, Sam O., and Keaton, amongst others. There were some lingering Allston Christmas submissions of found poems and some poems written just that day (new shit!). Erica Garcia’s poem blew everyone away with how well-crafted it was, and Kat debuted yet another Furby poem during the smoking section that left people thinking about angels and devils.

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is from Kai, with “no matter how many times we wake up there will always be the nightmare where we say all the right things the first time

Then, we had our team spotlight feature. The 2024 BPS Slam Team, formed in April and consisting of Aparna Paul, Katya Zinn, Jennifer Martinez, Mary Schwabenland, and Brynna Boyd, had a beautiful and successful slam season. In a send-off feature, we got to hear a full hour of poetry from these incredible, talented people. We got to hear some “greatest hits” like Brynna’s Black Beauty poem, Katya’s Dunkin Law and Order poem, Aparna’s triple river contrapuntal, Mary’s conspiracy theory poem, Jennifer’s tick poem, and the closets group piece. We also got to hear some less-competed poems, and the whole thing was such a treat. The room was as filled with as much love and support as it could muster, with hugs all around and audience members lining up for signed team chapbooks. Speaking of which, it was incredibly heartwarming to have the team chapbook accompany the feature. All chapbook sales went to funding the team’s last competition at VoxPop this past weekend. They have made BPS and the whole Cantab community so proud. They are a team we will never forget.

Onto next season!

THIS WEEK! Keep all the hype from last week going because this feature is not one you want to miss. The feature is Crystal Valentine! Crystal Valentine is a nationally and internationally acclaimed poet, educator and organizer. A former New York City Youth Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, Crystal has been offered fellowships from Callaloo, Tin House, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and The Boston Foundation. She is the winner of Palette Poetry’s 2021 Emerging Poet Prize, selected by Kelli Russell Agodon, and her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Muzzle Magazine, TriQuarterly Magazine, MSNBC, BET, CNN, The New York Daily News, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from New York University. Originally hailing from the Bronx, Crystal now resides in Boston where she serves as the Director of Programming for Mass Poetry. When she isn’t writing or agonizing over line breaks, you can find her watching anime and dreaming.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was our annual Allston Christmas Slam, and we had plenty of hidden gems on the open mic, and so so many first-timers! We had a string of newcomers in the middle, including Lee, Ariel, and August. We also had a trio of heartfelt poems by Jade, Skylar, and Mar. Our wonderful workshop host, Elana Lev Friedland, also performed on the open mic!

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is: “This ain’t the final frontier, this is Walgreens” – Peter (we think)

Then, of course, we had our slam. The stage was decorated with several items collected by Myles Taylor, all found during the famed Allston Christmas. These items ranged from hats, shirts, jackets, shark slides, and various unique knickknacks. All of which were up for grabs by the winners of each round. Slammers competed in head-to-head battles, each reading a found poem (aka, a piece of text that is not a poem, nor written by the poet, but performed as such), while our lovely judges picked which poem they preferred. We had incredible readings of reddit posts, a striking and moving reading of some writings found at a T station, a collection of words from other Cantabbers, Teams messages, texts, you name it! We even had a found “group piece” with Mary and Will reading excerpts from their own text conversations. Cameron took all the passion in a reddit post about grilled cheese and released it upon the audience. Katya’s stunning and hilarious performance of the woes of a girlfriend doomed to the nickname of “Tony Pizza” left us in stitches. Kai read an infamous article from 10 years ago that is (we think?) about Bruno Mars being potentially gay. It was an enlightening night that left several slammers with some new prized possessions to accompany their prized poems.

This week, we have the highly anticipated 2024 BPS Slam Team Showcase!

“My team won, they won, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thrilled about that. But it’s how they won. In finals, the team did not win any one round outright.  Most poetry slam teams are built around what I call a Score Horse. It’s not always the same person from slam to slam, but the idea is that one big poem will carry the team to victory. This team didn’t have that. They didn’t need it. As I was rehashing the glory of that win to a coworker, I relayed to him that we didn’t win one round but won the whole thing. Ahh, he said, you didn’t have an Ace, but you had Five Kings.” – Zeke Russell

The 2024 Boston Poetry Slam team is perhaps one of the most decorated in Cantab’s history, winning the Nossrat Yassini Festival Slam, the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam, and the 2024 Grudge Match versus Slam Free or Die. Come see Brynna Boyd, Aparna Paul, Mary Schwabenland, Jennifer Martinez, and Katya Zinn do a special hour-long set before their final competition at VOX POP 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire. These five kings’ work will be sold in chapbook form to fundraise for our NH lodgings. This is a feature you won’t want to miss!

NOTE: *As part of the fundraiser, this special show will be $6 rather than our usual $4 at the door.*

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, August 28th, 2024

It was another full night at the Cantab this past Wednesday, with an open mic that had so many highlights to keep up with it! There was “Love Island Starring Jennifer Martinez”, Cameron’s “A Note About The Dress Code At My Wedding”, Jay’s defiant take on “No Gays in the BSA”, Zack’s scrabble-themed poem that tackled immigration and fleeing with only 7 letters to your name, Will’s cleansing ritual poem followed by Alex Kist’s response to it, Zeke’s spirited tribute to Massholes™, and Kat Anderson’s dental-aftermath poem where the poet finds themself surprised-but-up-for-the-fight with their body’s reactions. This isn’t even mentioning what was likely the most stunning moment of the open mic: Maura’s “Rejection Letter From My Dream Journal,” which took its inventive premise of rejected dreams down an unexpectedly dark and winding road, transfixing the entire audience and staff!

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is by Nick Roberts, with the relatable query “What complaint today, my heart?”

Our very entertaining and heart-tugging feature was Liv Mammone, who read a wide range of work that built eager anticipation for their debut collection coming out in 2025! There was an unforgettable first date horror story, a memorable piece in the voice of their grandmother from Flushing (full disclosure: this recapper grew up in Flushing), formal work that ranged from a golden shovel to the lost art of the “tumblr response poem”, and a sneak behind with the curtain with a poem that Liv’s manuscript editor has currently deemed too spicy to publish! Thank you Liv!

This week, it’s Allston Christmas! Come celebrate the local holiday with us for our annual found poem slam: bring any piece of text under 3 minutes that was found out on the streets (or the internet) and would not typically be considered a poem. Competitors will be paired up and the winners of each found poem pair will win a prize from the Allston Christmas Sidewalk (a collection of items Myles has scrounged in Allston Christmases past).

There will also be an early-bird workshop starting at 6:30 by Elana Lev Friedland, entitled “The Performance of Everyday Life”. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore and create works that live at the intersection of poetry and performance art. We’ll focus on the ways the body and everyday objects can reframe the mundane. Readings will include works by Yoko Ono, CAConrad, and Gabrielle Civil. Time permitting, work may be shared with the group (though sharing is not required). The workshop cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, and workshoppers will have early access to the open mic list.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, August 21st, 2024

Hey Cantab! Hope everyone had a wonderful week. I’m writing this recap from Ireland, making this the first official Recap from Overseas™️. Last Wednesday was a busier Wednesday than most, with a crowded open mic list and bar, making for a crowded basement! As several of our regulars were competing in the slam, it left a decent amount of room on the mic for newcomers, such as Will (first time ever reading!), Leilani (from New York, promoting her own open mic with a sensational poem about the infamous “would you rather be left in the woods with a man or a bear” question), and Larry (who killed it from the wait list!). Another highlight was Kai, performing the highly anticipated audience participation version of their NorthBeast poem, which resulted in a chorus of the pivotal line “WHAT DOES ‘APPOINTMENT’ MEAN?” We also had your usual moving and heartfelt performances from Otto, Kaitie, and Nick Roberts, whose poetry I am trying to channel during my vacation in Ireland. Lastly, we had David F’s poem about his experience with bidets – I guess since the point of a bidet is to cleanse, then I hope no one will mind if I call that poem exceptionally… holy.

There were some shenanigans during the smoking section, as Kimi introduced her work as “a happy poem,” and host Michael F. Gill later announced that he misheard it as “a hockey poem.” Then, two poets later, AK announced that their pre-planned piece was…a hockey poem! One of the funniest bits of poem manifestation we have seen this year🔮

Then, we had our CAMP SLAM, hosted by myself and Aparna. Two teams – team Junk Bunk and team Mother Bunkers – battled head-to-head over seven themed rounds, while Aparna and myself provided half-improvised and half-scripted commentary, making for some typical Cantab Chaos. Highlights from the slam include Cameron’s dial tone poem, having the audience harmonize a dial tone sound; Mary and Edie’s piece that was a cento of their indie poems, that functioned almost as a conversation between the two pieces; uniquely beautiful memory-focused poems from Briana, Logan, and Lila; Edie doing a very impressive “instant blackout” for the surprise round (where teams were given five minutes to do a blackout of a previously read poem), and a literal “talent show” from team Mother Bunkers at the finale, highlighting the strengths of each camper.

After each bunk traded wins round-by-round, Mother Bunkers claimed the victory, winning homemade friendship bracelets and $15 each!!! It was a wacky, wonderful slam. Thank you to all slammers, judges, and audience members!

THIS WEEK! Our feature is Live Mammone. Liv Mammone (she/her) is an editor and poet from Long Island. Her poetry has appeared with Button Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, The Medical Journal of Australia, and in many places. In 2017, she competed for Union Square Slam as the first disabled woman to be on a New York national poetry slam team. She was also a finalist in the Capturing Fire National Poetry Slam in 2017. A Brooklyn Poets Fellow and Zoeglossia fellow, she is currently an editor at Game Over Books. In 2022, hers was one of the top ten most read poems at Split This Rock’s poetry database, The Quarry. Her first collection is forthcoming in 2025. Follow her on Instagram @mammoneliv.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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