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Open Mic Highlights

• The return of old slam team member Bobby Crawford, who found parallels to the traditional bouquet toss at weddings at a funeral when an uncle fell into an open grave

• Great first-timer poems from Megash, Dyre, Auden, and Madison

• Sue Savoy writing candidly about her sister and their last connections to family

• Just a taste of a long, a multi-part poem/essay from Kaitie D (anti-Thoreau!) and Nick Roberts (púca madness!)

• Cole’s “Storrow without the T” was another ode to/history of the man behind Storrow drive that seems to pop up on the open mic every few months

• Everyone on the open mic greatly respected the time limit, so there no one was left on the waitlist by the end of the night!

Feature

Tonight’s feature was an open poetry slam that filled up quickly! First, big shout out to first timers Courtney and Heather who skipped the open mic and went straight to competing with some heavy hitters! Second, seasoned open mic regulars/veterans Kyle Mendelsohn and Erica Garcia both made incredible Cantab slam debuts, with Kyle going impressively off book and advancing to the final round via a tie. But the night belonged to Mugs Myers and Isaiah Newman, who both outdid themselves with their best performances to date to go along with their highly polished poems. Mugs Myers goes shocking places with their poems, and while they honestly feel almost *too personal* to describe publicly on our website, they did perform their contrapuntal with Judith Butler on one side, and Michel Foucault on the other. Isaiah won the slam by one-tenth of a point, with work on art, bees, the therapist/client dynamic, religion, and the nuance of published language, and will qualify for next year’s team selection slam!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Come get spooky at our TRICK OR TREAT SLAM, where every round starts with a trick and ends with a treat! Each head-to-head round will have THREE WAYS to win extra points toward a sweet prize: wear a costume, do a poem that relates to your costume, AND complete the round’s “trick” (a challenge to incorporate into your poem)! You only need to bring one poem to compete! Email/DM us or line up early if you would like to sign up! NOTE: this slam does NOT qualify poets for team selection, it is for a silly goofy time!

See you later!

– MFG 🚪

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Please note: WE ARE NOT AT THE CANTAB LOUNGE THIS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15TH! This week Boston Poetry Slam is partnering with Middlesex Lounge (315 Mass Ave in Central Square Cambridge) to launch our YOUTUBE CHANNEL and celebrate archived Boston Poetry Slam footage!

Open Mic Highlights

• Mariana opened the mic with some blackout poetry read on their phone (!) which included some pauses as they scrolled down through all the blank spaces

• Newcomer Tyrone wrote a poem waxing heavy nostalgia for the 1990s, with a lot of references you don’t hear much about these days (Zima, anyone?)

• Dedicated listener Dan Malloy returned to the mic for the first time in 2 years to give us a couple of haiku and stories to go with them. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait 2 more years for 2 more of this former haiku slam winner’s work!

• Ember wrote about the extensive editing of Wikipedia page on The Ship of Theseus, and used it as a metaphor for their self over time

• David F told us why he prefers to write in miniatures (but not why he rhymes) before taking a hard left into how he remembers his Dad through writing

• Everyone on the mic was incredibly respectful of the time that the open mic ended a half hour earlier than expected, leading yours truly to wonder if he should read a half hour of haiku to make up for it (I didn’t.)

Feature

Our third annual HAIKU TOURNAMENT was a resounding success, and always one of the most fun nights of the year. This year, we added a new wrench to the format: a Wild Card/Second Chance Roud, in which poets who would have normally been eliminated get to battle against each other for the chance to move on to the next round. In the end, all 11 poets got read at least two times, and 8 got to read at least four times!

Some of the many highlights of the night:

• Briana did a haiku in Japanese while unscrewing the microphone stand in two and then drew one of the two pieces of the mic stand out like a sword
• Shawn did his haiku where he keeps reading the intro for as long as possible and the crowd acted very antagonistic (in a funny way.) He didn’t stop until yours truly walked on stage and made him stop.
• Anna Geiger, who has only read on our mic a couple times, held her own against everyone else, showing a wide range of experimental, sexy, and thoughtful haiku
• Keaton (who was reading the haiku of Logan Lopez, who had fallen ill) read a long series of crush haiku, which ended with giving audience members tiny cans of Crush soda that said “you’re my crush” on it
• Aparna performed a group haiku where a different audience member said each syllable of the haiku in sequence
• Gel did *more than one* series of haiku about JD Vance f***ing a couch. One was set to the tune of “Baby Shark!” 🦈
• Kaitie D read a series of haiku in morse code intensely, as well as a series of poems examining Stephen King’s trashy horror novels
• Oliver performed work that was simultaneously pastoral and deeply weird, and Sarah King used comedic timing, silences, and some intentional microphone fumbling to great effect.
• March riled up the crowd with a lot of awkward-yet-brazen haiku about sex, gender identity, and queer politics
• Jarvis’ haiku celebrated their queer identity, with tender and raucous haiku about gay clubbing, living with their partner(s), tales of their cat, and a set of “choose your own adventure” haiku that the audience helped decide the progression of the plot

In the end, our final round was between Briana, Aparna, and Jarvis, with Jarvis taking the BIG WIN, and Briana coming in 2nd place. They both will qualify for the 2026 Boston Poetry Slam team selection! Thank you to everyone who performed.

Coming Up This Wednesday

WE ARE NOT AT THE CANTAB LOUNGE THIS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15TH! This week Boston Poetry Slam is partnering with Middlesex Lounge (315 Mass Ave in Central Square Cambridge) to launch our YOUTUBE CHANNEL and celebrate archived Boston Poetry Slam footage! Come read on the open mic, then stay to eat popcorn and watch a set of videos on Middlesex Lounge’s projector screen from past and present Boston Poetry Slam team members. Then make sure to SUBSCRIBE, because our channel will start posting regular footage from our programming! (But never fear, our weekly Wednesday show will stay camera-free.) See you there!

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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Open Mic Highlights

If you were at the show last week, you may have heard my slot on the open mic, where I read haiku about each poem that was read before me that night! Here they are for the sake of posterity.

Adam M

what to do with this
poetry journal i just found:
write a haiku

Lou C

i’m going to spit a little
watch out
it’s intensely joyful

Alex Kist

welcoming a tear
for each question i have about love
welcome home

[s.m.] DECKER

roger’s got no head
it’s an interlocking rollercoaster
instead

Speros P

we never wanted
indigo apples
indigo apples stone still

Tyler B

nine times eight times
seven times six times five times
four times three times two one

Edie

happy spelled with backwards p’s
stained
with the comfort of generations

Lauren

what if you were dead
let me tell you a cold hard fact:
you were hit by a bus

Bailey

queer
queer
queer
queer meat suit with the check engine light flashing queer
queer
queer
queer

Mariana

last stop
called at every station—
plausible deniability

Cheyanne

durability of concrete
white cement mold
what is a birthplace?

Kaitie D

gluten-free jesus will not save me so i don’t say anything about how long a haiku should be just do you want to die or kill the part of you that’s hurting? anyway my dad says some weird stuff

Donovan Beck

the light in the oldest lighthouse is still on
who is keeping it?
who

Isaiah

tomato / basil
coconut / lime
the fruit the follows grows the soil

Will S

normal’s hard to resist
surveillance capitalism
is normal

Otto Vock

poetry closes doors
i became an architect
to replace the doors

Mary S

can you believe in me
long enough
for me to finish this haiku

Aruna

holding hands with the divine
i told him nothing right
empty soul alight

Sue Savoy

to the long list of things
i can’t do anymore
you can add parties

Nick Roberts

here comes
cameras-out confidence men with
mosquito bites between both breasts

March Penn

there is a you inside a you
that is all body
falling towards truth

Brynna B

the kind of laugh
where you forgot to breathe:
too loud too proud too much joy

Briana Crockett

does a survivor’s haiku
sound like anger, broken glass,
or reciprocity?

Aparna

i think they only have
the unasked question in my heart
on the menu

Kai W

epiphanies lost in the “watch later” tab
migrate to me
in sleep

Amy Argentar

in two hundred feet
i want to keep on moving
while staying at home

Feature

We had a short (!) and beautiful feature from Jess Yuan this week. Jess gave us some unique persona poems voicing the dreams of a “project manager”, a poem about her long-distance relationship that was written while actually-travelling-the-long-distance on train, a four-part poem relating to the four stomachs of a cow (wild writing prompt alert!) and finished with a vulnerable poem involving secret languages and a refrain admitting “It’s true I don’t know anything about love / So you must not believe my poems”. The audience disagreed with the point, as they were keenly listening and enthusiastic throughout! Thanks Jess!

Coming Up This Wednesday

BPS presents a double feature: The touring poet KERM, and our 2nd community Night, showcasing poems in multiple languages! THERE ARE STILL SPOTS AVAILABLE FOR THE MULTILINGUAL MIC! SIGN UP AT tinyurl.com/MLNIGHT27 if you are interested!

Bio: KERM is a real presence in front of a mic. While he’s relatively new to sharing his words with the world, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else. He currently resides in LA, but was raised in Nashville, Tennessee; Quincy, Massachusetts; and Attleboro, Massachusetts. His poetry is rooted in reflective storytelling, placing his audiences right beside him, as he time travels through memories oozing nostalgia, processed by a mind molded by comic books and hip-hop. He loves to write about the Black American experience. He loves to write personification poems. He’s finished writing his first poetry book and is currently in the process of getting it published.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter