Archive of Past Shows, Features, and Slams

Since 1991, the Boston Poetry Slam has had a weekly (or twice weekly) show which has included a featured poet and/or poetry slam. The list below attempts to chronicle every feature and open slam winner at the Boston Poetry Slam—a voluminous task that includes most of the top names in performance poetry from the past 30 years—and to do so as accurately as possible. Pre-2004 information was transcribed by Simone Beaubien from the logbooks that original slammaster Michael Brown used to keep. A few of the books in the series were missing, so there is a year or two of missing data. Notes from the curators have been kept to a minimum, unless there is no further information about the night in question.

You can read more about the individual shows from 2004 to the present day by searching for the appropriate date in the archives of our blog. Please note that the names of certain poets may have changed since the start of this log. The list will be updated as needed/requested, but it will likely always be a work in progress. According to the list below, the people who have featured the most often are Patricia Smith, Michael Brown, Jack McCarthy, Ryk McIntyre, Ron Goba, and C. Bain.