Cantab Recap For Wednesday, July 24th, 2024

What a night!! Cantabbers, we experienced a lot of firsts this past week—from first time debuts to our first nonstop memorized 29-minute-long feature. On the mic we had a total of 7 first timers, from Kelly with a fantastic extended metaphor on gender, to Kelly’s friend Jay with a tribute…to Kelly! It was a wholesome moment felt by the entire room, and exemplified by host Myles who was quoted saying “I fuckin’ love friendship.” Also notable was a surprise group piece! Kai and Edie, members of pick-up team SLG, got to show off their incredible, gravity-defying, lion-taming group piece on the never-ending gender “circus,” a poem that they did not get a chance to perform at Northbeast. They knocked everyone’s socks off with their performance, complete with matching fits!

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is from Kelly, with “There is nothing rotting inside of you / the bees have found their honey”

Then, Tongo Eisen-Martin gave us an unprecedented feature. After asking how long he had on the mic, being told “30-minutes,” and responding “groovy,” Tongo wend up to the mic with nothing but his voice and memory, and performed a nonstop, completely memorized, 29-minute-long piece. We learned after the fact that this is not only something he does fairly regularly, but the piece was a mash-up of a series of longer individual poems, which was evident in the universe-traversing effect it had on all of us. Tongo made us rethink what we knew about society, government, truth, and poetry itself, taking us on a seamless journey spanning metaphors and harsh realities.

Coming up this week, we have a farewell feature from beloved regular Youssef Mohamed. Youssef is a Muslim-American poet and lawyer. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New South Journal, Ambit Magazine, Nimrod Journal, and elsewhere. He was also selected as a finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. He has clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and when not writing poems or drowning in judicial opinions, he stress drinks caffeinated beverages and listens to Studio Ghibli soundtracks. Youssef is your favorite poet’s favorite anime-girl connoisseur.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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