Send us feedback anonymously or via email
This past Wednesday, Boston Poetry Slam was around the corner at Pandemonium, an excellent home for our Nerd Slam event. The open mic included references to worms, meteorites, dinosaurs, video games, Pokemon, nominative determinism and more!
Open Mic Highlights
First timer Scott delivered a moving poem about worms that had the audience snapping and cheering with the line “Am I just a host for parasites?”
Logan’s poem was inspired by ICA paintings—a truly art-nerdy, reflective adventure! Jennifer’s piece was packed with jaw-dropping lines like “We were all trying to survive the same sinking ship.” Ed devastated us with “Suffering connects and alienates us from each other” in a poem about a video game no one in the room had played before. Ilse’s poem was a self-aware journey, including the line “It’s easier to be naked than to be honest,” and perhaps motivating us to also check out the work by an inspiration mentioned in the poem—the poet Alejandro Jimenez. Later on the mic, Shawn dropped some shiny Pokemon, followed by the audience singing a Backstreet Boys lyric as TJ took the mic.
Featured Slam
Myles opened by sharing the history of the Nerd Slam at major Slam events like CUPSI and NPS where nerds met and shared trivia and poems with each other. Kai (via Facetime), Shawn, and TJ judged and asked each poet custom trivia questions as part of the slam. Some great lines from the slam:
“If it’s raining, the water is not wet; it wets us.” – Katya
“My heart burns with the flame of survival” – Isaiah
“Kmart is the bottom of my belly or the way station to God.” – Kaitie D
In the final round, Cameron, Faith, and Otto were left as the top three, answering many trivia questions correctly that non-nerds (me) find totally incomprehensible. Cameron was out first and read a poem called “Questions about Pokemon” that delighted in all the questions we’re dying to know like “Can a fire Pokemon be cremated? What happens if Pokemon shit or piss in a Pokeball? Is Lickitung really good at you know what?” Faith and Otto were incredibly close in the trivia component but Faith won the match by a squeaker. Otto started with the statement ‘free Palestine” and then read a poem about video games in the pandemic and experiences with antisemitism. Faith, a first time slammer and NOW Nerd Slam champion, finished out the night with two sonnets, one about a bad dental experience and the other about Pokemon. Thanks to everyone who came out and slammed!
Coming Up This Wednesday
Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy.
She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. From 2022-2024, she was the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry which seeks to make poetry accessible to all in a way that nourishes the soul.
See You Later!
– March Penn 📒
Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter
Boston Poetry Slam Online