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Open Mic Highlights
• First-timer Lauren’s piece on the shifting idea of what being brave means as life goes on
• The unexpected return of former-regulars Kim and Maile B, and a rare two-poems-in-three-minutes from Kaitie D
• First-timer Alvaro read in Portuguese, with a beautiful cadence and rhythm that allowed you to hear all the turns in the poem even if you didn’t speak the language
• Diego, another first-timer, hit it out of the park with a poem about being a statistics teacher, and why he teaches his students about the darker origins of stats, including eugenics and profiling
• An explosive unpredictable / “Wait, did he just say that?” performance piece by Jack Chasse, who continues to keep us guessing where his poems will take us during each line/rhyme
• We also had 2 fantastic Juneteenth spotlight features from our own staff member Brynna Boyd, who shared pieces from their upcoming chapbook about the burning of plantations, and Yah Yah The Wordstress (@yahyahthewordstress), who did a long extended narrative piece with exquisite descriptive detail!
Feature
We had a rare triple feature this week for our Juneteenth celebration!
Marsha (@mizzymaz_) opened things up with a short set that invoked both the themes of “needing time” and coming to terms with the feeling that you are procrastinating.
Up second was Messi Amaru’Khan (@messagefrommessi), who had a relaxed and smooth flow that kept the audience in the groove throughout. The highlight was an excellent extended piece that was initially about papaw and mango trees, but later turned into an extended metaphor on what a tree will and won’t produce despite how it is treated, before arriving at the final question “What type of tree are you?”
Closing the night was M’shairi The God ((@mshairithegod) who opened with a great newly-written portrait of their Jamaican father, and how tangible his heartache has become, and then ended up with a showstopping piece about kissing a white guy and reveling in the act of taking control of the power dynamic between them.
All of our features come up from a new poetry show in the Boston Area, Pull Up Poetry (@pulluppoetry), so give them a follow and check out their upcoming shows!
This recap is a little late due to the 06/25 show having to be relocated at the last minute, but look out for a small recap of that open-mic-only show soon! We’ll be back at the Cantab next week, July 2nd!
See you then!
– MFG 🚪
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