Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 9: Team Selection Preliminaries

The Cantab’s Team Selection Slams are the venue’s biggest, wildest poetry slams of the year– this January, we’ll be starting the season early with our Team Selection Preliminaries on January 9!

Team Selection Slams go for three nights at the Cantab, with the top five poets after seven rounds comprising the venue’s National Poetry Slam Team. With this year’s Nationals being held on the home turf in Boston, you can expect serious competition at this year’s already-popular local events.

We’ll be offering a total of twenty-five opportunities to qualify for this huge slam, with the list of qualified poets growing since May of 2012 and finishing up with the Last Chance Slam on January 2, 2013. Every poet on that list is invited back for a two-round battle royale… That means all your favorite Cantab slammers will be throwing down together in our second show of the new year! Only twelve poets can advance to Semi-Finals on February 6, so with the field getting cut in half, you can expect a no-punches-pulled, no-holds-barred poetic brawl on the stage tonight. Yowza!

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. A SHORTENED open mic begins at 8:00 and the slam begins at approximately 9:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $5; proceeds will go toward funding the National Poetry Slam this August in Boston.