Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 22, 2014: Team Selection Preliminaries

The Cantab’s Team Selection Slams are the venue’s biggest, wildest poetry slams of the season. This January, we start the team slam series with our Team Selection Preliminaries.

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. The 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team will travel to the National Poetry Slam across the mainland in sunny Oakland, California.

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 2013 and finishing up with the Last Chance Slam on January 15, 2014. 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 in February, so with the field getting cut in half, you can expect a no-punches-pulled, no-holds-barred poetic brawl on the stage tonight.

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 in August.