Cantab Recap for Wednesday, August 30, 2014

August has arrived, and with it the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California! This past Wednesday, we sent off our totally baller five-star team with a bang: Janae Johnson, Omoizele Okoawo, Sean Patrick Mulroy, Meaghan Ford, and Melissa Newman-Evans worked their talented patooties off for a full hour of solid and powerful feature. Despite being prolific writers (and Cantabbers) all, not a piece of paper hit the stage in this carefully crafted and highly polished feature of all our favorites and a few new surprises, including group pieces all shined up for Nationals!

The team leaves for Oakland on Monday, but won’t be bouting until Wednesday (just about at feature time at the Cantab, in fact). Can’t make it to the west coast to see them perform? You can at least follow along with the scoring play-by-play from PSi’s Erik Daniel:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Adam Stone will be mixing up drinks and presenting a much-anticipated feature of old and new work, lost and rediscovered tracks, and perhaps even a group piece or two– you know, just to put the team in their place. It’ll be a night full of snark (Adam) and sweetness (specialty cocktails, natch). We’ll also conclude our open slam series with the last slam in the 8×8 series.

But wait, there’s more! Since we know you’ll be itching for more poetry (and more spots on the open mics, ahem) with the teams out of town, we’ve got a first Thursday fix for you, too: our monthly edition of Moonlighting falls on August 7, this time featuring equally powerful and hilarious Portland poet Sarah Lynn Herklots, at Fazenda Coffee Roasters in JP.