Cantab Recap for Wednesday, August 20, 2014

As sad as we were here at the Cantab to hear that our original feature for this night had to cancel, we are even super sadder to recap that we spent the night waving goodbye to Alex Ehrhardt and Melissa Newman-Evans, both of whom took the feature slot that night to honor leaving the Cantab for parts not here. Alex opened up with a dense set of introspective, extropsective, and speculative work, punctuated by his signature no-banter banter; a three-year veteran of the open mic, Alex leaves us behind to return to his roots in upstate new York. The headlining feature was Melissa, whose many years of service behind the bar, on the open mic stage, and as a two-time National Poetry Slam semi-finalist for the Boston Poetry Slam all culminated in a solidly sweet and sad set, highlighted by her custom-mixed Bitter Farewell, available for one bitter, bitter night only. Melissa departs us for Denver, Colorado, where she joins partner Kevin Spak in their new life, no doubt returning to meet us at NPS on the enemy side of the bout. Harumph!

As though to spite both the departing poets, the slam was wicked great, full of wonderfulness and weirdness from eight hard-working performers, hosted by our by-the-book latest working girl, Tom Slavin. The final pairing came down to relative newcomer Alex Hicks against longtime Northbeaster Mckendy Fils-Aimé: Mckendy edged out the win by a margin, taking ownership of the ten dollars and the first spot in the World Qualifiers for 2015.

Next week: SCHEDULE CHANGE (again!). Once again, our scheduled poet had to cancel her trip to New England for family obligations. However, we couldn’t stand to say goodbye to anyone else… So we’ve booked much-missed one-time regular and host April Ranger, who’ll hop a train from NYC just to fill the slot. Excellent!