Cantab Recap for Wednesday, February 10, 2016

We survived another Erotic Poetry Night, Cantabbers! Huge, girthy, well-lubricated thanks to our really remarkable open mic poets, who brought us the sexy while almost unanimously bringing accompanying agency, personality, consent, and very creative language to the stage. Also, y’all are awkward as heck and that sure is hot. Nice work, poets!

Extra-enthusiastic thanks also go to our tumblr maven, Cassandra de Alba, who designed, printed, and not-especially-secretly distributed a fine selection of erotic slam bingo cards. Did you get an open mic bingo on pirates/dick size/fetish you’ve never heard of/fan fiction/audible noise of disgust from the audience? WAIT. Congratulations, but don’t tell us; we may not need to know.

The head-to-head Schmlatz Slam that followed our open featured flawless host/producer Emily Carroll, gloriously crafted Heart vs. Fedora judging flags, and a healthy dose of seasonal cynicism. Despite the best efforts of the Pick-Up Lines team (c’mon, give them credit! they put themselves out there!), the entire cadre of Cantab regulars was traumatized by the triumph of the Valentines: for the first time ever in this dive bar basement, Love won the day.

Don’t worry, folks, things will be back to normal next week… That is, if you consider it a regular night when you get to watch the venue’s top poets in a high-stakes fight on the road to Nationals. Next Wednesday will be the Team Selection Semi-Finals, where you can see Tom Slavin host for Manvir Singh, Joshua Elbaum, Marshall Gillson, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, Simone Beaubien, Nora Meiners, Neiel Israel, Quentin Lucas, JR Mahung, Zeke Russell, Meaghan Ford, and Bobby Crawford as they lay down two poems each, hoping to escape the night and qualify for Finals in March! Remember: it’s a $5 cover charge night for the big show, and the open mic will be a little shorter to accommodate the twelve-poet slam.