Cantab Recap for Wednesday, June 9, 2016

Our five-poetry-payday month continued last night with NOLA poet Desireé Dallagiacomo, who’s in town on a whirlwind New England tour. Desireé brought us some of the performance work that’s already earned her a top-three spot at every major national slam tournament, as well as some vulnerable new poems she was inspired to dare reading by our super-solid open mic. Thanks for being you, Cantab; it was a fabulous night.

Our open slams are starting to fill up with competitors again (perhaps you all got wind of the fact that a win this summer qualifies you for the 2017 BPS team?), so we had a seven-poet brawl just before midnight last night! The final round came down to RebeccaLynn Gualtieri and Jess Rizkallah, each rocking unapologetic and thoughtful new work. Sure, both poets were awesome, but there can be only one: Jess Riz took the $10 prize, and RebeccaLynn survives to slam another day.

Another day might be next week, of course: you know we have our fifth slam in the series on June 15, right? It’ll be preceded by a feature from one of our favorite west coasters: Brendan Constantine will be back in the house with work from his new collection, Dementia, My Darling. Come check it out!