CANCELLED: Cantab Feature for Wednesday, March 7, 2018: CUPSI Warm-Up

Poetry fans and hardy New Englanders! We regret to announce that due to weather concerns, there will be NO POETRY SHOW on Wednesday, March 7, 2018, at the Cantab Lounge. Although the forecast may not be reliable, we cannot justify asking our many out-of-towners to risk traveling for this slam.

The Cantab Lounge upstairs bar (21+, cash only) will remain open this evening, although no entertainment is scheduled.

Please join us next Wednesday, March 14, for an early-bird workshop and feature with C. Bain!

The annual collegiate national poetry slam tournament is the driving performative force behind a large number of the Cantab’s regular readers and listeners. This year, our local students (and some local familiar coaches as well) will be headed to Temple University for the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. To help our town favorites gear up for the national competition, we’ll be offering the CUPSI Warm-Up, a team slam featuring four teams in a nationals-style team slam, incorporating all the collegiate regulations, poetry, and intensity of competition we’ve come to expect from CUPSI.

This year’s event will feature Emerson College, Wheelock College, Wellesley College, Smith College, and sacrificial poems from UMass Boston! It’s (just some of) the future of slam, folks: bring your fight songs, flags, and/or tough, objective judging faces to help these poets prepare for their national tournament in April.

Host Kieran Collier performs in the Team Selection Slams. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Host Kieran Collier performs in the Team Selection Slams. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Our host for the slam, by the way, will be familiar Cantab host Kieran Collier, a Boston-based writer and educator. He is the author of When the Gardener Has Left (Wilde Press, 2015) and This to You (Beard Poetry, 2016). His work has been featured in the anthologies MultiVerse: A Write Bloody Superhero Anthology and Again I Wait for This to Pull Apart, as well as multiple online and print journals. The only four-time CUPSI member of Emerson College’s existence, Kieran is uniquely qualified to heckle, cheer, and introduce all of the competing poets. If you look closely, you might catch him weeping into a Shirley Temple intermittently throughout the night.

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. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the slam begins at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.