Cantab Feature for Wednesday, June 25, 2014: Brendan Constantine

Brendan Constantine, Los Angeles poet.

Brendan Constantine, Los Angeles poet.

Brendan Constantine’s work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, FIELD, Zyzzyva, Ninth Letter, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, ArtLife, The Los Angeles Review, The Pinch and the L.A. Times bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles. His most recent collections are Birthday Girl With Possum (Write Bloody Publishing) and Calamity Joe (Red Hen Press). Brendan has received grants and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently poet in residence at the Windward School and adjunct professor at Antioch University. In addition, he regularly offers classes to hospitals, shelters and with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Visit him at brendanconstantine.com.

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 feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, June 18, 2014

So many new folks turned out for the NorthBEAST 4×4 last night at the Cantab! …Well, actually, we think they turned out to get a spot on what was a super-fun and thoughtful open mic, but the room was still packed with excited listeners when slamtime rolled around. The Boston Poetry Slam team was prepped and ready to take on the Providence Poetry Slam from Rhode Island, the Rhythmic Cypher team from Portland, and the far-flung travelers from louderARTS NYC!

The show started strong with a thoughtful and funny three-woman group piece about crying in public from Mikayla Mitchell, Jordan Peterson, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva, followed by a more serious (and chilly!) sacrifice from Zeke Russell. First round highlights included a new cut of some older work from Oz and a carpetbagging Jamie Martin hitting the stage for NYC on a short jaunt down from his Portland feature, putting Boston and NYC neck and neck going into round two.

The second round was a cavalcade of confession, starting with RC’s Generalissimio setting his own house on fire. Muggs Fogarty got the on-page response award for the night from the two-spot in this round with her poem about anxiety and queerdom– her raw score would have been enough to put Providence up over New York, but a big time penalty gave the audience another reason besides great writing to shout and stomp. Brendan Wolff followed up from NYC to remind us that “sanity is a relative concept,” which led into a blistering performance of Melissa Newman-Evans’ Hurricane poem that pulled the home team well into the lead.

The NorthBEAST is rocking several lady-heavy teams for NPS this year, and that was most evident in the third round: three more solo ladies hit the stage for NYC, Portland, and Boston, including Bengal tiger Sophia Garcia from Portland: the judges even started giving up some of their precious 9s by the time Janae Johnson hit the stage with The Art of Being Feminine. The round closed with brand-new group piece from Sabine Quetant and Marshall Gillson from Providence; the audience was excited to see group work, but the judges preferred to wait until everyone was off page to give up the high scores.

Boston opened the fourth round with a new edit of a new off-page poem (new new new!) from Meaghan Ford, sealing the deal on the home team’s victory. LouderARTS was just behind with a portrait of high school from Gabriel Ramirez. Providence continued to shun performance in favor of shiny new ideas with a smoldering astronomy poem from Astrid Drew to garner Rhode Island the third place spot, and then the unmatchable Princess Jones got to close the night for Rhythmic Cypher with a very funny and self-empowering body love poem that was a perfect finish for the audience after a heavy night.

Thanks so much to all the teams who traveled to hang with us, and to our judges: Laurel, Sue, Elaine, Amanda, and Edward & Sarah. Hope to see everyone back at next month’s regional on July 16: that one’s got teams from the Lizard Lounge, Port Veritas, Slam Free or Die, and Urbana NYC!

Meanwhile, of course, we’ve got three other shows between now and then… As always, show up early and stay late for next week’s open mic, open slam, and, in the middle, weird and wonderful headliner Brendan Constantine in town from the left coast.

Tips from the Bar: The TLC Prompt

Write a to do list of what not to do.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, June 18, 2014: NorthBEAST Regional 4×4 with louderARTS, Providence, and Rhythmic Cypher

The National Poetry Slam is just a few months away, folks, and you know what that means: it’s time to kick off our summer of slam! This year’s inaugural event will be a Nationals-style 4×4 match– meaning four teams in four rounds, the ultimate balanced format for a poetry battle of strategy, emotion, and wits. If you’re wondering what slam looks like at its highest level, this is it, folks.

This first of two summertime 4x4s will pit the following Nationals-bound teams against one another:

This show will have a slightly shortened open mic and will sell out in exactly two hot seconds, people, so we advise arriving for door time at 7:15 if you want to get in to catch the show… Otherwise you’ll be waiting until July 16 to catch the other 4×4 we’ve booked this summer. Cover charge is $5 to help raise funds for our team to travel to Nationals in Oakland this August!

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 $5.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Holy smokes, Cantab, where did all you late-spring poetry lovers come from? The house sold out in a hot second for Maya Phillips last night, who brought nearly all new-to-us work to the Cantab stage from her fresh chapbook, Welcome Home. After missing Maya on the mic for the two years she’s been in New York City, it’s a savory, rare treat to hear so much of her work again.

(If you missed it, by the way, or found yourself locked out when the open mic sold out by 8:00, you might consider checking out the FAQ on how best to plan to see a show.)

The night’s slam was packed as well, full of eight experienced poets trying out lots of new work! The final round came down to Sophia Holtz and Zeke Russell vying for the $10 prize: Zeke came out on top by just 0.1, but the tight finish earned a huge response from the crowd for both poets.

Upcoming shows: two big slams are going down in the next six days, people! First up is the Nationals-style team slam going down up in Manchester tonight (Thursday, June 12), featuring a wicked four-way grudge match among the poets from Slam Free or Die, Rhythmic Cypher, Lizard Lounge, and our very own Boston Poetry Slam team; there’s plenty of room up at Milly’s and you’re invited to check out the show! Then, next Wednesday, we’ll host our own 4×4 NorthBEAST Regional where the home team takes on Providence, Rhythmic Cypher, and louderARTS-NYC– that one’s a $5 cover to help get our team to the National Poetry Slam in August, so save your quarters and gear up for a big night. See you soon!

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, June 11, 2014: Maya Phillips

Emerson grad and 2011 Boston Poetry Slam Team member Maya Phillips.

Emerson grad and 2011 Boston Poetry Slam Team member Maya Phillips.

New York native Maya Phillips began slamming at the Emerson College Poetry Project in 2008 and found her way to the Cantab Lounge in the same year. A powerful performer with remarkable sense of persona and role, Maya has become an active and prominent reader in both the New York and Cambridge slam scenes, featuring throughout New York and the New England area. A former curator of the Emerson Poetry Project, Maya represented Emerson at CUPSI as a member of the college’s 2010 and 2011 slam teams. She competed for the Boston Poetry Slam at the National Poetry Slam in Cambridge and Boston as a member of the 2011 team.

Maya holds her BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing with a concentration in poetry from Emerson College, where she completed a creative thesis in poetry and an academic thesis examining gender roles and the portrayal of women in Greek drama. She is a freelance writer/copy editor and also works at the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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 feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and Reading Series Featuring Charlie Bondhus on Thursday, June 5, 2014

Charlie Bondhus, feature at Moonlighting. Photo by Kevin Hinkle.

Charlie Bondhus, feature at Moonlighting. Photo by Kevin Hinkle.

This reading is part of our monthly LGBTQ series, Moonlighting. Click here for more information about this recurring show.

The featured reader for June 5 is Charlie Bondhus.

Charlie Bondhus’s second poetry book, All the Heat We Could Carry, won Main Street Rag’s Annual Poetry Book Award for 2013, and is currently a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award in Gay Poetry. Previously he published How the Boy Might See It (Pecan Grove Press, 2009), and two chapbooks, What We Have Learned to Love— which won Brickhouse Books’s 2008-2009 Stonewall Award— and Monsters and Victims (Gothic Press, 2010). His poetry appears or is set to appear in numerous periodicals, including Midwest Quarterly, The Hawai’i Review, CounterPunch, The Alabama Literary Review, and Cold Mountain Review, among others. He teaches at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey, and is the Poetry Editor at The Good Men Project.

This show in our monthly Thursday LGBTQ series takes place at Fazenda Coffee Roasters, 3710 Washington St. in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. An open mic begins at approximately 7:00 p.m. and the headliner follows the open mic. The show is all-ages and a $3 donation is requested.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Good stuff at the Cantab last night, folks: a late-spring packed house, a way-full open mic and slam, and a really solid feature by William Evans made for a pretty super night. Will took the stage a bit behind schedule and then apparently stopped time with a series of poems drawn straight from his contracted-but-not-yet-published manuscript forthcoming from Penmanship Books; his distinct voice and carefully crafted work led us down and back rows of Midwestern cornfields and generations of American history, ending with a sweet and very funny account of the poet’s own progeny. Excellent show!

Our slam was packed from the beginning of the night with some old favorites and some new-to-the-show competitors; also of note was our top-rank sacrificial poet, Omar Holmon, in town visiting from his home slam of Urbana in New York. Ethan Smith achieved the final round in his first Cantab slam despite bringing page to the stage every round; Ethan was eliminated at last, however, by Marshall Gillson, rising in intensity with new performances of the poems that earned him a spot on this year’s Providence slam team.

Marshall will be back with his team, as well as teams from louderARTS and Rhythmic Cypher, to take on the hometown heroes in a 4×4 slam a couple of weeks from now. Between now and then, however, you’ll get to enjoy a very rare feature from 2011 BPS team member and one-time Emerson captain Maya Phillips, visiting from NYC especially for us. See you there!

Tips from the Bar: The Tick Prompt

Write a poem where you serve justice– at room temperature.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, June 4, 2014: William Evans

William Evans: poet, instructor, and performer from Columbus.

William Evans: poet, instructor, and performer from Columbus.

William Evans is a writer, instructor and performer from Columbus, Ohio. As the founder of the Writing Wrongs Poetry Slam, William has created the largest weekly poetry open mic currently operating in the city. William also founded the NuGrowth Youth Poetry Slam in Columbus in addition to hosting the first ever Columbus All District High School Poetry Slam in April 2009.

As an artist, William is one the most successful performance poets to come from Columbus and the state of Ohio as a whole. He made his second appearance on a slam finalist stage at the National Poetry Slam in 2011 as a member of the Writing Wrongs National team, in addition to his 11th place finish at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2009. He has performed on seven Columbus National Teams while being an artist in residence for both the Columbus Wexner Center and Columbus City Schools.

William released his first full-length manuscript, In the Event You are Caught Behind Enemy Lines in August 2009 on Penmanship Books. Previous to that, he released a chapbook, Humble Shell Casings on JK Publishing, as well as two poetry CDs: Living in the Hour Glass (2006) and Measure (2007).

Currently, William Evans tours the country and facilitates writing workshops thru Projecting Murals, LLC, a non-profit organization that connects facilities such as schools, community centers and correctional facilities to artists from the community. He founded the company in April 2009.

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 feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.