Cantab Recap for Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Cantabbers, thanks to you all, it’s official: we have raised 100% of the funds required to ship and house Bobby Crawford for the 2013 Individual World Poetry Slam in Spokane, Washington! Thanks to your generous attendance at this spring’s selection slams, plus last night’s send-off feature, we even had enough to get a round-trip ticket to bring him home at the end of the tournament. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who helped us reach our goal for Bobby; if you are a fan and would like to make an additional contribution, we encourage you to pick up Bobby’s chapbook at the next show.

…That is, if you can even handle the next show after having your poetry bones rattled this hard this past week! We only get to send one poet to IWPS all year, so the traditional send-off is a demanding one-hour feature slot for the big winner. Bobby rose to the challenge with ease and presented a fabulous three-act feature, performing a range of slam hits and brand-new work, as well as making room for a favorite group piece and a memorable cover of the late and great David Blair. We are exceptionally proud to have this talented poet represent us in international competition this year.

Next week: do you think you can handle Mo and Falu? You can’t handle Mo and Falu! –Which is exactly why you should come get all your facial features blown back by the incredible NYC double-feature from Mahogany L. Browne and Jennifer Falu next week. Assuming these amazing women don’t trigger a total poetic apocalypse before midnight, we’ll also be holding our next open poetry slam in the 8×8 series. Be there or regret your life choices!

Tips from the Bar: Planet You

Write a Field Guide to your own poetry: consider frequent themes, metaphors, or stories you reference.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, September 18: Bobby Crawford

Bobby Crawford in the 2012 World Qualifiers. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Bobby Crawford in the 2012 World Qualifiers. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Bobby Crawford is the “one-man-boy-band” of Emerson College. He discovered the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge in his freshman year (via Emerson’s slam scene, the Emerson Poetry Project) and has been an avid open mic reader and slammer at the Boston Poetry Slam ever since.

Bobby competed on three consecutive College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational teams representing Emerson (2011-2013). He also served as a curator of the Emerson Poetry Project from 2012-2013, where he was instrumental in helping the EPP win Emerson’s Student Organization of the Year. Bobby will compete at the 2013 National Poetry Slam with the Mill City Slam team from Lowell, Mass. He is the winner of the 2013 Boston Poetry Slam World Qualifier and will represent the Boston Poetry Slam at the 2013 Individual World Poetry Slam in Spokane, Wash.

A competitor and showman by instinct, Bobby is a retired nationally-ranked figure skater and a former chess-club kid. He plays harmonica and wears a leather jacket. He loves late night food and hanging out with other writers/performers. You can connect with him via Facebook.

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. Due to extended feature time, there will be no open slam. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A truly lovely time was had by all this past Wednesday at Emily O’Neill‘s long-awaited feature. This seven-year veteran of the Cantab broke our hearts, delighted us, then broke our hearts again with a series of her published and yet-to-be-published work. This lady is now officially booking for fall (and selling her brand-new books and CDs), so drop her a line if you have a gig available for her.

After Emily laid down the template of sound for the ladies in the room, the slam saw an all-lady finals as well: Austin Hendricks, first-time Cantab slammer, fell to Melissa Newman-Evans, who cements her spot in the 2014 team selection slams.

Next week: we’re back with kind-of-a-big-deal Bobby Crawford, your Individual World Poetry Slam representative from the Boston Poetry Slam! There’s no poetry slam tonight since Bobby will be doing an extended set; cover charge is $5 to help raise funds for Bobby’s trip to IWPS in Spokane this October.

Tips from the Bar: Needs More Salt

Prepare a receipe to cook your past.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, September 11: Emily O’Neill

Emily O'Neill, Jersey/Hampshire poet and editor.

Emily O’Neill, Jersey/Hampshire poet and editor.

Emily O’Neill is a proud Jersey girl who edits poetry for Side B Magazine and nonfiction for Printer’s Devil Review. She represented Hampshire County at the 2010 National Poetry Slam and has featured at venues throughout the country as a member of the No More Rib Cage Tour. Her most recent work appears in FRiGG Magazine, Paper Darts, and Sugar House Review.

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 slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Encyclopedia Show: Somerville for Monday, September 9 — S2V1: DINOSAURS

Monday, September 9
The Davis Square Theatre
255 Elm St. in Somerville
7pm doors, 8pm-10pm show
all ages, $10/$7 sliding scale
click for Facebook event

The Boston Poetry Slam and Simone Beaubien present the next installment in a slightly educational monthly series!

The Encyclopedia Show Somerville is an event franchised from the original series founded in Chicago in 2008, wherein invited artists from a variety of performance disciplines present all-new, original works on sub-topics of a single theme. A recurring cast of hosts and characters welcomes the artists with open arms and minds, while the resident Fact Checker is charged with maintaining the integrity of the Encyclopedic Truth of the show.

Our theme for this month’s show will be DINOSAURS! Presenting all-original guest performances from local artists, plus work from our recurring cast members:

  • Aimee Rose Ranger and Kevin Spak provide deft and earnest CO-HOSTING
  • The Michael J. Epstein Evolutionary Taxonomists offer MUSICAL SUPPORT
  • Wes Hazard dispenses QUESTIONABLE EXPERTISE in a field not totally unrelated to dinosaurs
  • And Intern Steve Subrizi proves that he is not a doppelgänger.

Live Fact Checking is reluctantly provided by Jack van Sly from the Institute of Human Knowledge and Hygiene.

This show in our monthly Encylopedia Show: Somerville series takes place at the Davis Square Theatre, 255 Elm St. in Somerville. Doors and the theatre bar open for a pre-show welcome party at 7:00. The show begins promptly at 8:00 and finishes at 10:00, including a short intermission. This is an all ages show! Admission is $10, or $7 for students, teachers, or guests in Prohibition-era dress.

Moonlighting Recap for Thursday, September 5

Last night marked another great night for the Moonlighting series, with a feature from Boston slam fixture Adam Stone that kept the audience on the edge of their seats. Besides one or two slam hits, Adam read from his brand-new book, Psalms for the Vacant. The show highlighted some of the Cantab bartender’s more cerebral, imagistic work.

Our packed house brought another open mic with great work from a cohort of newbies, and boasted great readings from Jha D and D. Ruff, hosts of If You Can Feel It, You Can Speak It, another great queer arts event in Jamaica Plain. Check them out on the second Thursdays of each month, and be ready for more Moonlighting awesomeness coming up on October 3rd! Stay tuned for updates, and be sure to join us for the Encyclopedia Show’s season opener in Davis Square this Monday!

Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and Reading Series on Thursday, September 5, 2013, featuring Adam Stone

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

Local favorite Adam Stone.

Local favorite Adam Stone.

This month we are thrilled to announce a feature reading from local favorite Adam Stone! Come join us for another exciting open mic in what’s coming to be known as our always surprising, inviting, and sex-positive series.

A little more about Adam, for the uninitiated:

Adam Stone has been involved in slam since he misread an academic schedule in 1998 and wandered into a poetry club by mistake. The club took a field trip to The Prodigal Sun in Hyannis, Mass. to watch a poetry slam. While not immediately hooked, it wasn’t long before he saw a Boston poet named Jack McCarthy, and decided he should go to Boston to check out the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge.

Since then, Adam has represented venues at the National Poetry Slam twelve times, most recently Lowell, Mass. in 2013. He was twice selected to represent the Lizard Lounge at the Individual World Poetry Slam, served as Cape Cod’s Spoken Word Poet Laureate from 2000-2005, and has won the Boston Poetry Slam’s Champion of Champions slam more times than anyone else since the inception of the series in 1993. He holds the venue title of Dirty Head-to-Head Haiku Champion, acquired on Erotic Poetry Night in 2012.

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, September 4

It’s back to school time at the Cantab, folks! By which we mean we stayed out late at a bar on a Wednesday night just like we do every other week of the year… Except this time we got schooled by Jeremy Radin, West Coast actor, poet, and Write Bloody author of Slow Dance with Sasquatch. Wow! You’d think our local poets would be scared to slam after that feature, but nope: eight hard-working folks fought it out to qualify for the 2014 team qualifiers in a wicked hot slam. The final pairing came down to a New Hampshire/New Jersey matchup between Mckendy Fils-Aimé and Meaghan Ford; Meaghan came out on top with the ten bucks her name in lights (well, up on this website, anyway). Congratulations, Meaghan!

Can’t get enough poetry this week? Good thing, because we have THREE shows for you in the next six days:

Come get educated. We’ll see you there!