Consider a terrible or unnecessary revolution: the Arts & Crafts Revolution, the Counterclockwise Lawn-Mowing Movement, etc. Write it out and see what changes.
Cantab Feature for July 10, 2019: Diannely Antigua
Dominican-Massachusetts winner of the Pamet River Prize Diannely Antigua. Photo by Savuth Thor.
Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship and received her MFA at NYU where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems can be found in Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, The Adroit Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Her heart is in Brooklyn.
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. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.
Sunday, July 7, 2019: Boston Poetry Slam Team @ The Roost in Northampton
Late-breaking news, poets! Are you in Western Mass this weekend? If so: you’ve got a chance to catch the 2019 Boston Poetry Slam team in a last-minute set at The Roost in Northampton.
The 2019 Boston Poetry Slam Team is: Terah Ehigiator, Joshua Elbaum, Arianna Monet, and Zeke Russell. Photo by Tatiana M.R. Johnson.
Starting at 4:00 p.m. at 1 Market St. in Northampton, the team will read short sets, accompanied by special local guests Catherine Weiss, JR Mahung, and more! The show is free and lasts until 6:00, which gives you plenty of time to sample the café’s delicious offerings.
Cantab Poetry Slam for July 3, 2019: Team 4×4 Slam
It’s the summer of slam, folks! As one of the oldest poetry slams in the known universe, the Boston Poetry Slam holds a certain responsibility to deliver high-energy, high-quality slam to you right around this time of year; come celebrate your holiday eve with verbal fireworks on our stage.
We’re excited to welcome slam teams repping the following literary entities:
- Verbal Slap of Connecticut
- The Dirty Gerund of Worcester
- The George Abraham All-Stars (local pick-up team)
- and your very own 2019 Boston Poetry Slam Team!
This show will have a slightly shortened open mic and will sell out quickly, so we advise arriving for door time at 7:15 to catch a seat… Otherwise, you’ll be waiting until September to catch another team slam. Cover charge is $5 to help raise prize and gas money for the traveling teams.
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 26, 2019
Another June in the books, Cantabbers! Big ups to last night’s feature, Ben Tolkin, who withstood some good-natured “elusive” ribbing in order to bring a dynamic, wide-ranging, and literally historically true feature to the stage last night. Take notes, folks on the hook for a full feature set: if you aren’t nestling a ten-minute poem into the centerpiece of your setlist, you could be doing things Ben’s way instead.
Next week: did someone say slam? Oh, wait, it was us: we’ll be back in action with a 4×4 team slam featuring teams from Verbal Slap (Connecticut), Dirty Gerund (Worcester, Mass.) and pick-up all-star captain George Abraham, all taking on the home team. Check your couch cushions for twenty first-week-of-the-month dimes, please; it’s a $5 cover this week to put up a $100 prize for the winner and pay gas money to our traveling teams!
Cantab Feature for June 26, 2019: Ben Tolkin
Local open mic favorite and nerd Ben Tolkin. Photo by Amelia Trainer.
Ben Tolkin lives and works in Cambridge, which is a great place to be a nerd and a terrible place to be insecure. He has competed at CUPSI and NPS and had a poem engraved into a Cambridge sidewalk slab and once won a prize for pretending to be a scientist. These days, he really enjoy fonts, old maps, the Internet, obscure historical figures, and writing about same.
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. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.
Cantab Recap for Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Holy wow, Cantabbers: thanks so much to each of you who brought your kindest and truest selves to the show last night. Our open mic was the sweetest and shiniest strawberry it’s been a long time, thanks to the visible and joyful work of poets and audience, and surely due in no small part to a carefully curated workshop and emotionally rich feature from James Merenda. If you missed your chance to get a copy of this local’s new chapbook, Stone Split & Fruiting, you’re in luck; catch them at just about any upcoming open mic to ask about taking one home with you.
Next week: our feature will be Ben Tolkin, a CUPSI/NPS poet who finally leaps from much-touted-occasional-open-mic-sensation to full-on headliner at the BPS. Come by to listen in on a full set from this elusive local.
Cantab Workshop for June 19, 2019 with James Merenda: Sneaking into the Poem
Arrive in advance of tonight’s event for an early-bird workshop at the Cantab Lounge before the show. The one-hour workshop has limited space and begins at 5:30, with latecomers admitted no later than 6:00. This is a generative workshop that is open to anyone who wants to write a poem and contribute to the night’s feeling of community.
Workshop leader James Merenda is a queer & nonbinary poet, playwright, and organizer raised outside of NYC and currently living in Somerville. Learn more about James, who will also be the featured poet for the night, at this link.
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: Sneaking into the Poem
The workshop leader will provide example poems that present a topic through an unexpected or counter-intuitive lens, then guide workshoppers through multiple prompts to create small entrances to a topics that can feel too large or complex to tackle all at once.
Cover charge is $5-$20 sliding scale, which includes admission to the evening show. We ask financially stable poets to consider contributing the higher end of this scale (or more) in order to defer costs for others and support this teaching artist’s generous donation of time to our space.
Due to the constraints of the venue, this workshop has limited space; room can be guaranteed to poets who identify as POC or queer. The best way to secure a spot in the workshop is to send an email.
The venue is 18+ and a photo ID is required. For more information on the night’s open mic, click here.
Boston Poetry Slam Online