Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 2, 2019: Ilyus Evander

Ilyus Evander, transfem poet/activist from Providence. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ilyus Evander, transfem poet/activist from Providence. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ilyus Evander is a transfem poet/activist based in Providence, RI. She has represented the Providence poetry slam at five national poetry tournaments including Brave New Voices and the National Poetry Slam. She is a two-time finalist at the Capturing Fire Queer Poetry Summit and a 2018 FEMSlam Champion. Her work aims to identify, explore, and deconstruct the stigmas found at the intersections of queerness and mental illness. She wants you to know her beard is a fem. She wants you to know her lipstick is masc. She wants you to know you are loved and you are seen and you are important.

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 Show for Wednesday, December 26, 2018: NO SHOW TONIGHT

No poetry show tonight! Enjoy an evening outside the bar and come see us with your new work at our next show on January 2, 2019.

Need inspiration in the meantime? You can always dial up a random Tip from the Bar: click here to get a writing prompt from Adam Stone‘s weekly series.

And you can see our upcoming shows page for the 2019 schedule so far:
http://bostonpoetryslam.com/see-a-show/weekly-show/upcoming-features-and-slams

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 19, 2019

Cantabbers! Our starriest of love to you for packing the house last night for our final show of 2018. (Our next show is January 2 and we hope you are hyped.) The theme was ASTROLOGY and both our open mic and 4×4 team slam really came through with on-theme work devised to surprise and delight and educate and welcome all in the room. The featured event, of course, was the Astrology Team Slam, wherein teams from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water faced off in the ultimate battle for astrological poetic supremacy! The fight was fierce (okay and really loving), but the ultimate winners of the show stole our hearts and also nearly all of the points: congratulations to Aquarius Zeke Russell, Libra Justice Ameer, Libra Ilyus Evander, and Gemini-cusp Truj.

Big thanks to those who made this night possible: especially HYOOG gratitude to Myles Taylor, who both recruited the night’s slam rosters and hosted the event beautifully; special mention to Ilyus Evander for her pre-show workshop; and a hat tip to doortender Michael F. Gill who provided the inspiration for this excellent night.

As we may have mentioned previously, there is NO SHOW ON DECEMBER 26; the Cantab, however, will be open for business if you’d like to pay cash for drinks and enjoy the blues jam. We’ll make up for our little break when we return on January 2: fortune will favor us with quadruple-Libra and soon-to-be-southbound poet Ilyus Evander for our feature to kick off 2019. See you there!

Tips from the Bar: Lease at Will

Write an ad to get the roommate you think you deserve.

Cantab Workshop for Wednesday, December 19, 2018 with Ilyus Evander

Join Ilyus Evander, Providence transfem poet/activist, for an early-bird poetry workshop at the Cantab Lounge before the Astrology Slam. 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 and all are welcome.

This workshop is entitled The Body Speaks: the neck bone is connected to the shoulder bone, but what are they saying to each other? Our bodies talk to us every single day. Our bodies put as much out into the world as they are fed from the world. This workshop is designed to explore what our bodies are telling us and how we can better listen to them. The goal of this workshop is that each participant leave with a better understanding of their bodies, a new poem, and a simple prompt that can be done anytime to overcome writers’ block.

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 directly email the SlamMaster.

The venue is 18+ and a photo ID is required. For more information on the night’s open mic and Astrology Slam, click here. For more info about Ilyus, please see the info on her upcoming feature, scheduled for January 2, 2019.

Cantab Slam for Wednesday, December 19, 2018: Astrology Team Slam

For the Boston Poetry Slam’s final show of 2018, we are pleased to presented a team theme slam welcoming the signs of the Western astrological zodiac to the stage. Teams representing Fire, Earth, Air, and Water will battle for poetic supremacy as the winter solstice draws near. This show will feature guest host and producer Myles Taylor in addition to local all-star poets.

This slam format will be a traditional 4×4 team slam, with prizes awarded to the poets of the winning team. All sign-ups will be taken in advance: to slam in the show, please email slammaster@bostonpoetryslam.com with the zodiac sign (Sun, Moon, Rising, or other) you would most like to represent.

Judges are also invited to offer their services in advance in return for free admission; please email slammaster@bostonpoetryslam.com. No experience is necessary, or even desired, although we’d love best to have judges prepared to enjoy investing in the theme of the show.

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 the slam will follow at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Another December show in the books, folks! Mary Boo Anderson came to us last week and brought us an unnerving parody of corporate performance, split between two fabulously different sets and ranging in character from the slightly unhinged cube farmer to the time-strapped-relay-race-much-maligned media poet; an character-intense night softened by the sincere gentleness of the real-life poet’s presence. Unforgettable!

This week: we’ve got one more show for 2019, folks, and it’s a doozy. We’ll kick off our December closer with an early-bird workshop with soon-to-depart-these-climes Ilyus Evander, then enjoy our nightly open mic before launching into our first-ever Astrology Team Slam, hosted and produced by Myles Taylor! Come out and celebrate your survival of 2018 with us, folks… And, in the meantime, you can enjoy a sneak peak ahead at our 2019 schedule.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, December 12, 2018: Mary Boo Anderson

Brooklyn artist and writer Mary Boo Anderson. Photo by Susan Li.

Brooklyn artist and writer Mary Boo Anderson. Photo by Susan Li.

Mary Boo Anderson is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. Her interdisciplinary practice sheds light on the dark but humorous absurdities of everyday life, exploring banal spaces ranging from dating apps to office cubicles. Her art has been exhibited at Islip Art Museum, Kimberly-Klark Gallery, The Knockdown Center, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Goggleworks and elsewhere. Her poetry has been published in Peach Mag, Hobart, Metatron and Witch Craft Magazine, among others. She is an editor of GlitterMOB, an art and literary magazine. Visit her at whoismaryanderson.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. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 5, 2018

December! End of semester! Emerson coaches in the house! THE MOST GLITTERY TIME OF ALL THE YEAR! Yes, you are reading that right: last night was the long-awaited feature from 2017 Boston Poetry Slam Team member Myles Taylor. Myles took us all the way back to their first night at the Cantab in a generous feature full of carefully placed ideas. Their fabulously illustrated chapbook is still available: see Myles any Wednesday night at the show for a shiny new copy.

Only two shows are left for December, folks: next week we welcome the wondrous and guaranteed-surprising Mary Boo Anderson into town from Brooklyn.

Tips from the Bar: The Kaveh Akbar Prompt

From Kaveh Akbar’s Portrait Of The Alcoholic With Home Invader And Housefly (available in Calling a Wolf a Wolf):

…It can be difficult
telling the size of something
when it’s right above you — the average
cumulus cloud weighing as much
as eighty elephants.

Using very precise images, explain something seemingly or actually intangible you previously misunderstood but now are comfortably knowledgeable about. For example, peoples’ ages, physical distance, the transition from liquid to gas, etc.