Tips from the Bar: a weekly prompt series by bartender Adam Stone.
Looking for more summer writing prompts? Don’t worry, Adam Stone has had you covered since about 2008, when he began providing a weekly writing prompt at the Wednesday Cantab show. We’ve archived his prompts back to about 2011 or so: Tips from the Bar Archive. Thanks, Adam!
Canadian Cantab poet Ariel Baker-Gibbs. Photo by Amy Wilson.
Ariel Baker-Gibbs’s childhood was split between Toronto, ON, and Hornby Island, B.C., and she grew up competing for space with the largest collection of children’s books anyone has ever seen. She has been a resident of Somerville, Mass., for the past four years, reading grody French post-structuralist philosophy and all the technology and new media theory for the MIT Press. She is off to rejoin her beloved intertidal creatures on the West Coast and to start a PhD in English at UC Berkeley where she plans to read, write, and sign various kinds of words about the role of fantasy in popular culture. You can google her and find many strange things.
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.
Sure, sure, it’s blisteringly hot, swelteringly humid, and super-obviously only just past the midway point of the calendar… Still, it seems constantly surprising that July even exists and is happening to us right here. This past Wednesday, five teams prepping for the National Poetry Slam in August (so! soon!) got down on our dirty basement floor in the hopes of tuning up properly for the big show. At the end of four remarkable rounds, the standings were as follows:
1. The House Slam: 112.6
2. Slam Free or Die: 107.8
3. Seven Hills: 104.1
4. Northampton: 102.7
5. Boston Poetry Slam: 100.4
Congratulations to the House Slam, taking a win in their first-ever season, and best of luck to all the traveling teams! Extra thanks go to Meaghan Ford and Josh Elbaum, our intrepid sacrifices, as well as the five judges selected by ultra-competent bout manager Tom Slavin: Fiona, Julie, Colleen, Joanne & John, and Daysha!
Did you miss it? Well, boy-o, are you in luck this week: Christopher Clauss not only slammed for SFoD in the third round, but he got pictures of just about everyone else in the show. Here are a few selects for you to enjoy while you wait for next Wednesday’s feature: that’ll be a bittersweet farewell to not-with-us-long-enough local Ariel Baker-Gibbs.
The National Poetry Slam heads to Oakland, California, this August, and we want our New England teams to be ready to rumble! That means we’re making our own NPS-preview action right here on the east coast! Tonight, we’ll be featuring FIVE teams from New England in a semi-final format: that means five teams will go for four rounds, one of the riskiest, most whiplash-inducing slams the competition has to offer. If you’re wondering what slam looks like at its highest level, strap in and hold onto your whiskey, because this is it.
This second of two summertime 5x4s 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. 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.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Robert Lashley came to see us this past Wednesday, and he brought down the house at the Cantab on the very last stop on his marathon tour. Sure, his work is incredibly solid and surprising, and, sure, his banter and performance were off the charts– but we know that one of our favorite parts of his feature was also when he was kind enough to honor Jack McCarthy right on our home stage. Thanks, Robert. (Did you missed your chance to buy his sell-out book? You can still order it from Small Doggies Press right here.)
After the feature, of course, we slam. This particular Wednesday saw eight poets crowd into the slam, jostling for both elbow room and bragging rights. The final round came down to the matchup of mortal enemies Ed Wilkinson vs. Sophia Holtz: despite Sophia showing off some Nationals-ready work, Ed took the win and the ten bucks. Watch out, 2016!
Next Wednesday show: OMG IT’S NORTHBEAST EVERYBODY. Our second of two five-team NorthBEAST Regional hits the stage next week, with performances from Slam Free or Die, Seven Hills Poetry Slam, The House Slam, Northampton Poetry Slam, and, of course, your home team. Remember that it’s a $5 night this week to raise money to send our team to Nationals!
Northwestern poet Robert Lashley.
Northwestern poet Robert Lashley has had poems published in journals including Feminete, No Regrets, and Your Hands, Your Mouth. His work was also featured in Many Trails To The Summit, an anthology of Northwest form and kyric poetry. He has featured at the Kerouac Institute for Performing Arts, Goddard, and Seattle Central College, read and was a guest lecture at The University of Washington-Tacoma and Western Washington University, and was invited to the IWPS page/stage panel and showcase in 2013. A semi-finalist for the PEN/Rosenthal fellowship, Robert Lashley also holds the 2014 Cascadia Poetry Festival’s beer slam title. His full length book, The Homeboy Songs, was published by Small Doggies press in April 2014.
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.
This reading is part of our monthly LGBTQ series, Moonlighting. Click here for more information about this recurring show.
Brooklyn poet Miles Walser.
The featured reader for July 2, 2015 is Miles Walser. Miles Walser is the author of the full-length collection of poetry What the Night Demands, released on Write Bloody Press in 2013. He has represented New York City, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Madison, Wisconsin at the National Poetry Slam. His work has appeared in literary journals Muzzle, Vinyl, Used Furniture Review, Radius, and The Bakery as well as the audio podcast IndieFeed. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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.
Remember January, Cantabbers? That whole month when you were waiting, begging the calendar to turn to July? You probably didn’t even know that Jason Bayani was going to be our kickoff feature for this month, but boy-o, was that worth waiting for: Jason swung by New England for a whirlwind four-venue tour with our Wednesday as centerpiece, and we’d welcome this west coaster back any time. If you missed him last night, you can still catch him at Slam Free or Die in Manchester tonight, or grab his book, Amulet, online at Write Bloody Publishing.
After Jason’s feature, our slam was a wild ride of rookies looking for their first wins of the season– or their first-ever slam cred! Much-missed bartender Melissa Newman-Evans was back in town from Denver to sacrifice for these knock-kneed first-timers, setting the bar high. The finals came down to two storyline-heavy readers, Norm and JR Mahung… A strong effort from Norm was just short of catching JR, though, who stepped off the page for his final poem and into the record books with the first slam win of the summer.
Next week: we’re back with another open slam to qualify the winner for the 2016 slam team. Oh, and our feature? None other than the nationally excellent Robert Lashley, in town from the Pacific Northwest. Mark your calendar for Wednesday!
Boston Poetry Slam Online