THIS SHOW REPRESENTS A SCHEDULE CHANGE. Imani Cezanne (bio below) has had to cancel her trip to New England. Filling in will be April Ranger visiting from New York City.
April Ranger performs on the upstairs stage at the Cantab Lounge in 2011. Photo by Marshall Goff.
April Ranger is a poet, playwright and performer. A three-time member of Boston Cantab’s National Poetry Slam team, April has toured extensively across the Unites States. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Muzzle Magazine, apt, and the anthology Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014.) April directed the premiere of her short play, Civilized Rituals, for the 2013 Dorchester Fringe Festival. She grew up in Maine and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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.
Biography of the canceled feature:
Imani Cezanne, 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam runner-up. Photo by Holly Haines.
Born and raised in San Diego, Imani Cezanne is a passionate poet, workshop facilitator, community organizer and slam coach. She just recently returned home from taking second place at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Austin. In the past four years Imani has been on four National Poetry Slam teams (San Diego, Oakland and Hollywood’s Da Poetry Lounge), three of which placed in the top six at the National Poetry Slam. Last season, along with two of her team members, she was invited to perform on the TV One network’s Verses and Flow, a cable television show dedicated to showcasing performance poets from around the country– all while obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies from San Francisco State University. The Love. Always. tour took her on a 35-show nationwide tour through New York, Colorado, California and more, and now she’s swinging back around to take a few more stops in New England for our listening pleasure.
As sad as we were here at the Cantab to hear that our original feature for this night had to cancel, we are even super sadder to recap that we spent the night waving goodbye to Alex Ehrhardt and Melissa Newman-Evans, both of whom took the feature slot that night to honor leaving the Cantab for parts not here. Alex opened up with a dense set of introspective, extropsective, and speculative work, punctuated by his signature no-banter banter; a three-year veteran of the open mic, Alex leaves us behind to return to his roots in upstate new York. The headlining feature was Melissa, whose many years of service behind the bar, on the open mic stage, and as a two-time National Poetry Slam semi-finalist for the Boston Poetry Slam all culminated in a solidly sweet and sad set, highlighted by her custom-mixed Bitter Farewell, available for one bitter, bitter night only. Melissa departs us for Denver, Colorado, where she joins partner Kevin Spak in their new life, no doubt returning to meet us at NPS on the enemy side of the bout. Harumph!
As though to spite both the departing poets, the slam was wicked great, full of wonderfulness and weirdness from eight hard-working performers, hosted by our by-the-book latest working girl, Tom Slavin. The final pairing came down to relative newcomer Alex Hicks against longtime Northbeaster Mckendy Fils-Aimé: Mckendy edged out the win by a margin, taking ownership of the ten dollars and the first spot in the World Qualifiers for 2015.
Next week: SCHEDULE CHANGE (again!). Once again, our scheduled poet had to cancel her trip to New England for family obligations. However, we couldn’t stand to say goodbye to anyone else… So we’ve booked much-missed one-time regular and host April Ranger, who’ll hop a train from NYC just to fill the slot. Excellent!
THIS SHOW REPRESENTS A SCHEDULE CHANGE. Tova Charles and Zai Sadler (bios below) have had to cancel their trip to New England. Instead, we present a double-feature farewell to two poets departing New England this week.
Melissa Newman-Evans, departing us for the higher climes of Denver. Photo by Marshall Goff.
Melissa Newman-Evans is a two-time semi-finalist with the Boston Poetry Slam Team (2012 and 2014) and the only Cantab poet to successfully bait Oz into performing a group piece at NPS. She and took top honors (along with duet partner Kevin Spak) at the Cantab’s one and only Group Piece Slam in 2009. Her work has been featured in Side B Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, decomP, Radius, and PANK.
Melissa has provided print production and graphic design work for the Boston Poetry Slam family of shows, including the Encyclopedia Show: Somerville, the 2011 National Poetry Slam, and the 2013 National Poetry Slam where she served as Art Director. She also has served as bartender/waitstaff for the Cantab Lounge every Wednesday night. She leaves us for Denver at the end of this week.
Alex Ehrhardt, departing for the frozen north at the end of the month.
Alex Ehrhardt is a poet living in Somerville and writing in odd locations all over the Boston metro area. His work has appeared in Phantom Kangaroo and Maps for Teeth. In addition to poetry, he’s been a staff writer and editorial assistant for an online pop culture critique magazine called The Analytical Couch Potato. He’s leaving you for the patchouli-scented hinterlands of Ithaca, NY, but he’ll be back, promise.
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.
Biography of the canceled double-feature:
The Hair and Teeth and Talk Tour: Tova Charles and Zai Sadler.
Tova Charles and Zai Sadler are two nationally ranked poets on tour together to share good words, laughs, and poems. The Hair and Teeth and Talk Tour showcases group and individual work from these two women who worked together on the fifth-place 2013 Austin Poetry Slam team.
Marzai “Zai” Sadler has been on four slam teams out of Austin, Texas, representing both of the community’s venues; Zai was a 2010 National Poetry Slam Finalist with Neo Soul and a 2012 NPS Group Piece Champion with the August Poetry Slam.
Tova Charles, is a powerhouse performing spoken word born in Lafayette but raised in Austin. The daughter of a librarian and Zydeco percussionist, she gained her passion for writing from her mother and her passion for performing from her father. She is a graduate of the University of Houston with a BA in English literature, a 2011 Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist, and the Host City Director of the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Austin.
A pretty sweet night at the Cantab went down last Wednesday, folks: we got to celebrate the triumphant return of most of our top-twenty 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team, a killer feature from Jacob Rakovan, and a field of very serious NPS-caliber poets duking it out for the chance to challenge reigning Champion of Champions Ellyn Touchette for the venue title.
An open mic packed with veterans (and new work!) got us started, definitely impressing our feature and Poetry and Pie co-curator Jacob Rakovan. Jacob took the stage for a full feature afterwards, bringing us work from his first full-length publication, The Devil’s Radio, as well as excerpts of his latest long-form work. Very nice! If you find yourself in upstate New York, don’t hesitate to look up Jacob and the monthly reading he helps run.
The big close-out for the night was a highly competitive Champion of Champions slam. Sometimes, the week after the National Poetry Slam, we see a little dip in how competitive our local poets are feeling… Not this year! Six top-notch poets showed up to fight for a shot at the title, all of them bringing highly polished work and playing off one another’s pieces in the slam. The final pairing for the season championship came down to Nora Meiners (returning from repping the Lizard Lounge at NPS) and Bobby Crawford (a returnee for Slam Free or Die). Bobby proved the judges’ favorite and decided to let it ride to the ultimate champion round, facing off with reigning champ Ellyn in an all-new-to-the-Cantab-stage round! Bobby took the championship on a tight decision between the judges, earning the title and the $100 prize. What a great show!
Next week: WE HAVE A SCHEDULE CHANGE. Our original bookings, Tova Charles and Zai Sadler, are unfortunately not able to make it to New England this week. On such short notice, we are super-sad about the double feature we booked to fill: we’ll be waving a permanent moving farewell to both Melissa Newman-Evans and Alex Ehrhardt this week, so the two will take the stage for a tearful and not even sarcastic farewell from them both. Hope to see you there!
Appalachian writer Jacob Rakovan.
Jacob Rakovan is an Appalachian writer in diaspora. He is the author of The Devil’s Radio (Small Doggies Press, 2013) He is a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry and recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work has appeared in numerous journals including The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The James Dickey Review, Anon, Thrush, Nailed and Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism as well as anthologies by Salmon Poetry Press, MTV Books and The Arsenic Lobster. Rakovan was a finalist for the 2012 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature and the Gell poetry prize. He is co-curator of the Poetry & Pie Night reading series in upstate New York, where he resides with his five children and a mermaid.
Tonight also marks the final night in our current 8×8 poetry slam series! Eight slam winners will slam off for the season championship and the opportunity to challenge reigning Champion of Champions Ellyn Touchette.
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 Champions of Champions Slam in the 8×8 speed slam series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.
Congratulations to the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team, who qualified for the semi-finals of the National Poetry Slam tonight! The team took a 2 and a 1 in their prelim bouts and nailed down 14th place (out of 72); now they’re headed into semis against Elevated!, Inkwell, SNO, and Hawaii, with the sole winner headed to Finals Stage on Saturday night. Awesome job so far, Janae, Oz, Sean, Meaghan, and Melissa! Melt some faces with poetry tonight!
(In further cool neighborhood news, congrats to the Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam Team as well, who will be slamming in a different semi-final bout tonight.)
You can check out the full top-20 Friday line-up by clicking here, or see the complete rankings after prelims at this link. Go team! Go NorthBEAST! Go poetry!
With the slam team out of town, it’s been anything but quiet at the Cantab… Just ask Adam Stone, who was hoping for a nice, peaceful, anti-slammy feature, but instead ended up playing to a packed house while soon-to-be-first-mate-bartender Emily Carroll was busy slinging custom cocktails. Adam took us, as he put it, on a non-personal non-journey, with a really fun selection of humor, allegory, and extended joke/metaphor, with one wacky cover and a good sprinkling of puns thrown in. That kind of mix is what qualifies him to be our bartender, folks.
The slam was the last in the 8×8 series, which meant that eight big names were vying for the win! Perennial finalist Nathan Comstock made it all the way to the last round again, but was ousted by an on-fire Sophia Holtz, who takes the last win of the series. Open slams start again on August 20.
Next week: we’re back with excellent Appalachian/Rochester poet Jacob Rakovan, author of The Devil’s Radio. Plus, all the NorthBEAST slam teams will be home from Nationals with stories to tell… Especially Ellyn Touchette, Port Veritas slam team member and reigning Champion of Champions, who’ll have to defend her title against eight bloodthirsty challengers! Slam on!
Boston Poetry Slam Online