Cantab Recap for Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Kevin Spak at his July 24, 2014 feature. Photo by Marshall Goff.

A bittersweet night at the Cantab last night, folks: the much-beloved host and producer Kevin Spak presented a farewell feature for his birthday eve, one of the two remaining nights he’ll be a local regular at the Boston Poetry Slam. It wasn’t all tears and sadness, mind you: in honor of the night and his home venue, Spak presented a unique, carefully crafted, utterly new and incredibly fun murder mystery feature! Something like a cross between Cluedo, a Host Your Own Murder Mystery Party, and a superstar poetry headliner, the wild arc of Spak’s show had the audience hanging on every word. Here are some great shots of the show from Marshall Goff, one of our official BPS photographers:

Still wondering whodunnit? You’ll have just one more chance to buy Spak’s chapbook: next week at the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team send-off feature, wherein his partner, 2014 team member Melissa Newman-Evans, also bids us farewell for the airy confines of Denver, Colorado.

Mind you, some folks were able to make a perfectly good gander at the identity of the killer last night: our congratulations go to Nathan Comstock, who was the first to guess correctly (and win a free chapbook!). Unfortunately, Nathan’s luck only extended to the final round of the slam, where he was ousted by remarkable rising rookie Jake Villarreal. Congrats to Jake, who’ll be be one of eight folks looking to take on Ellyn Touchette at the Champion of Champions Slam in just a few weeks!

So, next week: as we said, it’s the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team send-off feature, which is a $5 cover charge in order to help fund our team go to the National Poetry Slam in Oakland in just a few short weeks. Team members Melissa Newman-Evans, Meaghan Ford, Sean Patrick Mulroy, Omoizele Okoawo, and Janae Johnson will rock the house for a full hour, delivering their most polished slam work and all the group pieces they’re packing to NPS… Plus the latest team chapbook will be available for purchase.

Tips from the Bar: Buck the Trend

Write a poem about civilized horses.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, July 23, 2014: Kevin Spak

Kevin Spak works furiously to polish some last lines for the stage. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Kevin Spak works furiously to polish some last lines for the stage. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Kevin Spak has been sharing his kinda-funny, often poignant narratives at the Cantab for almost a decade now, and has been a proud lovely co-host since 2010. He also co-hosts the Encyclopedia Show Somerville, co-coaches the Emerson College Slam Team, and co-hosts and executive produces SlamCenter, slam’s premiere/only sports-style recap podcast.

Tonight, Kevin will be presenting an all-new feature-length murder mystery, with every poem giving the audience a look into the mind of a different suspect.

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.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, July 16, 2014

You guys. YOU GUYS. What a great slam at the Cantab last night! Thanks so much to everyone who came, and especially our kick-ass slammers from Port Veritas, Manchester, the Lizard Lounge, and Urbana NYC.

We started the night with an open mic, as usual, but a number of non-usual folks came out to see us; a good number of first-timers hit the stage, with so many new and interesting voices and ideas! Really hoping to see these folks back on one of our future Wednesdays.

The slam itself was a deathmatch among four teams slamming outside of their home venues and trying to win the crowd’s (and judges’) acclaim! Host Kevin Spak introduced the kick-off sacrifice, an energetic Emerson Poetry Project group piece about the politics of body wash by Kieran Collier and Maggie Dunleavey, the slam got underway quick with the transition from this funny and topical piece to the second sacrifice, an intense piece of on-page hindsight from visiting celebrity April Ranger. (And if those can’t prepare a set of slam judges for what’s about to happen to them, we don’t know what will.)

Round one started in earnest with an emergency substitution: Zanne Langlois, former Cantab Champion of Champions and fill-in for a missing Port Veritas slammer, kicked in the door with her working-parts school shooting poem. She was followed up by the first of many group pieces in the slam, a brand-new-to-us three-woman layered piece about “just girls” from Nora Meiners, Porsha Olayiwola, and Lissa Piercy of the Lizard Lounge. Urbana followed suit with Anthony Ragler and Omar Holmon offering excellently rendered advice to black men in horror films (“RUUUUUNN!”). Slam Free or Die was also riding high on the group piece love with a five-poet (!) “Spoiler Alert” that capitalized on the whole team of Christopher Clauss, Bobby Crawford, Sam Rush, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, and Tim Hopkins.

Ultimately, Urbana eeked out a 0.1 lead over the Lizard to take the first round more than a point ahead of the other two teams. Looking to seal the deal early, they hit the stage at the beginning of round two with Jared Singer and a sweetly constructed poem about “love in parts” with a great callback to SFoD’s spoiler alerts; however, despite a massive crowd response, the returned score was the lowest of the night, including a time penalty! The other three teams all looked to recover ground with a strong first-time showing from Portland rookie Kirsten Uhde, a solo piece from top SFoD scorer Christopher, and a second group piece from Lizard showcasing Lissa writing into a poem by Harlym125. Lizard took the top score in the round by just under a point, putting them up on Urbana by 0.8 and bringing all four teams to within two points of one another with two rounds remaining.

SFoD started out round three (slam’s traditional “weird round”) with Mckendy and a baller performance of “Whistling Vivaldi,” good enough make a two-point jump in the scores from the last round. However, Jared and Omar returned to the stage together for another high-energy group piece about their surprising lack of “uncle shower,” tieing with the previous poem even with another time penalty! The Lizard Lounge was also showcasing lots of group work in the slam, bringing a third piece to the stage that centered Harlym125 on the stage with four women offstage in a rapid-fire interview, while Port Veritas responded with a sweet solo piece from Arwyn Sherman on how a cat is preferable to a man-thing. Urbana took the top score in this round, cutting Lizard’s lead back down to 0.1 with SFoD just over a point behind.

Neiel Israel opened up the final round with the night’s biggest score so far (and what would stand as the highest solo score), a beautifully blocked piece about how a black man walks. Tim Hopkins followed strong for SFoD with a powerful piece about addiction in the suburbs. A third burn-up-the-stage solo piece about Merry Clayton came up next from Portland’s Ellyn Touchette. Finally, Urbana played one last group-piece with the much-anticipated duo of Megan Falley and Olivia Gatwood, garnering the highest score of the night and topping the Lizard Lounge by just under a point.

Special thanks, of course, are due to our judges: Sam, Tyler, Colleen, Alaina, and the surprisingly efficient trio (!) of Amanda, Deepa, and Chevali. Applause and appreciation for these super-fast, super-consistent, and super-good-spirited folks who helped make the slam happen.

Final standings: Urbana #1, Lizard Lounge #2, Slam Free or Die #3, Port Veritas #4. Make no mistake, all four of these teams are mind-blowingly ready for the National Poetry Slam in just a few weeks. What an great night!

Next week: you’ve seen him host, now see him feature! Kevin Spak celebrates a birthday and moves to Denver all in the same week, so we might as well get some poems out of him, too. Don’t miss this lovely co-host’s farewell feature as we close another chapter in Cantab history.

Tips from the Bar: Ingredients for a Poem With April Penn and Andrew Campana

Ingredients for your poem:

1. The name of a thing obsessed with naming things;
2. Rain;
3. Architecture.

Cantab Feature for July 16, 2014: NorthBEAST Regional 4×4 with Urbana, Slam Free or Die, Port Veritas, and Lizard Lounge

Our summer of slam continues with our second of two 4×4 team slam matches: that’s Nationals-style slam, meaning four teams in four rounds, the ultimate balanced format for a poetry battle of strategy, emotion, and wits.

Our second summertime 4×4 will invite a total of four following Nationals-bound teams to face off:

This show will have a slightly shortened open mic and will sell out quickly, 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.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, July 9, 2014

When the SlamMaster’s away… Emily Carroll and Sean Patrick Mulroy will rule the house with an iron fist! These two dictators employed Nora Meiners and other stern-faced staffers last Wednesday night to make sure no one had even a moment of fun during our sweet and jam-packed open mic. The feature was the cool and nearly emotionless Nathan Comstock, who of course would never touch on the tender concepts of family, young love, or Schrodinger’s cat during his much-awaited feature. Lastly, the massive ten-dollar slam prize went home with the indubitably sour bartender Adam Stone, who defeated the bloodthirsty and ill-tempered Jess Riz for the win.

This Wednesday: everything is back to normal– except that it’s a hyooooge NorthBEAST Regional 4×4 in the feature slot! Teams from Port Veritas in Portland, Slam Free or Die in Manchester, Urbana from New York City, and the Lizard Lounge from down the street will face off in a winner-take-bragging rights practice bout for this August’s National Poetry Slam. Keep in mind that it’s a $5 cover that night to help raise money to send our own slam team to NPS.

Tips from the Bar: The Nathan Comstock Prompt

If your family were shape-shifters, what would they turn into?

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, July 9, 2014: Nathan Comstock

Nathan Comstock performs at the Wednesday open mic. Photo by Vasant Marur.

Nathan Comstock performs at the Wednesday open mic. Photo by Vasant Marur.

Nathan Comstock has been writing prose and poetry since high school, but he didn’t discover spoken word poetry until about three years ago when he moved to Boston from his home town of Indianapolis. From there, things spiraled out of control rather quickly. He is now a fixture at the Cantab’s open mic and has featured at such venues as Stone Soup, Rhythmic Cypher, and the Untitled Open Mic in Lowell, which he represented at the National Poetry Slam in 2013. Nathan offers up poetry that’s upbeat, funny, often geeky and often in formal verse, including what may well be the Cantab’s favorite-ever villanelles.

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.

Cantab Recap for July 2, 2014

How is it always the middle of summer when Patricia Smith comes to visit us? Does the hot weather bring her to us or, as might be suggested, is she simply guaranteed to bring the heat? Our co-founder burned up the stage last night with an extended set (really, who stops Patricia from reading) that turned out tons of old-schoolers and a good number of the newly educated for the show. If you missed it… All we can say is that you’ll want to mark your calendar for whenever we can schedule the next one.

To help you ease down off Patricia’s remarkable feature, we are proud to offer two Cantab regulars at our shows this week: first will be Chloé Cunha at Moonlighting on Thursday, July 3, at her last poetry appearance before she leaves for Paris for the summer! Our usual Wednesday reading on July 9 will feature Nathan Comstock on the Cantab stage. Both poets are beloved locals with great rising histories at the show, so you can expect a warm crowd and a great mix of old and new hits. Stay cool and we’ll see you there!