Winter Holiday Shows!

  • Filed under big news

  • December 24, 2025

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⛄Happy holidays! ⛄

Since both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are on Wednesdays this year, we will 🚫NOT🚫 be having shows on Wednesday, December 24 and Wednesday December 31. But we still have 2 holidays shows coming up!

#1: On Tuesday, December 30th, we are hosting a 🃏WILD CARD SLAM🃏at the Cantab Lounge. Sign up is first-come first-serve, and there will be a $75 cash prize for the winner! The top two poets in this slam will also qualify to try out for the 2026 slam team. Doors at 7 pm, open mic at 8, slam around 10 pm!

Also known as the “second-chance slam,” here is the format for the wild card slam:

  • Four round slam, with all poems 2 minutes or less, and everyone gets to read at least twice.
  • Round 1 – 8 poets (top 4 move to Round 2, bottom 4 go to wild card round)
  • Wild Card round – 4 poets (top 2 move to Round 2)
  • Round 2 – 6 poets (top 3 move to Round 3)
  • Round 3 – 3 poets

#2:Then, on New Year’s Day, we will be hosting a 📝Write-a-thon📝!

  • Fill Out the jotform survey here to sign up!
  • The 2026 Boston Poetry Slam Write-a-thon is a new event where members of the local community come together both virtually and/or in person to create all formats of poetry, writing, and art together. 
  • Time: January 1, 2026 from 3pm-7pm: Meet on Zoom or in person (address and further details to be emailed after RSVP sign up is submitted.)
  • Programming includes writing prompts, workshops, collaborative writing projects, tarot readings, and a private blog (known as the 365 blog) where work created during the Write-a-thon can be posted.
  • You don’t have to attend the virtual/in person programming to participate! There’s also an option to just post your work on the private 365 blog, which will be available all day long. Future updates on our full schedule of activities to be posted soon!

Hope to see you at one of these events! Regular Wednesday shows will resume January 7th, 2026.

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, December 17th, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• It’s the end of year, which brought a share of open mic regulars leaving (good luck in Denver, Ember!) and returning (welcome back from Ireland, Abbie!) to the stage, as well as surprise visits from Sophie (first time on the mic in 11 years!) and the always engaging Ben Tolkin (who told us about a wild stranger-than-fiction encounter with a stranger right off a bridge in Iceland).

• Kaitie D writing historically/metaphorically morse code with lots of echoes and repetition

• Harold’s first original on the mic went deep into their recovery from abuse using Jungian therapy

• Ed’s “Let it Snow” parody that focused on the ending phrase of “very frightful” to darkly comedic effect. Also seasonal: Meredith’s wrenching seasonal affective disorder poem that put us directly uner the darkness of 4:30 PM in December.

• John Lee made sure we didn’t end 2025 without hearing a funy yet existential diarrhea poem. Thank you?

•The smoking section feature lively work from Kai about Princess Zelda is non-binary, March’s Penn flashback to a moment when anger, jellyfish, and their mother’s sea change all collided, and Jarvis’ crowd-pleasing list of lurid and candid letters to people he has interacted with on Grindr.

Feature

We had an OPEN POETRY SLAM this week! We had a trio of first-timers in Edye, Liza, and Jack, as well as strong work from TJ Jones who read a poem revealed to him a dream. The welcome return of Meredith L to the slam stage brought forth a new headaches-and-horses poem, and a reprise of their relateable “What do I do with all this spite” piece. The final round came down to still-hungry slam veterans Will Leonard and Aparna Paul! Will Leonard came with newly-polished dynamic performances of some old classics (“I wake up with all the answes / I’m hungry” pulsed with fresh energy) and Aparna dropped some new work on us, one about being hatecrimed in Brookline, and another meta poem about how a slam poems “needs to have stakes.” Both of them qualified for the 2026 team selection and were equally beloved by the judges, but for the record Aparna squeaked out the win by one-tenth of a point!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, December 10th, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• Tyrone’s delightful memorized (or are they improvised?) miniature pieces continue! No one else could shout out “Enjoy your daily suffering!” with such perverse glee.

• Wholesome vibes: Brandon not onl read a poem to their best friend who was in the audience, but also gave them a copy of the poem in a plaque! And Greg M wrote another heartmelting poem to his wife of over 40 years.

• Harold’s surprising cover of Earth, Wind, Fire and Em’s response to Bailey’s “I am queer” poem

• River’s sonnet “Ars Poetica of aTrans Body” and poem detailing sex…by turtles!

• The return of Alison Truj to the mic, Sue Savoy’s telling “What my poems are about”, and Will S’s “New York Jets / New Jersey Mall Experience” rounded off a particularly great open mic in front of a packed basement.

Feature

Our feature Jenny Mulberg gave us a short but memorable feature featuring both new and old work. Early set highlights include “Grape Jelly” (“No one wanted to marry me on ring pop day”) and a tribute to radical/experimental artist Carolee Schneemann, specifically the time she pulled a scroll out of her crotch. We also heard a series of charming and self-described “Bitch” poems, with titles like “Bitch interrupts a Wedding” and “Bitch under a Tree Eating Wendys” that came with accompanying buttons that Jenny was giving out for free. Another section of her feature came from her book, The Court of No Record, which details the process of her abuser appealing the case against him, and turns the complete transcript of the court sessions into cathartic poetry. Thank you Jenny!

Coming Up This Wednesday

This week we will have our normal extended open mic and an open poetry slam! If you have 3 poems that are 3 minutes or less, you can compete for the chance to win $75! The top 2 slammers will also qualify for the 2026 Boston Poetry Slam team selection.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• “I grew up / the world begged for more observation” – Alex Kist reflecting on watching television and coming of age

•Newcomer Erica’s startling poem where they wrote a letter to their former self, after having lost a good amount of their personal memories after an accident

• Liza’s poem on ripped jeans and how they are “just like me”

• “Writing about anger is making me angry” – Sue Savoy

• March’s “body horror” poem inspired by all the graffiti and text written in the Cantab bathroom

• David and Ryan returning to the mic for the first time in years, and Tim’s homage to the person who helped them come out

Feature

Our feature was the very intriguing Sarah Kersey who read both new work and from their book Residence Time. “Residence Time” is a term for how long an object stays suspended in water (for example sugar can last as little as 2 seconds in water, where salt can last up to 55 million years in the ocean), which led to a striking opening poem “The People From The Middle Passage Are Still Suspended In The Water.” Another big theme was Sarah’s journey as a self-described “recovering cult member”, and what it’s like to leave a religion behind and find your own life and sexuality (she facetiously called these poems “The Tinder Chronicles.”) Her wry description of the mindset of depression (“Shit is just reliably terrible”) resonated with a lot of members in the audience, but she did end with a hopeful poem about the man who helped her when she was stranded on the side of the road with no gas in her motorcycle. Thank you Sarah!

Coming Up This Wednesday

This week we have a feature from the new Editor-in-Chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College – Jenny Molberg!

Jenny Molberg is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The Court of No Record (LSU Press, 2023), a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her fourth book, The Medium, is forthcoming from LSU Press in 2027. Her poems and essays have recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Oprah Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and others. She is Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, November 19th & 26th, 2025

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Michael: We are jamming two recaps into one during this Thanksgiving holiday season!

Open Mic Highlights 11/19

• Kamran surprised his wife (who was in the audience) by covering “Wedding Song” by Bob Dylan. (“Straight men take notes!” – Myles, who was hosting after Kamran left the stage)

• “The Large Hadron Collider has no date tonight…neither does God” – Tyrone

• “The bouncer at the bar tells me I am smaller each time he sees me” – from Jennifer Martinez’s showstopping new body image/perception poem

• “Masculinity peaks in the sword you never draw” – Frank M

• “Writing is lying and editing is making it true” – Bobby Crawford

• Will S’s wild vision of riding the 4:30 bus to Saugus and meeting Jesus, and then accompanying Jesus as he trashes a Trump supporters’ house

• “My love language is…language” – Jenna B on how difficult it is to put things in words sometimes

• Amy’s “What if I died with a Diva cup in”

Open Mic Recap 11/26

Myles: T’was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and all through the basement poetry rang and food abounded! Our community donated two bags of non-perishable food to the Harvard Square Community Fridge and gathered for a very sweet extended open mic. We got to hear the full, uncut version of Bailey Magpie’s therapist poem, regular TJ and host Myles danced on thin ice with some prose, and new regular Tyrone Walden coined the phrase “getting Waldenized” after another rhythmic stand-up-inspired off-the-dome piece. The most interesting part of the night, though, was how many new faces we saw on what is usually a slow night of predominantly regulars. We hope this wasn’t just a holiday season tryst and that these new readers come back soon!

Feature 11/19

Michael: Local Boston poetry legend Cole Rodriguez was our feature on 11/19! Cole performed a powerful set of almost all-memorized poems, with incredible flow and charisma that you may have not noticed the subtle and clever rhymes in nearly every line (until they performed a piece entitled “This poem will not rhyme”!) In honor of Patricia Smith, Cole performed an incredible cover of Patricia’s “Medusa”, and ended the night with a great sexy/naughty piece, despite being a little bit embarrassed that some of their students were in the audience! A great time was had by all!

Coming Up This Wednesday

We will have a feature from Sarah Kersey and an early bird 6:30 workshop by Shelby Coe!

Workshop Description: Looking to design or adapt workshops for youth spaces? In this reflective workshop, we will reflect on our past & present learning experiences and discuss creating community and safe space for young poets. Participants will leave with strategies to create inclusive, engaging programming for poets of all ages!

Feature Bio: Sarah Kersey is a poet and x-ray technologist. Originally from New Jersey, she has called Boston home since 2023. Her debut collection Residence Time was published last October with Newfound. Fellow poet Taneum Bambrick said of their collection: “Residence Time, begins in origin and sinks into realities that operate like dreams. This speaker remarks on the sonic beauty of the word ‘diaspora,’ asking ‘how many iambs did it take to cross the sea?’ Kersey’s forms snap apart, square, and seep—each poem scrambles excitedly, expansive like a midnight conversation between beloveds hidden under a sheet. I will turn to this poet, always, for how they trace the tangles between past and present, for how they obsess over the question of what permanence means.”In 2025, it was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award–Medal Provocateur. Their work has appeared in The Rumpus, SWWIM, Hobart, The Account Magazine, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. Sarah is a Tin House Workshop alum.

Workshopper Bio: Shelby Coe is a spoken word artist, educator and proud alum of the Disney College Program. She is a two-time recipient of the Transcendent Coaches Award at MassPoetry’s Write Here, Write Now, Speak Loud Youth Poetry Festival out of Boston. When she is not writing or performing, you can usually find her working with her award winning youth slam team out of Lowell, Massachusetts or learning Taylor Swift songs on the ukelele. Follow her on @shelbycoepoet on Instagram for updates!

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, November 12th, 2025

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Note: Tonight’s show (11/19) will start a little later than usual (8:15-8:30), due to the secret music show happening upstairs at the Cantab! While we wait to start, we plan on having a little writing workshop based on lines of poetry gathered by our staff!

Open Mic Highlights

• Bailey’s list/will poem based on the line “To my ____, I leave these things” which also included a rare paradiddle reference (shout out to drummers!)

• Mary’s “What do Oedipus and Taylor Swift Have In Common?” that revolved around Choice vs Fate vs Luck

• Ash covering former Cantabber torin a. greathouse and Kamran covering Persian poet Hafiz

• John’s ridiculously wry “I wish people would stop thinking I am flirting because I am not except when I am”

• “My name is built by braking, K-a-i-t-i-e should keep it’s I’s so it can always see itself” – Kaitie D

• Natalie’s poem analyzing and bemoaning how much time they’ve spend thinking and writing about their breakup, including the actual measured time and statistics

• Amy’s epic and cathartic “I wrote a short poem” that had a lot of empty spaces that were slowly and then urgently filled up as the poem went on, and has us all looking forward to next week’s “I wrote a long poem” (which should be the length of a haiku)

Feature

On short notice we had a surprise fill-in feature from Cantab slam team / slam coach veteran ZEKE RUSSELL! Although Zeke has deep pockets of poems, he performed mostly new work from his upcoming manuscript, and touched upon themes that have run through his work: recovery, sobriety, elegies for the departed, self portraits, and a love of baseball and wrestling. We heard odes to late Cantab poets Jeff Taylor and Omoizele “Oz” Okoawo, as well Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, plus a very “Masshole” flavored take on the people in Lowell who helped Zeke get clean. He ended up on a lighter note, reading poems about his chosen wedding song and the joys of filling-in to distribute lunch to those in need. Thanks for the last minute feature Zeke!

Coming Up This Wednesday

As mentioned above, tonight’s show will start a little later than usual, but we will have local legend Cole Rodriguez featuring for us!

Cole Rodriguez is an internationally recognized spoken word artist, originating from Boston, MA. As a six-year participant in the National Poetry Slam, Cole has competed against the top-ranked poets in the United States. As a mother, teacher, artist and friend, Cole has used her poetic work to create community, inspire activism and speak truth to power.

Passionate about youth development, Cole works with universities, high schools and in therapeutic settings to facilitate spaces wherein poetry can be de-constructed, celebrated and created. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, she has worked with institutions including Harvard University, Berklee College of Music, Boston College, Salem State University, Brandeis University and Bermuda College, as well as a host of alternative and public schools, to incorporate activism and poetic voice into the classroom.

As a performance poet, she has captured audience’s attention as an acclaimed slam winner at Cambridge’s Lizard Lounge, Roxbury’s House Slam and Manhattan’s Nuyorican Café. This lover of rhyme continues to perform throughout the US and abroad. Cole is an avid music appreciator, a Celtics fan, and a beast in the kitchen.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, November 5th, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• In our new “staff sacrifice” that now begins our open mic, Amy spontaneously wrote a golden shovel about a comment in Myles opening spiel regarding “America’s next great top talent”

• River’s “Poem In Which I Remove Myself”

• Jake’s wild piece about how chewing is a form of late-stage capitalism, and how you should eat strawberries without chewing them for the good of mankind

• Kamran read “3 minutes of prose” about the different collective nouns around birds that absolutely delighted the crowd and was, in fact, a poem!

• Fred-Yaah returns the mic after a nearly 20 year absence, with a poem about how he can sense black people walking with him when he’s confronted by racism

•John Lee’s very wry haiku, Edie’s riff on Bailey reoccurring “Queer” poem, and great imagery from first timer Adia

Feature

This week we had another open qualifier poetry slam! Props to open mic-ers Auden, Will, and Jamie who all slammed for the first time! While we had solid work from Kyle and Logan, Kelsey and Brynna stormed their way to the final round, with Brynna taking the win!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Our scheduled feature Aparna Paul has fallen ill, so their feature will be rescheduled. Filling in will be local legend/slam coach/Cantab veteran ZEKE RUSSELL.

Zeke Russell is a poet and housing advocate. He grew up in Central Maine surrounded by artists, lumberjacks and outlaws. He is clean and sober and lives in Boston with his spouse Milo. His debut poetry collection, Wintered Over, is available from Game Over Books. His work has appeared in Wyvern Lit, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Freezeray Poetry, Maps For Teeth and on Button Poetry online.

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, October 29th, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• Back-to-back FIRST POEMS EVER by Yoyo and Kamran, who read about “The pizza I can’t eat” and the voice of a river travelling through Iceland

• Former open mic regulars returning back-to-Boston: Dani’s “The God I don’t believe in has office hours from 2 to 4 am” and Kaitie’s riff on Gilmore Girls’ Season 5, Episode 22 (insert yacht emoji here)

• In honor of our beloved staff member Kai’s birthday, we had our 2nd KAIPHER, where many poets on the open mic covered poems by Kai! Special mention to TJ Jones, who lovingly matched Kai’s pacing, intonation, and mannerisms perfectly!

• First-timer Ruby made sure we didn’t go too long without a wrestling-themed poem on the open, where watching said theme provided a kind of therapeutic resolve that seems elusive in real life

• Long time favorite Donovan Beck bid farewell to us this week, as he moves to NYC. Donovan will be firmly missed, and after participating in the Kaipher, he read a poem that references many of our regular readers on the open mic!

• Shenanigans prevailed as yours truly unexpectedly opened the open mic (as part of a new experiment where we have 1 member of the staff start the show) with a poem referencing itself often as the first poem of the open mic!

Feature

For our monthly community night, Brynna-Boyd-in-a-dinosaur-costume hosted the very chill and fun TRICK OR TREAT SLAM, where a dozen poets signed up to compete in costume for fabulous mystery prize bags! Highlights include Jen’s rabbit poem vs the contrapuntal machine that is Kaitie D, a newcomers-only battle between Cece and Dyre, and Shawn dressing up as Kai for their poem! Cake and cookies were served in the back while the slam was going on, so everyone left the night both figuratively and literally fed. Thanks to all who slammed for such a fun night!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Tonight, alongside our normal extended open mic, we will have both an early bird workshop by Myles Taylor, and an open poetry slam! For the slam, you will need 3 original poems, with the top 2 poets qualifying for the 2026 BPS team selection slam. The slam winner also gets $75! The workshop will start at 6:30, 8 pm open mic, 10 pm open slam.

Workshop info: “Against Writing to Completion: Writing Endings for Slam & Page “

What is your goal when writing an ending? What makes an ending powerful? When are we done with the poem? This workshop by Myles Taylor will discuss strategies for ending a poem on the right note, with sample texts from Sam Sax, Marvin Hodges, Simone Beaubien, and others.

See you later!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

• The return of old slam team member Bobby Crawford, who found parallels to the traditional bouquet toss at weddings at a funeral when an uncle fell into an open grave

• Great first-timer poems from Megash, Dyre, Auden, and Madison

• Sue Savoy writing candidly about her sister and their last connections to family

• Just a taste of a long, a multi-part poem/essay from Kaitie D (anti-Thoreau!) and Nick Roberts (púca madness!)

• Cole’s “Storrow without the T” was another ode to/history of the man behind Storrow drive that seems to pop up on the open mic every few months

• Everyone on the open mic greatly respected the time limit, so there no one was left on the waitlist by the end of the night!

Feature

Tonight’s feature was an open poetry slam that filled up quickly! First, big shout out to first timers Courtney and Heather who skipped the open mic and went straight to competing with some heavy hitters! Second, seasoned open mic regulars/veterans Kyle Mendelsohn and Erica Garcia both made incredible Cantab slam debuts, with Kyle going impressively off book and advancing to the final round via a tie. But the night belonged to Mugs Myers and Isaiah Newman, who both outdid themselves with their best performances to date to go along with their highly polished poems. Mugs Myers goes shocking places with their poems, and while they honestly feel almost *too personal* to describe publicly on our website, they did perform their contrapuntal with Judith Butler on one side, and Michel Foucault on the other. Isaiah won the slam by one-tenth of a point, with work on art, bees, the therapist/client dynamic, religion, and the nuance of published language, and will qualify for next year’s team selection slam!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Come get spooky at our TRICK OR TREAT SLAM, where every round starts with a trick and ends with a treat! Each head-to-head round will have THREE WAYS to win extra points toward a sweet prize: wear a costume, do a poem that relates to your costume, AND complete the round’s “trick” (a challenge to incorporate into your poem)! You only need to bring one poem to compete! Email/DM us or line up early if you would like to sign up! NOTE: this slam does NOT qualify poets for team selection, it is for a silly goofy time!

See you later!

– MFG 🚪

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BPS Recap For Wednesday, October 15th, 2025

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We had a great time at the Middlesex Lounge this week hosting our open mic and video feature! This Wednesday we are back in the Cantab Lounge basement.

Open Mic Highlights

• Ty covering Harry Baker’s extremely alliterative poem “Paper People”

• Edie’s response poem to yours truly telling them that their poems make me wants to climb a stack of chairs and yell, which also included the line “An open mic might be my eulogy”

• Donovan’s friendship poem that namedropped several open mic and slam regulars

• Scott reprising their worms poem that they did the last time we had an open mic not at the Cantab

• Jen’s “When the Body Forms” (“Am I worth resurrecting?”) and Kaitie D writing a poem after the horror film “The Lodge” (“I watched it so you don’t have to”)

• AC reflecting on their Native American heritage, and Nick Roberts writing about the Irish myth of the shapeshifting Púca

• Staff Member and Slam team member Aparna Paul read from her new book, Home Free, as they depart for their book tour (which will end with a Cantab feature next month!)

Feature

We took advantage of the video setup at the Middlesex Lounge to officially launch our YouTube page. We currently have 5 videos up, but also have created many playlists featuring poets from our 30+ year history! With popcorn provided to the audience, we got to watch classics performances from Patricia Smith, Simone Beaubien, Brian S. Ellis, Manivr Singh, Bobby Crawford, Meg Ford, Neiel Israel, Zeke Russell, and many more. A great ending to a cozy night.

Coming Up This Wednesday

It’s slamming season again! Tonight we are back at the Cantab lounge for our normal open mic, and an open poetry slam! You will need 3 original poems, with the top 2 qualifying for the 2026 BPS team selection slam. The slam winner also gets $75 (“That’s 1 and half errand” – Myles) so be sure to join us for another great night!

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

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