Cantab Recap For Wednesday, November 6th, 2024

Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was a beautiful show. On a day when many people in our community woke up disappointed, shocked, and scared, we all still came together and put on a showcase of our art and voices. Many poems centered on the theme of community, which is now more important than ever. As we know, the basement of the Cantab Dive bar is more than just a place we get to perform and share and listen, it’s a place where we support each other.

This week, I’ve compiled a “Line of the Wednesday” from nearly everyone on the open mic list. If I missed you, I apologize (if you’re one of those people, or if I misquoted you, please dm us your poem last week on Instagram and I’ll pick a line and add it to this recap! I have reached out to those who I couldn’t quite get a line from in time.)

Edie: “We are at war with isolation”

Siraj: “I pooped today and it sucked”

March: “I wrote love letters to the ceiling until it became a sky”

Isaiah: “So I gather the pieces of my chair and shape them into a new skeleton / I take a seat.”

David F: “You know that death in dignity is a myth too far from true”

Shivank: “My death deserves a universal love language”

Cameron (covering Kai): “There is magic in this 2AM Walmart parking lot”

Kai: “I see love through the looking glass because I can’t see you otherwise”

Shawn (covering Kai): “Every world I’ve traveled to tried to kill me / living can no longer be called resilience”

Donovan: “So go on, burn bright / Let them know you’re here / And that you aren’t going anywhere”

Ilse: “It’s easier to be naked than it is to be honest”

Mary (covering Kai): “I need proof mutual love is real / Born not of cash value but of soul and too much time”

Kiana: “I wanted to tell her I was born in the states, but I didn’t know how to say it in English”

Allison: “I imagine men sometimes wonder what a deaf vagina feels like”

Decker: “A Pied Piper drawing / the sickness from our bones / unburying secrets in the backyard”

Ericka: “What is there to save / I’d rather be a victim of the house”

Sam O: “We dream again and we make it a reality somehow”

Sonya: “You inhale exhale and I can use my eyes again”

Otto: “Remember somehow hands are the gateway to all of this”

Charlie R: “I have hopes for this room without windows”

TJ (covering Kai): “Desire grows only when no one is watching the clock”

Jack: “Am I pulling teeth or a rabbit out of a hat”

Lillie: “Sex sells, yup” (takes off shirt)

Zach: “A mirror is one thing, reflections are too”

Chris: “You are not alone”

Ed: “The truth is there are a lot of things I never thought I’d die for”

Alex: “I don’t know how to make this beautiful”

Katya: “Introduce yourself to everyone you don’t know [in the Cantab Lounge]”

Aparna (covering Kai): “Staring down into the lunch cup my reflection becomes pink and orange, I am listening to a multitude of stories all at once.”

Briana (I pulled this line but the entire poem/rant is really one long bar): “What the fuck”

Myles: “My love is an abandoned building I’ve been squatting in for twenty years”

Thank you.

Our feature was Kenny Bradley of ProvSlam fame. A perfect feature for a night like this, Kenny’s raw, authentic, and captivating style took us on a journey. We begin with some name-poems as he led us through his own identity, from stoop kids to dragon ball Z to vivid childhood memories. He then read poems from his brand-new chapbook, Night Science, which combines his STEM-education and spotlights science concepts to a world that doesn’t always see you for who you truly are. It was a wonderful feature that everyone took something different away from.

Tonight! We have an OPEN SLAM! Try out for the 2025 Boston Poetry Slam team! Top two placements in each open slam are qualified for team selection next year. Standard slam rules apply: eight poets compete in three rounds with poems that are three minutes or less. No props, costumes, or musical accompaniment. Poems are scored by random members of the audience! Winner gets $50. Come compete among the best in the region this Wednesday.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 30th, 2024

Hello poets and friends, we had a unique show last week at the Central Square Theater! Thank you to everyone who came out to read and support our venue-for-the-night, especially first-timers Christopher, Zack, and Natalia. We got to hear from our longest-tenured open mic readers Sue Savoy and Charlie R, new favorites Erica Garcia and Lily K, and those irregular regulars who we don’t get to hear from that often like Lawrence, Sam O, and AK. Shout out to Cameron and Will L, who unexpectedly went back-to-back with memorized pieces that were out of their comfort zones, with Cameron going dark and Gothic, and Will L dealing in the intense and swirling repetition of key phrases.

Then it was time for the COSTUME SLAM, hosted by Nayeli, with plenty of showstopping poems! Early highlights included March Penn doing two poems detailing 20 different types of zombies, Ericka Ainsley with a gender-swapping Obi-Wan Kenobi, Daniel Letona writing in the guise of MF Doom, and Kaitie D as Velma from Scooby Doo. Chris Rye also did some of their best work with two impassioned, memorized-and-a-little-improvised pieces about cowboys being a metaphor for yearning. While Mary Schwabenland won the slam outright with a first poem about sleeping with your clone, and a subsequent response poem from the clone themselves, the TRUE SPECTACLE of the night was Gel, under the name MÜRDERHØRS. It was not only the horse mask, it was not only that they sang/growled their two poems in the style of death metal, it was the sincere committment to the bit that had the audiences spellbound in laughter and complete attention. Gel’s non-chalant intros and outros also showed impeccable comedic timing, and this recapper was literally in tears laughing at both performances. Bravo to all who slammed!

This week! We’re back at the Cantab Lounge! We’ll have an early bird workshop with Ed Wilkinson at 6:30 PM. Workshop attendees will have first access to the open mic list.

Then, our feature this week is Kenny Bradley! Kenny Bradley is a poet and graduate student at Rockefeller University, based in New York City, where he travels the boroughs to perform spoken word poetry. He utilizes concepts in both music and biology to influence and shape his poetry to discuss topics ranging in self-love, identity, dissecting trauma, and being a black person in STEM. He was a member of the Provslam 2023 slam team, where he and his teammates won the 2023 NorthBeast regional slam competition and self-published a co-authored team chapbook, “Dear Kid, Monster”. He and his teammate Ren L[i]u were finalists for the 2023 Button Poetry Video Contest with their joint poem “Love, Monster.” He was a finalist for the Luminaire Poetry Award and his work can be found on Button Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Empty House Press and etc. His debut chapbook, “Night Science” was recently released with Garden Party Collective. When he is not writing, you can find him in a record store with a steaming fresh cup of hot chocolate in hand, spotify in the other as he researches new artists to introduce to his homies. To find more of his work, you can find him on instagram @hotchocolate_poetry.

See you soon,

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024

Hi Poets! Before we talk about last week’s show, please note that this week’s show (on 10/30) will take place at THE CENTRAL SQUARE THEATRE at 450 MASS AVE! This is only three blocks away from The Cantab/Central T stop. It will be inside and it is ALL AGES. We will be back at the Cantab the following Wednesday.

Last week’s open mic brought us a lot of extended work (the three-minute poem barrier was challenged all night long) and there were many highlights. We heard the ending of Nick Roberts’ long running “Letters To Rilke” series, Meredith’s fascination with overgrown skeleton decorations, March Penn on “Hell-th” Care, the audacious spectacle of Cameron’s persona piece as a bathroom attendant, and a moving tribute to Ilse’s mother. Sue Savoy also brought a devastating poem based on the prompt, “What was the last straw?”

Our feature was the instantly likeable Mason Granger, who interspersed his poem suites with life and writing tips disguised as friendly banter. A poet with a gift for not only rhyme, song, and extremely deft wordplay, Mason also went on numerous deep dives dissecting popular phrases and idioms, proving that you can lead a poet to water, and while you can’t make them drink, they can still write an amazing poem about it! Mason also did a fun experiment where he asked everyone in the audience to text him a word, which he then incorporated—mad libs style—into one of his poems. Thanks Mason!

This week! It’s the 👻 HALLOWEEN SLAM 💀 !!!!! Hosted by the fantastic Nayeli Mzîn, slammers should come with TWO POEMS prepared and be sure to show up IN COSTUME! Both poems should be connected to the costume in some way, shape, or form. Props are encouraged as long as they are relevant to the costume/poem. Non-slammers are also encouraged to show up in costume!

To make it extra special and spooky, we won’t be having the slam at our normal haunt. The location will be at THE CENTRAL SQUARE THEATRE at 450 MASS AVE!! This is only three blocks away from The Cantab/Central T stop. The show will be inside, and it will be ALL AGES.

Accessibility information: Audience members will enter at street level. The theater is on the second floor. There are automations to open the doors. Inside the building, the Box Office is located on the ground floor with a half-door used during business hours. There is an elevator on the ground floor that accesses the second floor where the theater is located. Guests in wheelchairs have regularly enjoyed productions at Central Square Theater. There are two gender neutral bathrooms available. Both bathrooms are wheelchair accessible. All seats at Central Square Theater are removable. Accessible seats are placed on the floor level of the theater in the front row. The seats are cushioned and do not have armrests. The seats are approximately 18” wide. Seats are connected with no space in between, except for our accessible seating, where there is extra space. Other than the first row, the total depth of the rows are approximately 36 inches with 18 inches of legroom.

We are so excited for this show – see you then!!! 🎃

– The Ghosts of Amy ✈️ and MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Happy Wednesday! We had a smaller-sized but potent (in terms of quality) Wednesday crowd last week at the Cantab! There was talk of band kid culture (Ben Tolkin), the crossover between gender and the TSA (River) and an explosive written-at-the bar express lane poem that drew from the one and only Beyoncé (Arabella). Cameron did an abbreviated cover of “Moshe Feldstein, Icon Of Self-Realization” (alternate link) (aka “Imagine This Scenario”) by Cantab alum Alexander Nemser, which provoked Michael F. Gill to do a response poem that referenced many other poems on the open mic! Other highlights include Maura’s tales (tails) of Jessica, her rat-shoplifting friend, Max’s Sisyphus poem, and several references to the impending Harvest Moon, to which we can all say, “Full moon in Aries, fuck me up fam.”

The Line of the Wednesday is from Iman, with “I’ve kissed strange and convenient lips / Because they presented themselves / Like candied apples, / Hiding bruises with gloss

Our feature was our splendid neighbor, Mike Linehan! Mike gave us a wonderful set that covered teaching, tolerance, and of course, his beard. The SFOD Slam Team member showed us his skill and expertise on a range of topics, from heartfelt poems about his passion as a teacher to energetic, but still heartfelt, poems about heavy metal! Mike’s poetry was narrative, beautiful, and left us feeling inspired to write about what we are passionate about.

TONIGHT! We have MASON GRANGER!! Mason Granger (he/him) is a spoken word artist with over a decade of experience on stages & in educational settings across all 50 states and nine countries. His work centers around matters of class, nature, and sustainability– both of ourselves as human beings and the world we share– all from an imaginative and forward-thinking perspective.

As the inaugural Poet in Residence of the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC and an LA-Paris 2024 Poetic Games Olympic Showcase Awardee, Mason is one of Southern California’s most engaging poetic voices. Whether inhabiting a stage himself or making space for others’ voices to shine, Mason’s approach to the craft of spoken word poetry emphasizes engagement, connection, and creativity. He has been featured on ESPN (2011) , PBS (2018), the Golden Globes (2021), multiple national magazines, and founded a spoken word YouTube channel (2014), SlamFind, with nearly 100,000 subscribers. Mason also created poetry exchange programs in Romania (2019) and The Netherlands (2024), performed at the Austrian World Summit (2024), and did a backflip once (2003).

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 9th, 2024

Amy: We had quite the Wednesday last week, with a TON of first timers on the mic showcasing their work. We even broke a small 2024 record for most first timers in a row! Benny Alexander (all the way from Canada) read a beautiful poem about love and acceptance and relying like an outsider. Johnathan read about incarceration and his relationship to his father. Bailey was on FIRE, reading a very hot poem … about fire. From the regulars, Maura read poems from postcards, Eli Kane read from his Instagram post caption (which was in fact a beautiful poem about pie and gender), and Lys McGuire read a poem, I mean, meop a daer, that kept reversing direction, but took us on a wonderful beautiful journey nonetheless.

The ✏️ Line of the Wednesday ✏️ is from Lina with “Maybe our whole lives are about sculpting empty promises into a sky”

Colin Killick’s farewell spotlight feature was heartwarming, hopeful, and even occasionally harrowing, or hectic. We heard some classics, some older poems, a more recent poem, and more as he took us on a journey through his time reading at the Cantab Lounge. It was a great showcase of all of his talent, and a bittersweet reminder of why we will miss him so much as he goes on to do great, change-making things in DC.

That’s all from me, but I’m going to pass it to Michael with an electric recap of the haiku slam!

Michael: Thanks Amy! The 2nd annual haiku tournament was indeed one of the rowdiest and most fun slams of this year! As the neutral host of the slam, I was not able to comment in real time about the haiku (including several haiku that were about me) or the audiences’ heckles, but I can now say that everyone brought some incredible and/or wildly WEIRD material to the stage! There were too many highlights to mention, but let’s start with Will Leonard, who stepped in at the last minute to read the seductive and sinister haiku of finalist Arielle Gray, and also give a nod to Cam Salvatore, whose thoughtful and hilarious haiku left him inches away from the final round. After that dirty haiku round, we’ll never think about a pencil sharpener the same way! Speaking of the dirty haiku round, it had brazen work from Kai and Kat, as well as prop comedy from Logan, but it was Sam Bucci who had everyone on the floor laughing with a long “preface” to her series of cartoon characters she’s like to sleep with. The experimental round featured last year’s runner up March Penn placing groceries on chairs across the entire bar, as well as Aparna’s “costume change,” and Logan’s endless supply of hats. In the final head-to-head round, Logan and Aparna went 15 out of the maximum 17 rounds before Aparna successfully defended her title, 9 rounds to 6! Logan and Aparna also qualify for our 2025 team selection slam.

Final Standings:

1st Aparna Paul
2nd Logan Lopez
3rd (tie) March Penn
3rd (tie) Sam Bucci
5th Cam Salvatore
6th Arielle Gray (read by Will Leonard)
7th Kai Wallin
8th Kat Anderson
9th Amy Argentar
10th Sarah King
11th Cameron Vanderwerf
12th TJ Jones
13th Lynette Ramsay
14th Allie Burke
15th Chris Rye

Amy: Thanks Michael!

Now, TONIGHT! Our feature, hailing from the Slam Free or Die community in NH, is MIKE LINEHAN! Mike Linehan is a writer and educator from southern New Hampshire. Since 2011, he has performed poetry at local open mics and has since become a passionate member of the community. In 2018, he was a part of the Mill City Slam team from Lowell, Massachusetts, and competed in the National Poetry Slam in Chicago. As of 2023, he has joined the staff and organizers of Slam Free or Die based out of Manchester, New Hampshire. He self-published the poetry collection The Porch Light in 2023. When he’s not writing or speaking in front of a microphone, he likes engaging in Netflix binges, promising himself that he’ll practice guitar every week (he won’t) and he’ll work on that ever-growing pile of story ideas (don’t rush him, he’ll get to them…eventually). In the classroom, he likes striking up conversations with students, working tirelessly to convince them that literature and poetry are, in fact, cool.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was another great night with a lot of highlights to report on! Shout out to our first-timers Flora, Casey, and especially Matt, who read two poems about that same person, but written ten years apart from each other. We had showstopping work from Erica Garcia and Jack Chasse, mournful work from Brynna (re: Marcellus Williams) and Cam S (“I sweep and I sweep and the face still reappears”), and a great piece from Isaiah that was simultaneously about not wasting your vote, sending audition videos to the show Survivor as a means of survival, and how “the heart is survived by its own betrayals”.

It was also a night of notable cover poems: Cameron V did Daniel Ortberg’s “Male Novelist Jokes“, Ed Wilkinson covered Omoizele “Oz” Okoawo’s classic piece “The Beast:1944“, and Myles Taylor covered Cantab alum Jess Riz. All of this plus we had our last chance haiku slam, which featured stunningly sensual work from Arielle Gray, and surprisingly-hilarious haiku by Cam S, who took the big win!

A final note: the smoking section also featured longtime Cantab bartender Chris reading a farewell poem to the room. Chris has always been one of the biggest supporters of the Boston Poetry Slam for over a decade, and he will be greatly missed!

Our feature was the great Ayokunle Falomo, who came straight-off-the-plane to read for us. He read from his two books, “Autobiomythography of” and “AFRICANAMERICAN’T”, and his set perfectly mashed up performance and page poetry. His work intensely interrogated what it is not only to be a Nigerian and a Nigerian-American, but what it is to be a human who truly knows who they are, and what the next phase of one’s life journey should be after realizing that. He ended with a poem based on Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” that got a standing ovation! Thank you Ayokunle!

Tonight: it’s our second annual HAIKU TOURNAMENT, featuring a year’s worth of past haiku slam winners and runners up! There will be a haiku suite round, a themed round involving dirty and experimental haiku, as well as a head-to-head final round! The winner gets $170 (!), the runner up gets $30, and both finalists will be invited to our 2025 Team Selection Slam. You don’t want to miss it!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

Hey Cantab! We had a lovely fall evening this past Wednesday, with a somewhat serene evening setting up a bombastic speed slam!! Several first timers stunned on the mic, with Victoria reading a touching and vulnerable poem, and Lily K with a fresh new and unique tone! Serendipitously, our host Katya began a tradition of saying “Welcome Home” to everyone she introduced, and when she said so to Lily, we learned that Lily had just moved to Boston! We also had a couple people hit the three-minute mark, but all of them demonstrated the correct practice of 1) noticing they’re about to get kicked off stage and 2) dropping one last fire line. One of those people was Nick Roberts, who gave us an epic poem of sorts, taking us on a literary journey. Lastly, we got a great gaming poem from our gamer/regular Kai about mortality.

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to Maura, with “No longer a puppy love that needs to be taken out every once in a while

Then, we had our speed slam! Consisting of one-minute, two-minute, and four-minute rounds, ten slammers took to the stage to not only showcase their talent, but their range. We saw powerful short pieces from Colin Killick, a one-minute classic Kelsey Kessler poem on Persephone, and Kaitie D blowing us away with so much packed into their one-minute slot it hit us like a car! We saw Logan trim their firehouse slam piece down to two minutes in a display of versatility and Cameron show all his comedic, sincere, and sardonic sides. Ultimately, 2024 slam team member Jennifer Martinez took home the $50 AND a purple typewriter (thanks Eli Kane!) with an incredible performance of her Love Island slam piece, beating Mary by 0.1 of a point. Thank you to our judges and to our wonderful host!

This week we have a feature AND a workshop! Our feature is Ayokunle Falomo. Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), a recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program.

Our First Wednesday Workshop will be about assembling a manuscript for publication, led by local poet Yena Sharma Purmasir! As always, the workshop will start at 6:30, and workshop attendees get first access to the open mic list.

Also, if that wasn’t enough, we will have the last chance open haiku slam! This is in preparation for next week’s Haiku Tournament, which has a grand prize of $170, with the top 2 finalists also qualifying for our 2025 Team Selection slam.

See you soon!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

It was another eventful evening this past Wednesday at The Cantab Lounge, and it was proof that you never know who will show up to our show, and what amazing pieces could happen for one night only! Where to start!? Ash gave us an excellent Golden Shovel two poems into the night, which was based on this Sloppy Jane lyric:

But my heart is like a claw machine / Its only function is to reach / It can’t hold on to anything / No, I can’t hold on to anything”.

A few poems later Saloni wowed us all with their poem that contained the refrain I want to f%*k like a Punjabi Grandma“, and soon after that Cameron V, who had signed up under the name “Sigrid,” took the stage dressed as a grandma (!) and delivered a hilarious guided meditation poem that had lines like “Imagine you are on a train. And there is a frog on the top. Then imagine the frog has a gambling problem, and it is on the run from the mafia.” Later on, the unpredictable and multilingual Ben Tolkin went deep into Norse mythology and etymology, and during the Express Lane portion of the show we had the surprise return of mythical Cantab poet Rudolf Stueger! Known for his English translations of little-known German poets, Rudolf once read us one-half of a translation back in 2016, and then came back to read the second half seven years later!

Our feature was the renowned Crystal Valentine, who brought us a diverse set of work from a manuscript that explores the loss of her mother. These were large, expansive poems that felt like streams of consciousness growing into small sets of mountains, a series of mini-epics that grew taller the deeper you got into them. Poem titles included “My Mom Feeds My Dad A Strawberry Danish After Using It To Mop The Floor,” and “My Father Confesses His Sins To Tina Turner,” while the final piece had Crystal’s mother turning 64 and speaking to a god that she didn’t believe existed. What a show!

Tonight! We’ve had to postpone Gia Kagan-Trenchard’s scheduled feature, but in its place there will be an open speed slam! The top 2 from the speed slam will qualify for our 2025 Team Selection slam and the winner will get $50.

See you there!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

Hey Cantab! What a week! We had our wonderful team showcase last week as a bittersweet end to the 2024 slam season, but more on that later. It was a more “chill” night than normal this week, but still a full open mic and one first-timer! We had beautiful poems from Sarah, Kai, March, Sam O., and Keaton, amongst others. There were some lingering Allston Christmas submissions of found poems and some poems written just that day (new shit!). Erica Garcia’s poem blew everyone away with how well-crafted it was, and Kat debuted yet another Furby poem during the smoking section that left people thinking about angels and devils.

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is from Kai, with “no matter how many times we wake up there will always be the nightmare where we say all the right things the first time

Then, we had our team spotlight feature. The 2024 BPS Slam Team, formed in April and consisting of Aparna Paul, Katya Zinn, Jennifer Martinez, Mary Schwabenland, and Brynna Boyd, had a beautiful and successful slam season. In a send-off feature, we got to hear a full hour of poetry from these incredible, talented people. We got to hear some “greatest hits” like Brynna’s Black Beauty poem, Katya’s Dunkin Law and Order poem, Aparna’s triple river contrapuntal, Mary’s conspiracy theory poem, Jennifer’s tick poem, and the closets group piece. We also got to hear some less-competed poems, and the whole thing was such a treat. The room was as filled with as much love and support as it could muster, with hugs all around and audience members lining up for signed team chapbooks. Speaking of which, it was incredibly heartwarming to have the team chapbook accompany the feature. All chapbook sales went to funding the team’s last competition at VoxPop this past weekend. They have made BPS and the whole Cantab community so proud. They are a team we will never forget.

Onto next season!

THIS WEEK! Keep all the hype from last week going because this feature is not one you want to miss. The feature is Crystal Valentine! Crystal Valentine is a nationally and internationally acclaimed poet, educator and organizer. A former New York City Youth Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, Crystal has been offered fellowships from Callaloo, Tin House, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and The Boston Foundation. She is the winner of Palette Poetry’s 2021 Emerging Poet Prize, selected by Kelli Russell Agodon, and her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Muzzle Magazine, TriQuarterly Magazine, MSNBC, BET, CNN, The New York Daily News, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from New York University. Originally hailing from the Bronx, Crystal now resides in Boston where she serves as the Director of Programming for Mass Poetry. When she isn’t writing or agonizing over line breaks, you can find her watching anime and dreaming.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was our annual Allston Christmas Slam, and we had plenty of hidden gems on the open mic, and so so many first-timers! We had a string of newcomers in the middle, including Lee, Ariel, and August. We also had a trio of heartfelt poems by Jade, Skylar, and Mar. Our wonderful workshop host, Elana Lev Friedland, also performed on the open mic!

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is: “This ain’t the final frontier, this is Walgreens” – Peter (we think)

Then, of course, we had our slam. The stage was decorated with several items collected by Myles Taylor, all found during the famed Allston Christmas. These items ranged from hats, shirts, jackets, shark slides, and various unique knickknacks. All of which were up for grabs by the winners of each round. Slammers competed in head-to-head battles, each reading a found poem (aka, a piece of text that is not a poem, nor written by the poet, but performed as such), while our lovely judges picked which poem they preferred. We had incredible readings of reddit posts, a striking and moving reading of some writings found at a T station, a collection of words from other Cantabbers, Teams messages, texts, you name it! We even had a found “group piece” with Mary and Will reading excerpts from their own text conversations. Cameron took all the passion in a reddit post about grilled cheese and released it upon the audience. Katya’s stunning and hilarious performance of the woes of a girlfriend doomed to the nickname of “Tony Pizza” left us in stitches. Kai read an infamous article from 10 years ago that is (we think?) about Bruno Mars being potentially gay. It was an enlightening night that left several slammers with some new prized possessions to accompany their prized poems.

This week, we have the highly anticipated 2024 BPS Slam Team Showcase!

“My team won, they won, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thrilled about that. But it’s how they won. In finals, the team did not win any one round outright.  Most poetry slam teams are built around what I call a Score Horse. It’s not always the same person from slam to slam, but the idea is that one big poem will carry the team to victory. This team didn’t have that. They didn’t need it. As I was rehashing the glory of that win to a coworker, I relayed to him that we didn’t win one round but won the whole thing. Ahh, he said, you didn’t have an Ace, but you had Five Kings.” – Zeke Russell

The 2024 Boston Poetry Slam team is perhaps one of the most decorated in Cantab’s history, winning the Nossrat Yassini Festival Slam, the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam, and the 2024 Grudge Match versus Slam Free or Die. Come see Brynna Boyd, Aparna Paul, Mary Schwabenland, Jennifer Martinez, and Katya Zinn do a special hour-long set before their final competition at VOX POP 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire. These five kings’ work will be sold in chapbook form to fundraise for our NH lodgings. This is a feature you won’t want to miss!

NOTE: *As part of the fundraiser, this special show will be $6 rather than our usual $4 at the door.*

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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