Cantab Recap For Wednesday, June 11th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Open Mic Highlights

• Alex Kist’s ode to friendship / “you are who you surround yourself with” that not only invoked our feature Meg Ford but also many others in the audience!

• Otto Vock revisiting a poem they wrote when they were 16, which had the audience doing a call and response during the refrain of “You Are / Sexy” (it was better in practice than it might sound in print!)

• Sarah King told us about the small artistic island community of Halibut Cove, Alaska and the encouragement she’s received to remain an artist

• Cameron played a recording of himself reading a somber poem, which later included commentary of last week’s show, when Patricia Smith walked in on him reading

• Jarvis’ raucous “Welcome to Fantasy Boyfriend Island”

• The reliably nervous-and-raw Allie Burke, who discussed being a poet while travelling to the doctor, and the connection she has to wearing her mother’s clothes, specifically how it reminds her of how her mother used to be.

• Sue Savoy’s verbing-only poem, inspired by classic Cantab poet Shira Erlichman

• Brynna performed another piece from her in-the-works chapbook about plantations being burned

• We also had the return of the HAIKU SLAM, which featured rare haiku by both Myles Taylor and Kaitie D, but came down to a surprising final battle of former Haiku finalist Sarah King, and slam powerhouse Jarvis Subia. Jarvis won with a series of room-awakening pride month haiku, and claimed the $17 prize and a ticket to this Fall’s Haiku Tournament!

Feature

Our feature was the long-time Cantab open mic and slam veteran Meg Ford, who read from their long-awaited “Choose Your Own Adventure” themed book Wild/Hurt, which is out now on Button Poetry. Keeping that thematic spirit alive, the audience got two options to choose from after each poem (i.e. “If you want an old story, put up one finger, if you are not ready to tell, put up two fingers”), and their decision determined which poem Meg would read next! We got to hear both new and battle-tested poems from Meg throughout the set, touching on family trauma, self-transformation, and of course, their now-infamous Star Wars/Flute-playing/Queer-coming-of-age piece. Despite the intense subject matter, Meg themselves was surprised when we reached the last poem, stating “you guys actually made it to the happy ending of the book”, and then proceeded to end an adventure we would certainly choose again! Please purchase a copy of Meg’s book, and re-watch the feature on our Instagram if you missed it!

Coming Up This Wednesday

This week, we are celebrating Juneteenth with 3X the fun! Catch a triple feature by M’shairi The God, Messi Amaru’Khan, and Marsha, in collaboration with Pull up Poetry (@pulluppoetry)!! You don’t want to miss it! Get to the mic early to also see special spotlights by Yah Yah the Wordstress (@yahyahthewordstress) and our very own Brynna Boyd (@brynna_boyd)!

M’shairi The God ((@mshairithegod) has a mission and that is to authentically share her voice as a testament that there is great power in transparency and vulnerability. Through her lens, she creates space for truth, joy, and personal transformation. An enchanting master of bending language to her will, M’shairi The God is the voice of sensual and raw expression. Her pen has been her longest companion and most reliable instrument as a storyteller and poet. You never know now where she will take you next. M’shairi The God is an experience.

Messi Amaru’Khan (@messagefrommessi) is a Boston born creative artist indigenous to the continent, holistic guide, & a community pillar who’s focus is based around a holistic health approach to the balance of life from the physical body to our physical environment. Aside from being a performing artist myself, He loves to create space for other artist, being one of the hosts & founder of Sol Inspired Open Mic Series & the Pull Up Poetry Open Mic Series. Messi is releasing his first poetry book entitled “Dear Sacred Divine,” on June 30th as well as his debut music EP. Sacral expression is sacred. Facta non Verba: Deeds not Words INDEED I DO, how about you?

Marsha ((@mizzymaz_) is the heart behind Honeycomb—a space where creativity, community and authenticity collide. Now courageously stepping into her own spotlight, she is using her voice to heal, connect and inspire.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, June 4th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Open Mic Highlights

• Cam S delivered a beautiful piece on his failing vision and reflecting on how he may be following the path of family members before him

• Excellent bite-sized queer love poems by River (“I feel like a man, that is to say: salvageable”) and Lily (“This poem is about tomatoes and realizing you are a lesbian”)

• Kaitie D’s innovative “Broken Sestina” form poem & the one-week-only return of former Cantabber Jacq Roderick, who gave us a taste of what they are writing in their MFA program

• An unexpected fiery group piece on gossip by Jen Martinez and Amy Argentar

• Cameron’s highly autobiographical piece about the hemorrhoids he’s been dealing with, which was made even more notable because the BIG SURPRISE of the night happened right while he was performing: Patricia Smith, living legend and co-founder of our show, casually walked into the venue! The room was abuzz with excitement (and maybe a bit starstruck) as Patricia not only listened to all of us but later read us an INCREDIBLE poem from her forthcoming collection, based on a prompt to write about something in the drugstore that smells nostalgic of your childhood. If you missed it, fear not, Patricia is scheduled to feature for us in the late fall of this year!

Feature

Our feature Julie River brought us through a whirlwind of their past, present, and future work in poetry slam, including their well-known “Alfred Hitchcock vs. The SAW movies” poem (and its accompanying response poem). Having competed in poetry slams for over two decades, Julie had their fair share of material about the form, including a very meta piece about the nature of poetry competition itself, and the process of rewriting an old poem after coming out as a trans person. Fully charismatic, with their setlist written on their arm, and most of the work memorized, it was a joy to see Julie back on the Cantab stage after a long absence!

Coming Up This Wednesday

This week, we will have the book release celebration of long-time Cantab favorite Meg Ford!

Meg Ford is a queer writer from New Jersey who was voted Most Likely to Leave and Never Come Back. They are a two-time National Poetry Slam semi-finalist with the Boston Poetry Slam Team and received their MFA from Emerson College. Their work has previously appeared in The Rumpus, NAILED, PANK, and the We Will Be Shelter Anthology from Write Bloody. Their debut collection, Wild/Hurt arrives from Button Poetry in June 2025. Meg can most often be found hanging out with the cat at your party.

See you soon!

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 28th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Open Mic Highlights

Longtime veteran Ed Wilkinson came up to me at the end of last Wednesday night and said, “that was one of the best open mics I’ve heard” and I would agree, there was a sense of flow, unity, and high-quality work throughout the night that makes it hard to pick out individual highlights! Our three spotlight features (Kris Cho, JP Legarte, Munawwar Abdulla) celebrating AAPI month made for a nice change of pace (and each got a long intro by host Brynna), with each poet leaning towards a relaxed-but-intimate set. We also got to hear new work from the returning Sam Bucci and Sarah King, as well as first-timers Sabrine from Maine, I/O, and John. Yours truly also did another in the Cantab’s ongoing series of Pagliacci poems, without knowing that Ilse has done a poem on a very similar theme last week!

Feature

This week, former BPS and House Slam team member Brandon Melendez was back on the Cantab stage for the first time in years, touring the re-release of his book “Gold That Frames The Mirror”. Brandon caught us up on what he has been doing since he moved to Philly (and about his upcoming move to Seattle), read some old slam favorites, and revisited his series of persona poems as Pokémon. Despite his admission that he felt a little nervous, his charisma, performance chops, and excellent material really had the audience captivated, and lining up to buy his book at the end of the night. Thanks Brandon!

Coming Up This Wednesday

This week we will have the return of former New England slam veteran Julie River, and an early bird workshop by Keaton Howl! Workshop starts at 6:30 ($10+ suggested donation to workshopper, sliding scale) and open mic sign up starts a little after 7:15.

Workshop info: The childhood favorites food writing workshop is a generative workshop designed to engage with our earliest memories of food as a means to connect with the larger stories in our lives. Through selected quotes, cookbooks and other media we hope to create work with curiosity and excitement, like a kid in a candy store. Come join us at the table!

Feature Bio: Julie River is a slam poet, an award-winning journalist, and a personal enemy of Ronnie Radke. Her journey in slam poetry began in 2002 as a 17-year-old punk rock enthusiast on the AS220 stage in Providence, Rhode Island. Over the next two decades, she competed on 10 poetry slam teams across Providence, Worcester, and Denver, earning grand slam champion titles in all three cities and representing Denver at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2011. Despite many of her peers retiring, Julie continues to evolve her craft. After coming out as a transgender woman in 2016, she embraced reinvention, transitioning to freelance journalism and magazine editing for publications such as OUT FRONT Magazine and Yellow Scene Magazine. Shifting away from her old chapbooks bearing her deadname, Julie’s poetry will reach a wider audience in 2025 with Punk Rock and Science Fiction, published by OUT FRONT’s Q Publishing. The collection blends the best of her past and present work, capturing her growth as a poet and her enduring creative spirit.

See you later!

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 21st, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Open Mic Highlights

This week’s open mic kicked off with a few first timers who brought great energy, including the legendary “If you can feel it… you can speak it” call and response by D. Ruff. The audience was especially attentive, listening to each and every line, such as Carl’s question, “Why do I feel so safe in my fear?” A major theme of the night was about healing, epitomized by Kai’s query, “Can I un-grow the scars baked into my skin?” or Eli’s mystery, “Shell is something I don’t know the taste of.”

Aparna announced that there will be spotlight features next week to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Month. Kaitie D had us hanging on every word with a moving piece about colonization and language that also teaches about vulnerability and love. The last line really hit: “I lick the last piece of oblivion like an ending that will always come back.”

Otto made us reimagine the world for a second week in a row with lines like “Every currency is a made up crypto currency.” Caroline shared a piece about being in line at the Cantab and how the experience of meeting folks inspired a new poem.

Myles said we need Michael F. Gill to come back to calculate how many Pagliacci and Luigi poems have happened on the mic. Michael is in Italy but will be back this upcoming week.

Ed keeps us grounded with an honest take on how “what gives me strength is a wound.” Katya introduced a poet on the express lane as having the name of a goat in Scandinavia. The poet replied, “I am three goats in a trench coat.”

Aparna covered a poem by Sam Cha who moved to New York but we miss him, and also we miss Kat Anderson who moved to New York as well! Brenna’s poem responding to the burning of a plantation moved the audience deeply, with devastating lines like “one man’s grave is another man’s mansion.” Aparna and Amy performed a classic piece called “Hot Girl Summer” that was an audience favorite, getting folks to chant, “hot girl keep walking.” Myles is in a basketball era and shared a fresh poem about Achilles, highlighting how one tends to focus on the things that don’t hurt as much to process what hurts so much more.

Feature

Our feature, Diannely Antigua, was present for the whole open mic and was an active listener. Diannely didn’t speak in the expected “poet voice” but rather in vivid experiences as they are lived, a specificity that was totally engaging without needing overemphasis. The variety of forms, from sonnet to aubade to pantoum, took us on a journey merging construction and content wonderfully. Definitely purchase their book, Good Monster, if you haven’t already done so.

Coming Up This Wednesday

We will have a feature from former regular and 2017 BPS slam team member, Brandon Melendez! There will also be an AAPI month spotlight throughout the open mic. A collaboration between BPS and @narrative bookstore Flow State, we will be featuring local poets Kris Cho, JP Legarte, and Munawwar Abdulla!

Bios:

Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet and software engineer from California. He is the author of Gold That Frames The Mirror (Write Bloody, 2019). He is a National Poetry Slam finalist and two-time Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. A recipient of the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from The Adroit Journal, and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Award, his poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, The Journal, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia.

Munawwar Abdulla is an Uyghur advocate, poet, and scientist born on Kaurna land and based in Massachusetts. She co-founded The Tarim Network, runs Uyghur Collective, and enjoys translating Uyghur literature into English. Her work has been published in places like The Margins, Asymptote, and Cordite Poetry, and she is currently working on an anthology of Uyghur diaspora arts.

Kris Cho (any pronouns/형) is an poet, performer, and educator hailing from Mid-Missouri. Since their start with the Brown/RISD collegiate slam team, their written work has been featured in Visions Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Glass Mountain Magazine. They are a 2023 Best of the Net nominee, a 2024 RWW Poetry Fellow, and 2025 Periplus Fellow. Their debut chapbook Chosun Cowboy (Abode Press) will be published in 2026

JP Legarte (he/him) is a Filipinx American graduate student at Emerson College pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry). Outside his studies, he serves as a senior editor and the Community and Grant Development Assistant for Brink Literacy Project and F(r)iction, as a senior poetry reader and the Digital Director for Redivider, and as the Director of Creative Operations for Collections of Transience. His in-progress manuscript of visual, experimental poetry focuses on exploring colonialism as extinction and how Filipino, Filipina, and Filipinx Americans survive and rebel against extinction and its different forms. You can follow him on Instagram at @jpl091.

See you soon!

– March Penn 📒

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 14th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

This past Wednesday, Boston Poetry Slam was around the corner at Pandemonium, an excellent home for our Nerd Slam event. The open mic included references to worms, meteorites, dinosaurs, video games, Pokemon, nominative determinism and more!

Open Mic Highlights

First timer Scott delivered a moving poem about worms that had the audience snapping and cheering with the line “Am I just a host for parasites?”

Logan’s poem was inspired by ICA paintings—a truly art-nerdy, reflective adventure! Jennifer’s piece was packed with jaw-dropping lines like “We were all trying to survive the same sinking ship.” Ed devastated us with “Suffering connects and alienates us from each other” in a poem about a video game no one in the room had played before. Ilse’s poem was a self-aware journey, including the line “It’s easier to be naked than to be honest,” and perhaps motivating us to also check out the work by an inspiration mentioned in the poem—the poet Alejandro Jimenez. Later on the mic, Shawn dropped some shiny Pokemon, followed by the audience singing a Backstreet Boys lyric as TJ took the mic. 

Featured Slam

Myles opened by sharing the history of the Nerd Slam at major Slam events like CUPSI and NPS where nerds met and shared trivia and poems with each other. Kai (via Facetime), Shawn, and TJ judged and asked each poet custom trivia questions as part of the slam. Some great lines from the slam:

“If it’s raining, the water is not wet; it wets us.” – Katya

“My heart burns with the flame of survival” – Isaiah

“Kmart is the bottom of my belly or the way station to God.”  – Kaitie D

In the final round, Cameron, Faith, and Otto were left as the top three, answering many trivia questions correctly that non-nerds (me) find totally incomprehensible. Cameron was out first and read a poem called “Questions about Pokemon” that delighted in all the questions we’re dying to know like “Can a fire Pokemon be cremated? What happens if Pokemon shit or piss in a Pokeball? Is Lickitung really good at you know what?” Faith and Otto were incredibly close in the trivia component but Faith won the match by a squeaker. Otto started with the statement ‘free Palestine” and then read a poem about video games in the pandemic and experiences with antisemitism. Faith, a first time slammer and NOW Nerd Slam champion, finished out the night with two sonnets, one about a bad dental experience and the other about Pokemon. Thanks to everyone who came out and slammed!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy.

She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. From 2022-2024, she was the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry which seeks to make poetry accessible to all in a way that nourishes the soul.

See You Later!

– March Penn 📒

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 7th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

FYI: Our show this Wednesday 5/14 is at Pandemonium Books, located at 4 Pleasant St in Cambridge, one block from the Cantab lounge. This is an all ages show!

It was another unique night at the Cantab this past Wednesday, with a batch of new regulars on the mic, and a set of highlights that approached familiar topics from surprising angles. Side note: I (Michael) am writing this recap from abroad (🇮🇹) so expect March Penn at the door in my absence the next 2 Wednesday nights!

Open Mic Highlights

First timer Jecha showed great taste by covering Ross Gay, which led to a funny moment when host Myles (who has a tattoo of a Ross Gay line) had to contemplate “kicking” Ross Gay off the open mic at the 3 minute mark, or letting us hear just a few lines more.

The open mic returns of Sam Bucci and Allie Burke, who both wrote about loss and breaking up in very different ways.

Aparna’s persona poem from their plant that needs watering and Amy’s persona poem from their dislocated shoulder.

Grace D utilized the ghosts prompt from last week and wrote beautifully about her late friend Sarah. The poem ended with the beginning of a letter to Grace by Sarah herself, which was one of the most moving moment I’ve heard on the open mic this year.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was the EXPERIENCE that was David F, who continues to somehow be able to successfully ride the line between being darkly funny and very uncomfortable in a way that leaves us speechless. How else to describe a poem that was performed while reading from a children’s book about bears, yet also went into great detail about the father bear’s sex life?

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“(I’m) Dressed for the job I want, not the jabberwock I’ve become” – Bailey

“March presents to me an open mouth, a bargain” – Lily K

“I prayed something beautiful would crawl out of my ribs and collar bone” – First timer Charlotte 

Feature

Lauren Singer gave us a beautifully human set of poems that was a tour through their house, with each poem being located in a different room of their place. The poems cast a melancholy spell, offering up dry wit, wisdom, and the many-pronged consequences of long term relationships ending. For such a somber topic, Lauren delivered them all with an understated grace, an invitation to their truth that was more attractive and relatable than one might initially think. A lot of our audience left with a copy of their new book, Raised Ranch! Thank you Lauren.

Coming Up This Wednesday

It’s the return of the Nerd Slam! Poets will face off with poems about their specialized niche knowledge, and will also be tested with some trivia regarding their area of expertise! This special show will not be taking place at the Cantab, but down the block at nerd-haven Pandemonium Books, located at 4 Pleasant St in Cambridge. Same time, same Wednesday night, but this is an ALL AGES SHOW!

See you then!

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

It was packed night at the Cantab this past week, not only for the open mic and open slam, but as we said goodbye (for now) to beloved staff member / bartender / poet Kat Anderson, who is moving to New York to be closer to their family. We had a lot of funny and poignant stories about Kat on the mic, and we will all miss her presence and poems.

Open Mic Highlights

Juliet’s charming theatrical piece about being a microcelebrity (read while wearing dark sunglasses and posing around the stage)

Hallie Carton’s “pattern seeker” poem about how every time they get close to someone with red hair, they feel something bad will happen to them. As the poem progressed, it openly wondered that if you never see someone again, does that make them immortal?

Mahathi’s poem titled “That one second where you gave a shit”

The welcome return of Briana and Meredith L to the mic, the former in extended visceral glory, the latter with a very meaty plot-heavy 1 minute piece during the express land that left us all wanting more.

The syncopated rhythms of Katya’s “Cocaine Bear: A Love Story”, which makes this recapper ponder if it will one day be performed/merged with her poem about the family of Charmin Bears

Kelsey, Meg Ford, Amy wrote bravely about recovery, the death of a parent, and all the personal thoughts and emotions that are behind grocery lists.

First Timers Section

Megan S brought us three painterly love poems, awash in evening rain and purple-blues, Cade gave us an ode to the mystic river, and Mer gave us a metaphorical (and literal) piece about the concept of hands. Special shoutout to Cyrus, who has been coming to our show for over a year and celebrated their newly legal name with their first time on the open mic. Welcome new poets!

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“My mother calls me hope like I’m a wildcat breaking free of the cage” – Kai W
“If I was a drag performer, my stage name would be ‘Male Hysteria'” – Keaton
“Love derives from a set of aching teeth” – Nick Roberts

This week’s writing prompt: Write a poem about your most charming ghost, the sickening and haunting thing that you can’t stop feeling attached to

Feature

8 poets faced off in the Fresh Ink Slam, where all the work was new and/or never-been-performed on our stage! Highlights were a SURPRISE group piece sacrifice from Meredith L and Kat Anderson, moving work from Ilse about being middle class, and an intense hybrid poem from Bailey, which was both meta and also a cry for the remembrance of the self. Making it the final round was newcomer Sarah Fox, and a truly raw and unhinged Edie Churchill. After a dramatic final round TIE, we went on to a BONUS poem round, where Edie prevailed! Congrats to Edie, who has been slamming for over a year here at BPS and finally got the big win!

This Week!

We have not only a feature by Lauren Singer, but an early bird workshop by Fin Leary, which will focus on how we can engage real life figures, such as Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, in writing poetry. Workshop starts at 6:30 pm, $10 / sliding scale. Workshoppers will have early access to the open mic list.

Bios:

Lauren Singer is an assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest and North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback, Feel the Word, Read This, Kosmosis, One Night Stanzas, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, among others. An attendee of the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute, she is a graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock and received her MSW at the University of Chicago in 2015. She has self-published three chapbooks and is a current attendant of Story Studio’s selective Novel in a Year program. In addition to her creative interests, Lauren works as a sex and relationship therapist and runs a private practice out of Northampton, MA. Her book-length poetry manuscript, Raised Ranch, will be published by Game Over Books in April of 2025. She prides herself on her wealth of useless pop culture knowledge, namely of nineties R&B lyrics, and she can pretty much quote “The X-Files”.

Fin Leary (they/he) is an author, program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and faculty in the MFA program at Emerson College and at GrubStreet. They are the editor of the sci fi anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2025) and a contributor to the horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken (Page Street, 2025). His young adult fiction has been supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, Changemaker Authors, and GrubStreet. Their creative nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His flash fiction was a finalist for Boston in 100 Words. Fin lives with their orange literary cat outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

See you soon,

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

One of the greatest things about our long open mic is not only its diversity and unpredictability, but the intensely personal work that is trusted to the audience, with a kind of blind faith that people will stop and listen for each other. There were a lot of personal demons, traumas, and familial ghosts exorcised on the open mic this week, yet the overall tone of the was uplifting, a cry of togetherness in a 2025 that hasn’t felt the most hopeful for a lot of us.

Open Mic Highlights

Erica Garcia’s “Texas was once underwater,” remembering a Texas devoid of dads.

Daivd F’s “Don’t check my browser history” poem that was interrupted by an advertisement read by Cameron, and then was immediately followed on the mic by Cameron’s satirical advertisement for the Calm app.

Gel’s poem about wanting to answer the phone despite the litany of “spam risk”/robocalls they receive, a desire that’s been complicated by the unexpected loss of a friend.

Mugs Myers gave us one of the bravest and most direct pieces about past trauma that I have heard on the mic in a long time, and it also included a line/reference to a previous Myles Taylor poem as a beacon of hope and perseverance.

Shout out to the large number of poets bringing memorized performance pieces to the mic this week: Jenn, Kaitie D, Will L, Myles, Ilse, and Bailey. Thank you!

First Timers Section!

Ali J read an excellently nuanced and winding take on the frayed edges/intersections of intimacy, therapy, the past, and feminism.

I’m not sure if this is a direct quote, but I have written down “Remember loving me at the corner of St. Botolph and West Newton?” for Laura R’s first time on the mic, and it feels like a good encapsulation of her piece.

Lisha gave us an intense extended metaphor/allegory about bees, buzzing, being touched, and disarming and detonating bombs.

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“Mount me nicely. Bark.” – Aidan
“I’m attempting to raise my dopamine levels by eating mango popsicle sticks” – Portia*
“Cast your ballot for the dirty smell” – Tom Fowler

*I think most of our patrons are attempting to raise their dopamine levels by listening to poetry!

This month’s HAIKU SLAM was won by Kai over Cam S! Honorable mention goes to open mic regular Juliet, who humorously titled their first-round haiku “I always lose the haiku slam,” and their second-round haiku, “I never make it to the 2nd round”.

This week’s WRITING PROMPT comes courtesy of our feature Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah:

Start with a place in the city you are familiar with. How does it see you. What does it have to say about you. Imagine it loves you. It does. Write a love poem in its voice about you. Your working title is [Insert location in they city] romanticizes [Insert Your Name].

Feature!

Our feature was the NEW Poet Laureate of Boston, and long-time local writer/organizer Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah! Emmanuel opened by asking the audience to think about a childhood belief that they strongly believed but was later debunked. He then asked each person to discuss this belief with the person sitting next to them, and we got to hear some wild examples from the crowd after the discussion was over. Emmanuel’s own poetry shone brightly with fervent detours, including a revised January 6th poem that probes the meaning of culpability, a piece for student activist Mahmoud Khalil who was taken from his apartment by ICE, and the excellently titled “Poem In Which I Mouth Myself into A Caucus of Crows”. Be sure to check out Emmanuel’s new book, not without small joys, out now on Game Over Books.

This Week!

Come celebrate the end of National Poetry Month! We will be capping off the month with our annual FRESH INK SLAM. Have at least 3 poems prepared that are BRAND NEW TO THE STAGE. If you did a 30/30 for the month of April, this one’s for you! If you did a 3/30, this one’s also for you. Sign-ups are first-come, first-serve. $50 prize for the winner of the slam.

See you soon,

– MFG 🚪

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 16th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Hey Cantab! A beautiful spring Wednesday was had last week, with poets rocking the mic left and right! We had wonderful poems from regulars Portia, Nick Roberts, and Kat Gunther, and waitlist warrior Meredith O discussing the perils of sitting down and remembering all 141 original Pokemon. Isaiah continued their tradition of reading a heartfelt poem addressed to their friends on their birthday (happy birthday Isaiah), and Bailey read a fabulous poem with a ton of horsepower, per say, after Will Leonard’s well-known horse poem(s). Later on, slam team members Jenn, Ilse, and Kaitie D. nearly knocked the mic over with their skillz. We also had a bittersweet farewell poem from Tony, who, though it was her first time on the mic, read about how she was processing leaving Boston for the time being, and how it feels “more like home” than where she grew up. 

The ✏️ Line of the Wednesday✏️  is from Tony, with “I think of love in very big words”

Our prompt from last week was inspired by Donovan Beck:  Write a poem using direct address.

Our features were Sara Mae and Zenaida Peterson, and we were honored to be the first stop on their tour, for what we experienced was such a treat! The pair not only read from their respective chapbooks, weaving in beautiful lines that wash over you like a wave, but there was so much more! They brought in a literal church pew, which was symbolically moved and repositioned on stage throughout the show. One would sit or lean on the church pew, reading, while the other would perform a poem, or they would both sit on the pew together, reading a piece together. There was additionally a cootie catcher, eyeshadow application, and an overall display of what true friendship means. It was a unique and wonderful show. 

Tonight! We have the NEWLY CROWNED POET LAUREATE OF BOSTON, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah!! Emmanuel is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator living out the diaspora in Boston, Massachusetts. They are both Black & alive. Born in 1993, Emmanuel is Boston’s newly appointed poet laureate, and the school librarian at the Joseph Lee School in Dorchester. In the past, Emmanuel has served as a teaching artist at organizations such as the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, the Cambridge Arts Council, Northeastern University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Emmanuel’s poem, “kra-din” (Kweli Journal), is a past recipient of the Pushcart Prize (XLIII). In his free time, Emmanuel enjoys hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, and the long sigh at the end of a good book.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for reading, as this will be my (Amy’s) last time writing the recap for the foreseeable future. I’m passing the baton to the very skilled archivist and poet, Michael F Gill, to tell you the tales of Wednesday nights moving forward. It has been so fun to write these for the past 2 years! I now have other BPS duties to attend to. Stay tuned!

See you tonight,

Amy ✈️

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 9th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Hey folks! We had a beautiful night here in our favorite basement. Our open mic was packed with a surprising percentage of first-timers: Mikumari visited us from NYC with a piece about his mother’s sunshine, Niveen rocked the mic with a memorized piece on injustice & genocide, Gavin gave us a touching tribute to a lost friend, and Cole, longtime listener and my personal MVP from the Chaos vs. Order slam, had his own technical debut on our mic. (For those not present, the slam involved him puppeteering and playing a trumpet, so if your face isn’t on the mic, I’m not gonna count it.) And that’s not even close to all of them! Please come back, newcomers!

Don’t worry — our beloved regulars showed out, too. 2025 team member Kaitie D gave us a fantastic rendition of her crowd favorite about meeting American Jesus, Kai weighed the pros and cons of comfort games, and Cam S gave us yet another installment of the Great Pagliacci series rapidly developing at our clown-and-doctor-filled venue. All of this culminated in a local feature from weekly regular Donovan Beck, whose new book, Sunbreak: Notes On Hope, filled many a hand at the end of the night. Donovan brought us into his world, guided us through the process of getting out the despair, and then finding the hope behind it. 

Our prompt of the week: “One year of…” or “The first year of…” — inspired by the culmination of our first full year of running Slam Adams! Slam Adams takes palce every first Monday at the Samuel Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain. Email myles@bostonpoetryslam.com to sign up for May’s slam. 

I’m gonna give our friend Gel the line of the week for their haiku on the Express Lane: “I finally washed / my drying rack. Now where the / fuck do I put it?” (That was from memory, so I hope I got it right.)

Next week! Usual open mic shenanigans ensue. GET THERE EARLY, because this feature is gonna be a big one: SARA MAE and ZENAIDA PETERSON return to the basement! The FEMS Tournament co-founders are running a dual-feature tour across New England for their respective new collections, Phantasmagossip (YesYes Books) and Sky Responds To Our Holler (Game Over Books). This is probably my most anticipated feature of the season, so you’d better get down here. 

See you all next week!

– Myles ✨

Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter