2025 Northbeast Regional Poetry Slam & Festival Is This Weekend!

Tickets are available via Eventbrite!

This weekend, representatives from poetry venues across New England and beyond will be competing in the 3rd Annual NorthBeast Regional Poetry Festival at the Cambridge Foundry!

The NorthBeast Regional Poetry Festival is dedicated to assembling poets from New England and beyond to uplift each other’s voices. In NorthBeast’s main event, 16 teams will compete in a regional poetry slam!

But NorthBeast is so much more than a competition: it is an opportunity to bring the poetry community together in a weekend of growth and camaraderie. Attendees can look forward to participating in open mics, a community fair, and workshops taught by esteemed local poets.

Teams Participating In The Slam:

Boston Poetry Slam (Cambridge, MA)

Slam Free or Die (Manchester, NH)

ProvSlam (Providence, RI)

Mill City Speaks (Lowell, MA)

Slam Euphoria (Troy, NY)

Port Veritas (Portland, ME)

The Dirty Gerund (Worcester, MA)

Rockland Poets (Nyack, NY)

(Not) BuckSlam (Minneapolis, MN)

Land of Lakes (Minneapolis, MN)

Charm City Slam (Baltimore, MD)

Verbal Slap (Bridgeport, CT)

Mic’d Up Mass (Boston, MA)

Sonic Bloom (Pick Up Team)

Team SLG [Silly Lil’ Guys] (Pick Up Team)

Peaky Binders (Pick Up Team)

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

SATURDAY JULY 12

OPENING CEREMONY
11:30am in Multipurpose Room

FIRST PRELIMINARY SLAM
12:00pm in Multipurpose Room
featuring Mic’d Up Mass, Port Veritas, Rockland Poets, and Charm City Slam

SECOND PRELIMINARY SLAM
1:30pm in STEAM Set Theater
featuring Land o’ Lakes, Sonic Bloom, Peaky Binders, and (not) BuckSlam

THIRD PRELIMINARY SLAM
3:00pm in Multipurpose Room
featuring Mill City Speaks, ProvSlam, Slam Euphoria, and Dirty Gerund

FOURTH PRELIMINARY SLAM
4:30pm in STEAM Set Theater
featuring Verbal Slap, Boston Poetry Slam, Slam Free or Die, and Silly Lil’ Guys (SLG)

HAIKU NUPIC SLAM
7:00pm in Multipurpose Room (sign ups at 6:30pm)

SUNDAY JULY 13

COMMUNITY FAIR & CHAPBOOK EXCHANGE
12pm – 6pm in Main Hall

LIBERATION OPEN MIC
12pm in Multipurpose Room

WORKSHOP 1 – EKPHRASTIC REMIXING: SAMPLING POP CULTURE with Kenny Bradley
12 pm in The Point

WORKSHOP 2 – THE BODY SPEAKS with Ilyus Evander
1:30pm in Design Lab

WORKSHOP 3 – MOTHER EARTH IS WATCHING with Essmaa Litim
3pm in The Point

JUST (BE)LOVED OPEN MIC
3pm in Multipurpose Room

WORKSHOP 4 – ANTI-POEMS & OTHER HIJACKINGS with G/ج (George Abraham)
4:30pm in Design Lab

FINALS TEAM CHECK-IN
5:30pm in STEAM Set Theater

FINALS STAGE
6pm in STEAM Set Theater

Event Venue

The Cambridge Foundry
101 Rogers St., Cambridge, MA 02142

To learn more about the Foundry, its accessibility features, and directions, see our page with venue information.

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

BUY TICKETS for the 2025 Northbeast Regional Poetry Slam & Festival in Cambridge! Happening this weekend!

Highlights From This Past Wednesday’s Show

Donovan’s line about having met “plenty of the keepers of the light” seemed to represent the feeling on tonight’s open mic, which was beautiful and vulnerable. Thank you for the shout out to Myles Taylor, “the keeper of the light,” as we are so grateful for this chance to have community with each other. A big thank you as well to our workshop facilitator, Kes, who led us through a prompt about fear by animating our monsters. Kes also read on the open mic and blew our minds with lines like “Everyone is acting like conversation with predators is still conversation.”

Other memorable lines from the open mic:
“Affection feels like a dungeon.” – Kelsey
“My pain is currently on sale.” – Edie
“Even in a flop era, there are some slays.” – Brynna (hosting bit)
“You use your context clues against me.” – Hunter
“A candle is to an astronomer as an egg is to a rabbit.” – Charlie
“In this room filled with queer acceptance, I think I finally found home.” – Muggs
“Their breath is the only prayer we need.” – Isaiah
“Peace comes to the spirit painfully.” – Nick
“The meat of your matter is all baloney.” – Greg
“I left my hometown even though it was the only place I felt grounded.” – Brynna
“This email found me rabid, foaming at the mouth.” – Aparna

We also had an excellent feature from touring poet Bob Sykora, who graced us with work from his new book, Utopians in Love, out now on one of our favorite local presses, Game Over Books. Check out the entire feature on our instagram HERE!

Coming Up This Wednesday

We welcome back to the feature stage longtime New England poet, artist, and educator, Ilyus Evander!

Bio: Ilyus Evander (they/them) is a disabled, non-binary mental health worker, educator, poet, and theater maker from Providence, RI. They have represented the Providence Poetry Slam at several National Poetry Tournaments including the National Poetry Slam, Brave New Voices, and the Women of the World Poetry Slam. They are the recipient of multiple awards for excellence in design from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for their work on theatrical productions. Ilyus’ first original experimental play, “Somebody. Nobody.” is currently being workshopped for production with OutLoud Theater Company. They are the author of two poetry collections; Good Mourning, Bad Dreams (2022 Ginger Bug Press), and Heavier Than Wait (2020 Game Over Books). Most recently, Ilyus became the 2024 ProvSlam Grand Slam Champion, won the “Pushing the Art Forward” award at the 2024 NorthBeast Regional, and has published work with The Poetry Foundation (Ours Poetica), Button Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets (Poem-A-Day). Ilyus has toured the country teaching and performing poetry, theater, and accessibility in the arts workshops. They are so proud of you.

See you there!

~ March

Cantab Recap For Wednesday, June 25th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email
BUY TICKETS for the 2025 Northbeast Regional Poetry Slam & Festival in Cambridge!

Hi Cantab! It was a hot one last Wednesday, and I’m not just talking about the fire poetry we heard. It was the middle of a heat wave, causing some unusual circumstances for our show. Due to The Cantab Lounge having a HVAC issue, we held the show at The Foundry instead (thank you to our friends there for accommodating us on such short notice). Despite having to reschedule the tag team slam to August, we still had a hell of an open mic – specifically, the Extended Remix Open Mic! Due to the lack of a feature or slam, a whopping 28 people read on the open mic (not including staff!), and it was a certified all-bangers, no-skips kind of night.

Show Highlights

• New staff member Kai made their hosting debut, delighting the audience with understated curiosity, entertaining quotes, and tidbits of fun.

• Kai and Kaitie D made a sign that said “Cantab Above Ground,” a dry-erase replica of the famous mural that Aparna’s haiku later referenced (btw Aparna did do a performance with the new make-shift mural!)

• Taking a page out of Just Bookish’s book, we wrote down our favorite lines of poetry on whiteboards, which Amy initially hid under the chairs as if we were in a 90s talk show, about to win a special prize.

• We had several newcomers and far-flung travelers on the mic, including first-timer Betsy who came all the way from Vermont, and Colin Killick, who returned from DC to perform a classic on disability activism.

• Jack Chasse and Cameron did fast-rapping poems back-to-back in homage to each other (and Spongebob).

• David F (occasionally affectionately known as “the rhyme slut”) performed a thoughtfully constructed poem about editing and his father, playing into the theme of “time” that was prevalent. 

• Another major theme emerged in the poems shared by Jennifer, Ilse, and Aparna regarding writing about family, roots and the role of parents in one’s life.

• Aparna also gave us a prompt in honor of our change of venue: Write about a last-minute change and incorporate a quick turn.

• Finally, we enjoyed all the poems read in Spanish – always appreciative of multilingual work – keep it going, poets!!!

Memorable Lines Galore:

“Reality buckles under the weight of Spongebob” – Jack

“Pretending to know is so much easier than knowing” – Sue

“I let silence expand” – Abe

“Silence is complicity” – Danny, from a poem for Palestine

“I don’t fight depression when it comes, I surrender and surrender to something else” – Ed

“The loudest voice in my head is my mother” – Aparna, from a cover of Solmaz Sharif’s “Social Skills Training”

“I can’t picture a wedding in the middle of a wake” – Brynna, from the burning of the plantation series

“If vulnerability is so precious, why does it feel like lying?” – Amy

“Maybe I’m not meant to exist here right now” – newcomer Kayleen

Coming Up This Wednesday

We will back at the Cantab this week, for a feature by Bob Sykora, and an early bird (6:30 pm) workshop with Kes Maro!

Feature Bio: Bob Sykora is the author of the collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025) and the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016). He lives in Kansas City where he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar. He can be found online at bobsykora.com

Workshop info: “Meet Your Monster” is a generative character design and persona poetry workshop run by Kes Maro. In this workshop, we will read poetry written in the voice of monsters, discuss core aspects of character design, and give voice to our fears.

See you there!

– Amy, March, and Kai

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 18th, 2025

Send us feedback anonymously or via email

Open Mic Highlights

• First-timer Lauren’s piece on the shifting idea of what being brave means as life goes on

• The unexpected return of former-regulars Kim and Maile B, and a rare two-poems-in-three-minutes from Kaitie D

• First-timer Alvaro read in Portuguese, with a beautiful cadence and rhythm that allowed you to hear all the turns in the poem even if you didn’t speak the language

• Diego, another first-timer, hit it out of the park with a poem about being a statistics teacher, and why he teaches his students about the darker origins of stats, including eugenics and profiling

• An explosive unpredictable / “Wait, did he just say that?” performance piece by Jack Chasse, who continues to keep us guessing where his poems will take us during each line/rhyme

• We also had 2 fantastic Juneteenth spotlight features from our own staff member Brynna Boyd, who shared pieces from their upcoming chapbook about the burning of plantations, and Yah Yah The Wordstress (@yahyahthewordstress), who did a long extended narrative piece with exquisite descriptive detail!

Feature

We had a rare triple feature this week for our Juneteenth celebration!

Marsha (@mizzymaz_) opened things up with a short set that invoked both the themes of “needing time” and coming to terms with the feeling that you are procrastinating.

Up second was Messi Amaru’Khan (@messagefrommessi), who had a relaxed and smooth flow that kept the audience in the groove throughout. The highlight was an excellent extended piece that was initially about papaw and mango trees, but later turned into an extended metaphor on what a tree will and won’t produce despite how it is treated, before arriving at the final question “What type of tree are you?”

Closing the night was M’shairi The God ((@mshairithegod) who opened with a great newly-written portrait of their Jamaican father, and how tangible his heartache has become, and then ended up with a showstopping piece about kissing a white guy and reveling in the act of taking control of the power dynamic between them.

All of our features come up from a new poetry show in the Boston Area, Pull Up Poetry (@pulluppoetry), so give them a follow and check out their upcoming shows!

This recap is a little late due to the 06/25 show having to be relocated at the last minute, but look out for a small recap of that open-mic-only show soon! We’ll be back at the Cantab next week, July 2nd!

See you then!

– MFG 🚪

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

Tonight’s 06/25 Show Has Been Relocated to The Foundry!

Hey folks! Unfortunately, The Cantab Lounge is having HVAC issues today. For the safety of all of our poets, we will have to postpone tonight’s Tag Team Slam and move the show away from the Cantab.

However, our friends at The Foundry are coming through to host us for our weekly open mic! It will be at 8 pm tonight at 101 Rogers St in Cambridge, MA. See venue information for The Foundry here.

Thank you all for your continued support and love, and a huge thank you to everyone who busted their asses to find us a last-minute replacement venue. I feel very secure and supported in my role when I have so many people eager to help.

Please come to the Foundry if you’re interested in doing some poems — it’s all ages! Same time, same $4 at the door. No feature, no frills, just an open mic for those die-hard standhead T-posing It Says Cantab Underground Right Behind Me michael fucking gill allston christmas mic rats. Amy wrote that last part. Anyway — see you there!

– Myles

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