Cantab Recap For Wednesday, November 27th, 2024

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Once again, we had an incredible open mic and an even more incredible slam. Though the mic list was rather light given the holiday week, the slam sign-up list filled up almost immediately! Regulars shined on the mic including Ash (God is dead, did you hear?) and Will Leonard, and newbies excelled including René and Norm (back after so long!). We then had a notably killer smoking section, with staff debuting new shit reminding us why we love them.

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to newcomer Raquel, who, at the very end of the mic, hit us with “listening is the real sodomy”

Then, we had our OPEN SLAM! The slam was chock full of eleven slammers, including regulars, first-timers, and our very own curator Myles Taylor. We first heard Chris share about grief, and Myles riffing on shoplifting/want/capitalism. Abe and Jack Chasse then shook things up with their energizing styles, Edie and Charlie Jay tugged at our heart strings, and Cail made an incredible debut on religious trauma. As the marathon first round continued, Keaton’s pen game continued to stun us, Ilse definitely made sure we knew they knew what hunger was, and Daniel wowed us with his worldview-changing work. Our two finalists, Isaiah and Ilse, went toe-to-toe in a free-for-all final round (and both are now qualified to try out for the BPS 2025 Slam Team!). In a mic-drop poem written on and about their birthday, showing their range, what they value in life, and taking us in a journey through both grief and love, Isaiah emerged with the title and the $50 prize! Thank you to all our slammers, our bout staff, and our judges!!

TONIGHT!! DUY ĐOÀN (pronounced zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game (Yale University Press), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Duy’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Margins, Kenyon Review and Poetry. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University. He lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

We also have a workshop at 6:30 by Amy Asherah on Writing for Healing! As a reminder, workshop attendees get first access to the mic list.

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, November 20th, 2024

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It was another fun night of poetry at the Cantab this past Wednesday! On the open mic, first timer Riva stole the show with an incredible memorized piece revolving around the theme of circles, which appropriately had some stellar rhythm and rhymes that winded their way around the room, and they even got the audience reciting lines without any prompting. There was also great work from Hallie Carton, who read a found poem of sorts using lines from movie reviews they’ve left online. Ask them about the full list of movies they’ve watched this year for all the references! Elsewhere, Ilse had a tremendous poem about love, yearning, and fulfillment, while Kai gave us another in their series of discreet love letters to medical professionals.

Our feature Mila Cuda took the stage dressed in a spider costume (!) and yes, while there were spider poems, we also heard work on femme friendship and dating, some mantra-laden memorized poems, and a good deal of unexpected rhymes. It was a real lovely set that went by too quickly! Be sure to preorder her book Still from Game Over books!

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.

See you then!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, November 13rd, 2024

Amy: Hey Cantab! Quick note: we now have an online form if you’d like to send us anonymous (or non-anonymous) feedback about any of our shows.

We had an incredible open mic this week, with bangers throughout the mic, so many that host Brynna was confidently proclaiming her section of the mic being “no skips” before it was even over! Ericka’s Star Wars / self-actualization poem got rave reactions, March had a sensational somewhat anti-slam piece (on the night of a great slam), and we got a showstopping debut from Wonderwoman, who started their performance by repeating “can you hear me?” from the back of the stage, then proceeding to do a great poem about their experience as a HOH individual. We also had a heartfelt debut from Tiff about her experience spending much of her childhood in her family’s restaurant. Additionally, we had two folks on the mic (Jamie and Walter) who last read here over three DECADES ago, in 1994! Both read fabulous poems, with Jamie even paying homage to Walter, who followed him afterwards on the mic! Ben Tolkin also paid homage, but to the names of about a dozen love song titles, which comprised the majority of his poem. David F blew the roof (well, first floor?) off the basement with his anti-ode to rhyming poems that, in true David F fashion, kept getting progressively unhinged until the audience was left awestruck. Rhyme on (or not), David F!

The✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to March Penn, with “Unlearning isn’t a strip tease of knowledge”

Michael: After the mic, we had our open slam! Of our eight slammers, THREE made their Cantab debut during the slam, and ONE made their first-ever slam debut. Shoutout to Hill, John, and Brianna: hope to see you on stage again soon! Early highlights of the slam included the captivating fanfare and lyricism of Jack Chasse, inspiring pieces from Edie, and powerful work by Keaton. But the final battle came down to impressive newcomer Rene Ramos against our very own BPS recap writer Amy Argentar. Amy stole the slam with an incredible trio of poems involving (among other things) Chicago rats, invasive fried chicken ads, and a surprising take on the mother-daughter relationship. Congrats to Amy, who despite being a mainstay of our show for the past two years, had somehow not previously won a slam outright at BPS!

Amy: Thanks Michael! This week: we have a feature by Mika Cuda! Mila Cuda is a caffeine-sensitive lesbian from Los Angeles with an unmatched enthusiasm for spiders. The former Youth Poet Laureate of the West Coast, their work has been featured on Teen Vogue, Button Poetry, Rookie, PBS and Poetry Online. A two-time winner of The Charlotte Paul Reese Memorial Prize for Creativity in Poetry, she now lives in Somerville, MA, with her partner and the seasons. Still (Game Over Books, 2024) is her first full-length collection.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️ and MFG 🚪

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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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