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Open Mic Highlights
• Mary’s poem about writing a commissioned song for a 7-year-old kid named Paulie that turned out to be a scam, and how the idea of Paulie lived on
• Ember’s poem re: the FBI’s claim to categorize trans people as “violent extremists”
• Kelsey’s new piece “My mother unburies her trauma” which featured the cutting line: “I am my mother’s mother before her daughter”
• Will S’s moving reflection on his Jewish root and his prayer for both peace and a free Palestine
• Jen’s striking “When Black Bodies Fall / Does Anyone Even Hear Them” and Brynna’s rebuttal to her professor: “Not all of us descended from Royalty”
• Myles just casually mentioning the documentary “Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching” on the mic (where is the poem, Myles?!)
Feature
For this month’s community night, Zeke Russell hosted a series of poems and poets discussing work about and inspired by their favorite music albums. Zeke himself bookended the set with homesick poems about the Grateful Dead, Tom Petty, and Nirvana’s Nevermind, featuring the brief and excellent “Self Portrait As The Major Key Remix of Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Amy reflected on her Dad’s classic rock favorites that she grew up, and through a series of ongoing revelations ended up with the line “The day I learned to call it love / I learned to call if grief.” Keaton wrote about growing up with the band Bastille (of which they were once in the top 0.1% of spotify listeners) and also about the lyrics of Matt Mason. Kai told us how they were a tumblr teen and were inspired by Marina & The Diamonds. Navah The Buddaphliii deeped into their deep well of paisley reflections, fever dreams, and Prince poems to speak about 1999. And Myles Taylor read a series of mini poems inspired by the band The National, centered around the theme of a post-college depression. The whole show was such a unique and striking look in to how our local poets interact with music, so we may have to do it again in the future!
Coming Up This Wednesday
This week’s feature is Quintin Collins! We also will have a last chance Haiku slam to qualify for next week’s tournament, and an early bird tarot-themed workshop by New England poet/former Cantab feature Mica Rich! Workshop at 6:30, Show starts at 8, feature begins at 10!
Workshop info: Learn how reading the tarot and writing poetry intersect at the art of storytelling. In this workshop, participants will read examples of poems inspired by the tarot, learn about archetypes within the tarot, and practice doing tarot readings for inspiration. Poets will have time to write their own tarot-inspired poems and to share with the workshop group.
Feature bio: Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, associate director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. His work appears in many print and online publications, such as Sidereal Magazine, Superstition Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Solstice Literary Magazine, and others. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet’s Billow, Quintin’s publishing accolades include multiple Best of the Net Nominations, and he was a finalist for the 2020 Redivider Beacon Street Prize.
Quintin’s first full-length collection of poems, The Dandelion Speaks of Survival, which was a finalist for the 2020 Alice James Award and the 2021 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, is available from Cherry Castle Publishing. His second collection of poems, Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal’s 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Honor Book for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s 2023 Best Poetry Literary Award, is available from Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books.
See you soon!
– MFG 🚪
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