Send us feedback anonymously or via email
Open Mic Highlights
• One of our 2026 Northbeast workshop leaders Leticia opened up the mic with a piece melding locust plagues with human intimacy and physical touch
• We had a lot of first and second timers on the mic this week! Shout out to Austin, Len (“Things that feel intimate but maybe aren’t”), Alexus (“when I was a kid / I was a velveteen rabbit”), Willa, and Lindsey
• Meredith’s ode to cooking (“the least amount of pots used wins”), Jocelyn’s slow creep through the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum through an abundantly hot day, and Mar’s personal experience with parents with multiple children who claim they don’t play favorites
• In the freak shit column, Finn detailed a long and flirty DM conversation with spinach, and Shivank wrote a kind of abecedarian that included numbers (“1A” “2J” “10K” ) along with the letters, and then followed that up with a poem in disguise as a list of sharks
• I can’t say this describes Jason’s poem accurately, but what I have written down for it is “so, life is running its tongue against the socket of a dirty lamp’s electricity…”
• Sue Savoy did a meditation on how it would be impossible to watch a movie of her life, Jarvis regaled us the tale of ripping his pants in Natick at Level 99, and Briana closed the mic with a bittersweet poem about how Boston is constructed for leaving and transience, how it seems made for distant memories
Feature
Beloved poet and former BPS staff member Kat Anderson was the feature tonight, reading from her first collection “Etymology of Break” as well as some brand new work! All the trademark(™) elements of Kat’s work was on full display: her love of photography (a disposable camera was passed around for the audience to use), well-constructed contrapuntals, themes of lust/regret, poems about queer joy and the love of community spaces that were published in small zines and local publications, the indefinable sense of self (“I am an adjective the refuses to be in the dictionary”), and a touch of the silly/ridiculous where she read some of her first attempts at poetry in 7th and 8th grade. Thanks Kat! Welcome back.
Coming Up This Wednesday
This week, renowned poet Stevie Edwards returns to feature at the Cantab, and we also will have our normal open mic that will include our monthly haiku slam!
BIO: Dr. Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Weather Inside (University of Arkansas Press, 2026), Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). She holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Cornell University. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her spouse and a small herd of rescue pitbulls. Her work has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, SAFTA Firefly Farms, and Buinho Creative Hub
– MFG 🚪
Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter
Boston Poetry Slam Online