Hello Hello! A wonderful Wednesday was witnessed last week. On the open mic, March Penn blew everyone’s minds again, Rina performed an absolutely beautiful piece on loss, and our wonderful graphic designer Jackie read an amazing poem based on a series of unsent text messages. Just business as usual at a sold-out poetry night at the Cantab Lounge.
It was also one of those lucky nights where we had a haiku slam hosted by our own Michael F. Gill! Poets went head-to-head and showed their wittiest, prettiest haiku, resulting in a couple near-ties. It came down to Christine, whose last haiku was an improvised combo of her first two, and Eddy Martinez, veteran haiku slammer. It was incredibly close, but Eddy emerged victorious to win the $17 prize! Stay tuned for out haiku slam semifinal competition coming later in September!
After the open mic and haiku slam, we had our feature, Courtney LeBlanc, who read touching, relatable, and cathartic poems. Everyone in the audience was guaranteed to find a connection to one of her pieces, and we loved the storytelling in between. Good luck on the rest of your tour, Courtney!
This show would not be complete without some 😊Shenanigans🪄. This week, Will Flores got called up from the wait list, but when he went up to the mic he spontaneously handed off his slot to a fedora-wearing Mike who read an absolutely ~magical~ piece that took us all on a journey.
This week’s ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to our very own social media manager Kat Anderson, with “Everyone loves the ocean but nobody loves her depth”
Coming up this Wednesday! We have TWO things going on at the Cantab, and it is going to be one of the most packed shows of the YEAR, so get in line early, folks! After our lovely spotlight feature, we are going to have a 🏎️💨SPEED SLAM🏎️💨! Buckle up poets, and come ready with your ONE MINUTE OR LESS poems to compete in a head-to-head style slam, with the winner gaining early qualification for our next slam team as well as a $50 prize.
But before that, we will have our feature. And not just any feature, no, this is a spotlight feature of our wonderful staff member, website-maintainer, host-extraordinaire, and overall amazing person and poet Jimmy Pavlick! Jimmy is sadly leaving us to go on other adventures, so it will be a bittersweet night indeed. See Jimmy’s bio below:
Jimmy Pavlick (any pronouns) is an alloy of bad wordplay and worse ideas sitting near Inman Square in Somerville. They practice martial arts, think a lot about comics, play multiple mobile phone games at the same time, and sometimes write and draw. They love Spinoza and being surprised by media. Their work has been published in the Vassar Student Review, and one online venue that, much to their chagrin, vanished from the internet. Their website is forthcoming.
Jimmy (also known as Jimmy!) first came to the Cantab in autumn 2019, was told by Myles to stay for the feature, and did. They haven’t left the building since. Jimmy now co-hosts for the open mic; their specialties are frequently lying about the audience to their faces and telling prophetic tales of the woes that befall those who stand on the fire lane stairs. You can find them on Wednesdays shouting in disbelief that there’s more than one Wednesday. Or, if not in the basement, waiting in the pizzeria upstairs for their chicken finger dinner to finish cooking.
See you then!!
– Amy ✈️
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