Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

Happy May, Cantab!

We had a lovely workshop, open mic and feature last week, with Sam Bucci serving up an incredible poem from said workshop, Otto Vock returning after their team came in second at the Midwest Mashup (congrats Otto, Meaghan, McKendy, and Alex), and Daniel Letona with a powerful piece on heritage. We also had a particularly notable smoking section, with Kat again bringing bars up from the bar, Briana with some super-fresh shit on the “would you rather be left alone in a forest with a man or a bear” debate, and Aparna with a wonderful 2-year Cantabverssary tribute. 

Before all that though, March Penn hosted a very informative workshop, teaching us about hypotaxis and parataxis, analyzing a few exemplary works, and creating a really generative space for writing. Several workshop attendees performed their poems on the mic later that night! Stay tuned for our next monthly workshop, which happens on the first Wednesday of every month.

This week’s ✏️ Line of the Wednesday ✏️ is from Finn, with “I am mute on nameless streets. My head in a spiral of gemmed fiddlehead fern.” 

We then had an INCREDIBLE feature by Durane West, who maybe broke the record for number of cool forms (specifically, index poems) read on the mic within thirty minutes. We even got a contrapuntal. His work was rich with storytelling, descriptors of the black experience, and coincidentally, powerful parataxis. Thank you Durane!!

This week! We have A BOOK RELEASE from our beloved March Penn!!! March Penn has been a regular on the open mic at Cantab since 2010 and writes about neurodiversity, gender fluidity, queer relationships, chronic illness and creative community building. During the pandemic, they started the DIY MFA / Self-Educating Poets Network to make literary education free and accessible using online resources. March’s first full-length book, Green Antelope Fire, is out with Game Over Books.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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