Hi Cantab! Last Wednesday was our annual Allston Christmas Slam, and we had plenty of hidden gems on the open mic, and so so many first-timers! We had a string of newcomers in the middle, including Lee, Ariel, and August. We also had a trio of heartfelt poems by Jade, Skylar, and Mar. Our wonderful workshop host, Elana Lev Friedland, also performed on the open mic!
The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is: “This ain’t the final frontier, this is Walgreens” – Peter (we think)
Then, of course, we had our slam. The stage was decorated with several items collected by Myles Taylor, all found during the famed Allston Christmas. These items ranged from hats, shirts, jackets, shark slides, and various unique knickknacks. All of which were up for grabs by the winners of each round. Slammers competed in head-to-head battles, each reading a found poem (aka, a piece of text that is not a poem, nor written by the poet, but performed as such), while our lovely judges picked which poem they preferred. We had incredible readings of reddit posts, a striking and moving reading of some writings found at a T station, a collection of words from other Cantabbers, Teams messages, texts, you name it! We even had a found “group piece” with Mary and Will reading excerpts from their own text conversations. Cameron took all the passion in a reddit post about grilled cheese and released it upon the audience. Katya’s stunning and hilarious performance of the woes of a girlfriend doomed to the nickname of “Tony Pizza” left us in stitches. Kai read an infamous article from 10 years ago that is (we think?) about Bruno Mars being potentially gay. It was an enlightening night that left several slammers with some new prized possessions to accompany their prized poems.
This week, we have the highly anticipated 2024 BPS Slam Team Showcase!
“My team won, they won, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thrilled about that. But it’s how they won. In finals, the team did not win any one round outright. Most poetry slam teams are built around what I call a Score Horse. It’s not always the same person from slam to slam, but the idea is that one big poem will carry the team to victory. This team didn’t have that. They didn’t need it. As I was rehashing the glory of that win to a coworker, I relayed to him that we didn’t win one round but won the whole thing. Ahh, he said, you didn’t have an Ace, but you had Five Kings.” – Zeke Russell
The 2024 Boston Poetry Slam team is perhaps one of the most decorated in Cantab’s history, winning the Nossrat Yassini Festival Slam, the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam, and the 2024 Grudge Match versus Slam Free or Die. Come see Brynna Boyd, Aparna Paul, Mary Schwabenland, Jennifer Martinez, and Katya Zinn do a special hour-long set before their final competition at VOX POP 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire. These five kings’ work will be sold in chapbook form to fundraise for our NH lodgings. This is a feature you won’t want to miss!
NOTE: *As part of the fundraiser, this special show will be $6 rather than our usual $4 at the door.*
See you then!
– Amy ✈️
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