Hey Cantab! What a week! We had our wonderful team showcase last week as a bittersweet end to the 2024 slam season, but more on that later. It was a more “chill” night than normal this week, but still a full open mic and one first-timer! We had beautiful poems from Sarah, Kai, March, Sam O., and Keaton, amongst others. There were some lingering Allston Christmas submissions of found poems and some poems written just that day (new shit!). Erica Garcia’s poem blew everyone away with how well-crafted it was, and Kat debuted yet another Furby poem during the smoking section that left people thinking about angels and devils.
The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ is from Kai, with “no matter how many times we wake up there will always be the nightmare where we say all the right things the first time”
Then, we had our team spotlight feature. The 2024 BPS Slam Team, formed in April and consisting of Aparna Paul, Katya Zinn, Jennifer Martinez, Mary Schwabenland, and Brynna Boyd, had a beautiful and successful slam season. In a send-off feature, we got to hear a full hour of poetry from these incredible, talented people. We got to hear some “greatest hits” like Brynna’s Black Beauty poem, Katya’s Dunkin Law and Order poem, Aparna’s triple river contrapuntal, Mary’s conspiracy theory poem, Jennifer’s tick poem, and the closets group piece. We also got to hear some less-competed poems, and the whole thing was such a treat. The room was as filled with as much love and support as it could muster, with hugs all around and audience members lining up for signed team chapbooks. Speaking of which, it was incredibly heartwarming to have the team chapbook accompany the feature. All chapbook sales went to funding the team’s last competition at VoxPop this past weekend. They have made BPS and the whole Cantab community so proud. They are a team we will never forget.
Onto next season!
THIS WEEK! Keep all the hype from last week going because this feature is not one you want to miss. The feature is Crystal Valentine! Crystal Valentine is a nationally and internationally acclaimed poet, educator and organizer. A former New York City Youth Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, Crystal has been offered fellowships from Callaloo, Tin House, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences and The Boston Foundation. She is the winner of Palette Poetry’s 2021 Emerging Poet Prize, selected by Kelli Russell Agodon, and her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Muzzle Magazine, TriQuarterly Magazine, MSNBC, BET, CNN, The New York Daily News, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from New York University. Originally hailing from the Bronx, Crystal now resides in Boston where she serves as the Director of Programming for Mass Poetry. When she isn’t writing or agonizing over line breaks, you can find her watching anime and dreaming.
See you then!
– Amy ✈️
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