Send us feedback anonymously or via email
Hey folks! We had a beautiful night here in our favorite basement. Our open mic was packed with a surprising percentage of first-timers: Mikumari visited us from NYC with a piece about his mother’s sunshine, Niveen rocked the mic with a memorized piece on injustice & genocide, Gavin gave us a touching tribute to a lost friend, and Cole, longtime listener and my personal MVP from the Chaos vs. Order slam, had his own technical debut on our mic. (For those not present, the slam involved him puppeteering and playing a trumpet, so if your face isn’t on the mic, I’m not gonna count it.) And that’s not even close to all of them! Please come back, newcomers!
Don’t worry — our beloved regulars showed out, too. 2025 team member Kaitie D gave us a fantastic rendition of her crowd favorite about meeting American Jesus, Kai weighed the pros and cons of comfort games, and Cam S gave us yet another installment of the Great Pagliacci series rapidly developing at our clown-and-doctor-filled venue. All of this culminated in a local feature from weekly regular Donovan Beck, whose new book, Sunbreak: Notes On Hope, filled many a hand at the end of the night. Donovan brought us into his world, guided us through the process of getting out the despair, and then finding the hope behind it.
Our prompt of the week: “One year of…” or “The first year of…” — inspired by the culmination of our first full year of running Slam Adams! Slam Adams takes palce every first Monday at the Samuel Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain. Email myles@bostonpoetryslam.com to sign up for May’s slam.
I’m gonna give our friend Gel the line of the week for their haiku on the Express Lane: “I finally washed / my drying rack. Now where the / fuck do I put it?” (That was from memory, so I hope I got it right.)
Next week! Usual open mic shenanigans ensue. GET THERE EARLY, because this feature is gonna be a big one: SARA MAE and ZENAIDA PETERSON return to the basement! The FEMS Tournament co-founders are running a dual-feature tour across New England for their respective new collections, Phantasmagossip (YesYes Books) and Sky Responds To Our Holler (Game Over Books). This is probably my most anticipated feature of the season, so you’d better get down here.
See you all next week!
– Myles ✨
Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter
Boston Poetry Slam Online