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It was packed night at the Cantab this past week, not only for the open mic and open slam, but as we said goodbye (for now) to beloved staff member / bartender / poet Kat Anderson, who is moving to New York to be closer to their family. We had a lot of funny and poignant stories about Kat on the mic, and we will all miss her presence and poems.
Open Mic Highlights
Juliet’s charming theatrical piece about being a microcelebrity (read while wearing dark sunglasses and posing around the stage)
Hallie Carton’s “pattern seeker” poem about how every time they get close to someone with red hair, they feel something bad will happen to them. As the poem progressed, it openly wondered that if you never see someone again, does that make them immortal?
Mahathi’s poem titled “That one second where you gave a shit”
The welcome return of Briana and Meredith L to the mic, the former in extended visceral glory, the latter with a very meaty plot-heavy 1 minute piece during the express land that left us all wanting more.
The syncopated rhythms of Katya’s “Cocaine Bear: A Love Story”, which makes this recapper ponder if it will one day be performed/merged with her poem about the family of Charmin Bears
Kelsey, Meg Ford, Amy wrote bravely about recovery, the death of a parent, and all the personal thoughts and emotions that are behind grocery lists.
First Timers Section
Megan S brought us three painterly love poems, awash in evening rain and purple-blues, Cade gave us an ode to the mystic river, and Mer gave us a metaphorical (and literal) piece about the concept of hands. Special shoutout to Cyrus, who has been coming to our show for over a year and celebrated their newly legal name with their first time on the open mic. Welcome new poets!
Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:
“My mother calls me hope like I’m a wildcat breaking free of the cage” – Kai W
“If I was a drag performer, my stage name would be ‘Male Hysteria'” – Keaton
“Love derives from a set of aching teeth” – Nick Roberts
This week’s writing prompt: Write a poem about your most charming ghost, the sickening and haunting thing that you can’t stop feeling attached to
Feature
8 poets faced off in the Fresh Ink Slam, where all the work was new and/or never-been-performed on our stage! Highlights were a SURPRISE group piece sacrifice from Meredith L and Kat Anderson, moving work from Ilse about being middle class, and an intense hybrid poem from Bailey, which was both meta and also a cry for the remembrance of the self. Making it the final round was newcomer Sarah Fox, and a truly raw and unhinged Edie Churchill. After a dramatic final round TIE, we went on to a BONUS poem round, where Edie prevailed! Congrats to Edie, who has been slamming for over a year here at BPS and finally got the big win!
This Week!
We have not only a feature by Lauren Singer, but an early bird workshop by Fin Leary, which will focus on how we can engage real life figures, such as Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, in writing poetry. Workshop starts at 6:30 pm, $10 / sliding scale. Workshoppers will have early access to the open mic list.
Bios:
Lauren Singer is an assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest and North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback, Feel the Word, Read This, Kosmosis, One Night Stanzas, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, among others. An attendee of the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute, she is a graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock and received her MSW at the University of Chicago in 2015. She has self-published three chapbooks and is a current attendant of Story Studio’s selective Novel in a Year program. In addition to her creative interests, Lauren works as a sex and relationship therapist and runs a private practice out of Northampton, MA. Her book-length poetry manuscript, Raised Ranch, will be published by Game Over Books in April of 2025. She prides herself on her wealth of useless pop culture knowledge, namely of nineties R&B lyrics, and she can pretty much quote “The X-Files”.
Fin Leary (they/he) is an author, program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and faculty in the MFA program at Emerson College and at GrubStreet. They are the editor of the sci fi anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2025) and a contributor to the horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken (Page Street, 2025). His young adult fiction has been supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, Changemaker Authors, and GrubStreet. Their creative nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His flash fiction was a finalist for Boston in 100 Words. Fin lives with their orange literary cat outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
See you soon,
– MFG 🚪
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