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Hi Cantab! It was a hot one last Wednesday, and I’m not just talking about the fire poetry we heard. It was the middle of a heat wave, causing some unusual circumstances for our show. Due to The Cantab Lounge having a HVAC issue, we held the show at The Foundry instead (thank you to our friends there for accommodating us on such short notice). Despite having to reschedule the tag team slam to August, we still had a hell of an open mic – specifically, the Extended Remix Open Mic! Due to the lack of a feature or slam, a whopping 28 people read on the open mic (not including staff!), and it was a certified all-bangers, no-skips kind of night.
Show Highlights
• New staff member Kai made their hosting debut, delighting the audience with understated curiosity, entertaining quotes, and tidbits of fun.
• Kai and Kaitie D made a sign that said “Cantab Above Ground,” a dry-erase replica of the famous mural that Aparna’s haiku later referenced (btw Aparna did do a performance with the new make-shift mural!)
• Taking a page out of Just Bookish’s book, we wrote down our favorite lines of poetry on whiteboards, which Amy initially hid under the chairs as if we were in a 90s talk show, about to win a special prize.
• We had several newcomers and far-flung travelers on the mic, including first-timer Betsy who came all the way from Vermont, and Colin Killick, who returned from DC to perform a classic on disability activism.
• Jack Chasse and Cameron did fast-rapping poems back-to-back in homage to each other (and Spongebob).
• David F (occasionally affectionately known as “the rhyme slut”) performed a thoughtfully constructed poem about editing and his father, playing into the theme of “time” that was prevalent.
• Another major theme emerged in the poems shared by Jennifer, Ilse, and Aparna regarding writing about family, roots and the role of parents in one’s life.
• Aparna also gave us a prompt in honor of our change of venue: Write about a last-minute change and incorporate a quick turn.
• Finally, we enjoyed all the poems read in Spanish – always appreciative of multilingual work – keep it going, poets!!!
Memorable Lines Galore:
“Reality buckles under the weight of Spongebob” – Jack
“Pretending to know is so much easier than knowing” – Sue
“I let silence expand” – Abe
“Silence is complicity” – Danny, from a poem for Palestine
“I don’t fight depression when it comes, I surrender and surrender to something else” – Ed
“The loudest voice in my head is my mother” – Aparna, from a cover of Solmaz Sharif’s “Social Skills Training”
“I can’t picture a wedding in the middle of a wake” – Brynna, from the burning of the plantation series
“If vulnerability is so precious, why does it feel like lying?” – Amy
“Maybe I’m not meant to exist here right now” – newcomer Kayleen
Coming Up This Wednesday
We will back at the Cantab this week, for a feature by Bob Sykora, and an early bird (6:30 pm) workshop with Kes Maro!
Feature Bio: Bob Sykora is the author of the collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025) and the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016). He lives in Kansas City where he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar. He can be found online at bobsykora.com
Workshop info: “Meet Your Monster” is a generative character design and persona poetry workshop run by Kes Maro. In this workshop, we will read poetry written in the voice of monsters, discuss core aspects of character design, and give voice to our fears.
See you there!
– Amy, March, and Kai
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