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Open Mic Highlights 05/13
• Bailey’s cover of Pigeon’s poem about adopting both a Pokémon-themed version of health insurance and a Pokémon-themed version of socialism
• Shivank added another entry in the long line of open mic poems where a horse starts talking (…but does it walk into a bar?)
• Using lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Greg & Martha enacted a conversation between Prosperity and America
• “I want to blow up a federal building….in Minecraft” – Edie
• “My heart gets me on weekends / My head has me during the week / Maybe I should stay with my lungs for a while” – Jenna on disassociating
• Kai’s moving poem to a close friend who is celebrating being in lymphoma recession for 15 years
• Early on the mic we heard a frog-themed poem by Jesse Cohen, and then at the very end we heard a dramatic (and very funny) reading by Brynna of her rap battle response poem in the voice of a frog, as part of the rap battle contest at the grade school where she teaches!
Feature 05/13
For 05/13 our feature was an open speed slam, featuring poems of 1 minute or less! We had some great work from Alex Kist and Chris Mckenna, jazzy stuff from newcomer White Swan, and Shawn showed off his (technically incredible) SPEED-reading of poems (which wowed the judges in the first round, but not so much in the second). In the end, travelling poet and DJ Mr. G won the slam over Alex and Chris with a heart-breaking poem about experimental prescription drugs that were recalled too late to save a family member.
Open Mic Highlights 05/20
• “It’s really good for my mental health for my therapist to ghost me” – Sue Savoy
• Down the wormhole with Shivank, whose poem featured an inexhaustible amount of/metaphors about….worms!
• Jen Martinez harrowing piece on domestic abuse and losing their mother slowly that absolutely shook the room (“Can you break a generational curse before it even exists?”)
• I’m not going to do justice to Scott Timothy’s poem, but it was a fast-moving stream-of-conscious fever dream through sexuality, pop culture, drugs, and existential humor that had the crowd wondering what hit them!
• First-timer Max read a very animated and well-performed poem in Spanish that seemed to transcend the language barrier for a good chunk of the audience
• First-timer Kay also managed to pull-off a difficult premise: a sexy poem that also managed to pay tribute to their late mother in the middle
• We had our monthly haiku slam this week! Despite some really close calls (the audience had a real hard time picking a winner between Kai and March in Round 2), a fiercely confident Lynette won in the final round over a set of brazen sexy and funny haiku by March Penn
Feature 05/20
Our feature this week was local poet and Providence Slam Team member, René Manual Ramos! René gave us a feel-good set about his journey in poetry over the past two years, starting with a poem about this progress from attending readings as “The Heartbreak Kid” to the time when “The heart breaks The Kid” as he got more into poetry slam. This was a very varied and unexpected set, topic wise. René opened up about his experience with alopecia (“Stress Marks”), learning to sew, being inspired to write about his mother after seeing a high school slam (“There’s no distance further than [the span of] my mother’s arms”), tattoos (“I thought I was ready for scar”) and his hometown of Lowell, MA. Thank you René!
Coming Up This Wednesday
This week, we will have an open mic, and as part of our ongoing community nights, the feature will be a COMPLIMENT DEATH MATCH! That’s right, people will be facing off head-to-head and giving each other compliments, with the best compliment winning! It’s not too late to sign up on the fly, so come on down and join us!
See you later! 🐊
– MFG 🚪
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