Cantab Recap for Wednesday, November 16, 2016

It’s been back-to-back Columbus celebrations at the Cantab, folks: this week, we welcomed rare traveler and Writers’ Block co-founder Vernell Bristow to the stage. This perennial national slammer and Columbus open mic mainstay brought her multi-facted, thoughtful work to the Cantab stage for the first time since she competed here at Nationals in 2013 and shone for a solid thirty minutes. This was an unusual chance to see Vernell outside of Ohio: keep her home slam in mind the next time you travel west on I-90.

After the feature, a really solid eight slammers took the stage, including some strong first-timers and some gung-ho regulars. The final came down to John Pinkham (oft-times slam finalist) and Allison Truj (rare bird at the slam). When the dust cleared, John was left standing holding the ten-dollar prize: congratulations to John, and we sure hope to see Truj back out to fight for a win in future weeks.

Next Wednesday: our feature will be the High School Reunion Slam. Missing your high school friends? Still rejecting the idea of senselessly formal, age-segregated education? Any which way, this slam is for you: the Freshmen vs. Sophomores vs. Juniors vs. Seniors will have you Facebooking your exes to tell them all about how anti-establishment yet formative our show is. Bring your favorite high school outfit and three minutes of angst to our open mic, then feel free to grab a whiteboard and judge our slammers’ art like the Heather you are.