Cantab Recap for Wednesday, August 13, 2014

A pretty sweet night at the Cantab went down last Wednesday, folks: we got to celebrate the triumphant return of most of our top-twenty 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team, a killer feature from Jacob Rakovan, and a field of very serious NPS-caliber poets duking it out for the chance to challenge reigning Champion of Champions Ellyn Touchette for the venue title.

An open mic packed with veterans (and new work!) got us started, definitely impressing our feature and Poetry and Pie co-curator Jacob Rakovan. Jacob took the stage for a full feature afterwards, bringing us work from his first full-length publication, The Devil’s Radio, as well as excerpts of his latest long-form work. Very nice! If you find yourself in upstate New York, don’t hesitate to look up Jacob and the monthly reading he helps run.

The big close-out for the night was a highly competitive Champion of Champions slam. Sometimes, the week after the National Poetry Slam, we see a little dip in how competitive our local poets are feeling… Not this year! Six top-notch poets showed up to fight for a shot at the title, all of them bringing highly polished work and playing off one another’s pieces in the slam. The final pairing for the season championship came down to Nora Meiners (returning from repping the Lizard Lounge at NPS) and Bobby Crawford (a returnee for Slam Free or Die). Bobby proved the judges’ favorite and decided to let it ride to the ultimate champion round, facing off with reigning champ Ellyn in an all-new-to-the-Cantab-stage round! Bobby took the championship on a tight decision between the judges, earning the title and the $100 prize. What a great show!

Next week: WE HAVE A SCHEDULE CHANGE. Our original bookings, Tova Charles and Zai Sadler, are unfortunately not able to make it to New England this week. On such short notice, we are super-sad about the double feature we booked to fill: we’ll be waving a permanent moving farewell to both Melissa Newman-Evans and Alex Ehrhardt this week, so the two will take the stage for a tearful and not even sarcastic farewell from them both. Hope to see you there!

Tips from the Bar: Ghost Line

Start your next poem with this line. Erase it once your poem is finished:

The skyline slanders the night as it falls.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, August 13, 2014: Jacob Rakovan and the Champion of Champions Slam

Appalachian writer Jacob Rakovan.

Appalachian writer Jacob Rakovan.

Jacob Rakovan is an Appalachian writer in diaspora. He is the author of The Devil’s Radio (Small Doggies Press, 2013) He is a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry and recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work has appeared in numerous journals including The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The James Dickey Review, Anon, Thrush, Nailed and Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism as well as anthologies by Salmon Poetry Press, MTV Books and The Arsenic Lobster. Rakovan was a finalist for the 2012 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature and the Gell poetry prize. He is co-curator of the Poetry & Pie Night reading series in upstate New York, where he resides with his five children and a mermaid.

Tonight also marks the final night in our current 8×8 poetry slam series! Eight slam winners will slam off for the season championship and the opportunity to challenge reigning Champion of Champions Ellyn Touchette.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. The Champions of Champions Slam in the 8×8 speed slam series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Check out the Boston Poetry Slam Team in NPS 2014 Semi-Finals Tonight!

Congratulations to the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team, who qualified for the semi-finals of the National Poetry Slam tonight! The team took a 2 and a 1 in their prelim bouts and nailed down 14th place (out of 72); now they’re headed into semis against Elevated!, Inkwell, SNO, and Hawaii, with the sole winner headed to Finals Stage on Saturday night. Awesome job so far, Janae, Oz, Sean, Meaghan, and Melissa! Melt some faces with poetry tonight!

For those who want to follow along with the scores, click here after 11 p.m. eastern time on Friday, August 8, 2014.

(In further cool neighborhood news, congrats to the Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam Team as well, who will be slamming in a different semi-final bout tonight.)

You can check out the full top-20 Friday line-up by clicking here, or see the complete rankings after prelims at this link. Go team! Go NorthBEAST! Go poetry!

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, August 6, 2014

With the slam team out of town, it’s been anything but quiet at the Cantab… Just ask Adam Stone, who was hoping for a nice, peaceful, anti-slammy feature, but instead ended up playing to a packed house while soon-to-be-first-mate-bartender Emily Carroll was busy slinging custom cocktails. Adam took us, as he put it, on a non-personal non-journey, with a really fun selection of humor, allegory, and extended joke/metaphor, with one wacky cover and a good sprinkling of puns thrown in. That kind of mix is what qualifies him to be our bartender, folks.

The slam was the last in the 8×8 series, which meant that eight big names were vying for the win! Perennial finalist Nathan Comstock made it all the way to the last round again, but was ousted by an on-fire Sophia Holtz, who takes the last win of the series. Open slams start again on August 20.

Next week: we’re back with excellent Appalachian/Rochester poet Jacob Rakovan, author of The Devil’s Radio. Plus, all the NorthBEAST slam teams will be home from Nationals with stories to tell… Especially Ellyn Touchette, Port Veritas slam team member and reigning Champion of Champions, who’ll have to defend her title against eight bloodthirsty challengers! Slam on!

Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and Reading Series featuring Sarah Lynn Herklots on Thursday, August 7, 2014

This reading is part of our monthly LGBTQ series, Moonlighting. Click here for more information about this recurring show.

The featured reader for August 7 is Sarah Lynn Herklots.

Portland, Maine performance poet Sarah Lynn Herklots.

Portland, Maine performance poet Sarah Lynn Herklots.

Sarah Lynn Herklots is a performance poet who believes in poetry and performance as tools for transformation and healing. She works hard to dismantle her own shyness and fear of embarrassment by telling on herself for just about everything. Sarah represented Portland, ME in the 2012 Women of the World Poetry slam where she placed in the top fifteen. She has been published by Moon Pie Press in the anthology “Passion and Pride: Poets supporting Equality,” Nin Journal and by Resurgo Magazine.

Fullfilling her dreams of someday being Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah spends nights with her laptop as a contributing writer for Jack Tar 207 and DapperQ. She writes about style, self love, breaking the mold and a variety of other glittery things.

This show in our monthly Thursday LGBTQ series takes place at Fazenda Coffee Roasters, 3710 Washington St. in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. An open mic begins at approximately 7:00 p.m. and the headliner follows the open mic. The show is all-ages and a $3 donation is requested.

Cantab Feature for August 6, 2014: The Adam Stone Anti-Slam

Adam Stone performs at the Cantab Lounge during the 2011 National Poetry Slam. Photo by Mark Skrzypczak.

Adam Stone performs at the Cantab Lounge during the 2011 National Poetry Slam. Photo by Mark Skrzypczak.

Poet, performer, and bartender Adam Stone has competed in, organized for, and heckled at more National Poetry Slams than some of the event’s biggest fans have been alive for. Having done and seen so much, for this year’s National Poetry Slam, Adam Stone is staying home in Cambridge, hunkered down in the questionable fallout shelter that is the Cantab Lounge.

With the summer of slam drawing to a close and all of New England’s slam team all-stars, coaches, and entourage out of town, Adam will be coming out from behind the bar to take the stage tonight. One of the most prolific and well-known performance poets in the NorthBEAST, Adam has promised to present a feature of his excellent poetry, prose, and in-between work… That is, unless he can convince some other old-school all-star poets who are also skipping out on Nationals to show up and produce a show with him. Or against him. Or at him. Or whatever: all he knows is that it won’t be a slam, but it will definitely be the ONLY poetry place to be if you aren’t trekking to Oakland to watch NPS this week.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. An open poetry slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, August 30, 2014

August has arrived, and with it the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California! This past Wednesday, we sent off our totally baller five-star team with a bang: Janae Johnson, Omoizele Okoawo, Sean Patrick Mulroy, Meaghan Ford, and Melissa Newman-Evans worked their talented patooties off for a full hour of solid and powerful feature. Despite being prolific writers (and Cantabbers) all, not a piece of paper hit the stage in this carefully crafted and highly polished feature of all our favorites and a few new surprises, including group pieces all shined up for Nationals!

The team leaves for Oakland on Monday, but won’t be bouting until Wednesday (just about at feature time at the Cantab, in fact). Can’t make it to the west coast to see them perform? You can at least follow along with the scoring play-by-play from PSi’s Erik Daniel:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Adam Stone will be mixing up drinks and presenting a much-anticipated feature of old and new work, lost and rediscovered tracks, and perhaps even a group piece or two– you know, just to put the team in their place. It’ll be a night full of snark (Adam) and sweetness (specialty cocktails, natch). We’ll also conclude our open slam series with the last slam in the 8×8 series.

But wait, there’s more! Since we know you’ll be itching for more poetry (and more spots on the open mics, ahem) with the teams out of town, we’ve got a first Thursday fix for you, too: our monthly edition of Moonlighting falls on August 7, this time featuring equally powerful and hilarious Portland poet Sarah Lynn Herklots, at Fazenda Coffee Roasters in JP.

Tips from the Bar: Twitter Prompt #1

Check out @NYTMinusContent this week to pick your own prompt.

For the non-tweeters, here are a few examples of New York Times quotes taken out of context:
“woman hatin’ nerd toucher”
“She is young and she is happy, and that is interesting.”
“I get it, okay?”

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, July 30, 2014: Boston Poetry Slam Team

The 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team (bartender-approved). Photo by Marshall Goff.

The 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team (bartender-approved). Photo by Marshall Goff.

This night will mark the Cantab’s last show before the 2014 National Poetry Slam, when we send off the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam team to compete for a week in Oakland, California! Janae Johnson, Omoizele Okoawo, Sean Patrick Mulroy, Meaghan Ford, and Melissa Newman-Evans will present an extended feature full of all the hits, future favorites, and rare-for-a-reason B-sides before hopping a plane to the other side of the country. Awesome!

To learn more about the 2014 Boston Poetry Slam Team, click here. We’ll also keep you updated here with the team’s upcoming bout schedule at the National Poetry Slam, and links to help you follow along at SlamCenter: the bout draw will be announced in mid-July and we’ll have all the details as soon as they’re available.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. A slightly shortened open mic begins at 8:00 and the extended feature begins at approximately 10:00. (No open slam tonight.) The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $5.