Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 23: Beau Williams

Nationally touring New Hampshire performance poet Beau Williams. Photo credit to Hannah Cohen.

Nationally touring New Hampshire performance poet Beau Williams. Photo credit to Hannah Cohen.

Beau Williams is a proud member of the NorthBEAST poetry scene and a three time member of the nationally competing Slam Free or Die slam team (2010, 2011, 2012). He had toured solo and with the poetry collective Uncomfortable Laughter alongside Wil Gibson, Ryan Mclellan, and Kait Rokowski. Now he performs across the country with Wil and Ryan as the group, GUYSLIKEYOU. Beau is a co-creator of the successful Zion Hill Poetry Reading in Newmarket, NH at the Stone Church performance venue.

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 speed slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 16

Is it the mild weather? The return of the National Poetry Slam? Or perhaps the remarkable bar ambiance at the Cantab? …No, we’re pretty sure it’s still the open mic and feature that keeps selling out our Wednesday night show, and this past week was no exception. Bay-Area-gone-Canadian performance poet Lucia Misch put together a sensitive, sweet, and super-fun feature for us last night, making all our booking work worthwhile once again. The first speed slam was won by Nathan Comstock, who overcame a tough tie in the first round to go on to defeat Kieran Collier in the final one-minute head-to-head. Excellent!

Next week, we’ll return with our usual open mic and New Hampshire reader Beau Williams, once of the nicest guys in slam and a damn fine writer to boot. To close the night, we’ll continue our speed slam series: that’s 3-, 2-, and 1-minute rounds in an open poetry slam.

Tips from the Bar: Spooner It Ain’t

Use the following concept as you see fit: feeding the hand that bites.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 16: Lucia Misch

Lucia Misch, top Canadian performance poet.

Lucia Misch, top Canadian performance poet.

Lucia Misch grew up at an astronomical observatory near San Jose, California, began writing and performing at fifteen, and moved to Canada three years later. She placed second at the 2011 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam, was a member of the 2010/11 Vancouver Slam Team, a two-time South Bay Youth Slam champion, co-founder of the University of British Columbia poetry slam, and the winner of the 2010 Vancouver Labour Slam. She can fix your bicycle, make you a mean leek and potato soup, or let you borrow her staple gun, all for the small price of a story about dinosaurs. She believes in the Oxford comma and currently lives in Montreal.

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 speed slam in the 8×8 series will follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Tips from the Bar: Prompt by Proxy

Write a poem about your day (or lifetime!) as a video game.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 9

Boston Poetry Slam fans! If you weren’t at the Team Selection Preliminaries back on January 9, you might have missed some results. Likewise, if you were there, you might be wanting the updated information. Lo, for you, we come through with both! After two rounds of 21 poets (yowza!), here are the rankings from the show:

1. Ed Wilkinson 50.9
2. Adam Stone 50.8
3. Sean Patrick Mulroy 50.3
4. Danger Ranger 50.0
5. Melissa Newman-Evans 49.9
6. Kayla Wheeler 49.2
7. (tie) Meaghan Ford 49.1
7. (tie) Mckendy Fils-Aimé 49.1
7. (tie) Nora Meiners 49.1
10. Zanne Langlois 49
11. Marshall Gillson 48.6 (dropped from semis)
12. Sam Teitel 48.4
13. (tie) Jade Sylvan 48.2.
13. (tie) Omoizele Okoawo 48.2
15. Brenna Kleiman
16. Michael Monroe
17. Bobby Crawford
18. Sophia Holtz
19. Zeke Russell
20. Nathan Comstock
21. Eddy Martinez
DNS: Simone Beaubien, Christian Drake, Anna Gallagher
Fabulously correct and rapid scorekeeping by Jamei Bauer.

Poets marked in bold advance to Team Selection Semi-Finals. Note that since Marshall Gillson has dropped from semi-finals (boo, job commitments!) all poets tied for the final spot in semis will advance (yay, more poets!).

Special thanks go to our hard-working judges from this marathon slam! We are grateful for the consistency and staying power of Chloé, Annie, Dave, and Laura. Jill and Yasmin graciously timed their necessary departure between rounds, so we also thank both them and Patrick S., who stepped up to fill in. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Watch for the next appearance of these bold poets on Wednesday, February 6, at the Team Selection Semi-Finals. All poets will perform two poems in the hope of reaching Finals on March 13!

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 9: Team Selection Preliminaries

The Cantab’s Team Selection Slams are the venue’s biggest, wildest poetry slams of the year– this January, we’ll be starting the season early with our Team Selection Preliminaries on January 9!

Team Selection Slams go for three nights at the Cantab, with the top five poets after seven rounds comprising the venue’s National Poetry Slam Team. With this year’s Nationals being held on the home turf in Boston, you can expect serious competition at this year’s already-popular local events.

We’ll be offering a total of twenty-five opportunities to qualify for this huge slam, with the list of qualified poets growing since May of 2012 and finishing up with the Last Chance Slam on January 2, 2013. Every poet on that list is invited back for a two-round battle royale… That means all your favorite Cantab slammers will be throwing down together in our second show of the new year! Only twelve poets can advance to Semi-Finals on February 6, so with the field getting cut in half, you can expect a no-punches-pulled, no-holds-barred poetic brawl on the stage tonight. Yowza!

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 SHORTENED open mic begins at 8:00 and the slam begins at approximately 9:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $5; proceeds will go toward funding the National Poetry Slam this August in Boston.

The Encyclopedia Show: Somerville — S1V4: EXPLOSIVES

The Encyclopedia Show: Somerville -- S1V4: EXPLOSIVES

Monday, January 7
The Davis Square Theatre
255 Elm St. in Somerville
7pm doors, 8pm-10pm show
all ages, $10/$7 sliding scale
click for Facebook event

The Boston Poetry Slam and Simone Beaubien present the next installment in a new monthly series!

The Encyclopedia Show Somerville is an event franchised from the original series founded in Chicago in 2008, wherein invited artists from a variety of performance disciplines present all-new, original works on sub-topics of a single theme. A recurring cast of hosts and characters welcomes the artists with open arms and minds, while the resident Fact Checker is charged with maintaining the integrity of the Encyclopedic Truth of the show.

Our theme for the October show will be EXPLOSIVES! Presenting all-original guest performances from local artists TBD, plus work from our recurring cast members:

  • Aimee Rose Ranger and Kevin Spak provide deft and earnest CO-HOSTING
  • The Michael J. Epstein Library offers MUSICAL SUPPORT
  • No-nonsense New Englander Teacher Meg ups the EDUCATIONAL CONTENT of the event
  • And Intern Steve Subrizi tries to get through a whole show without sneezing on anyone.

Live Fact Checking is reluctantly provided by Jack van Sly from the Institute of Human Knowledge and Hygiene.

This show in our monthly Encylopedia Show: Somerville series takes place at the Davis Square Theatre, 255 Elm St. in Somerville. Doors and the theatre bar open for a pre-show welcome party at 7:00. The show begins promptly at 8:00 and finishes at 10:00, including a short intermission. This is an all ages show! Admission is $10, or $7 for students, teachers, or guests in Prohibition-era dress.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 2

We don’t fool around on the first Wednesday of the new calendar year, people! Last night, we stuffed a whole buncha people into the venue before the show even started, all of them looking to learn a little something new at Jon Sands’ early-bird workshop. Just a little extra work from these dedicated writers paid off for all of us: the open mic was excellent, and capped off by wonderful, personal, and exciting work from feature Jon Sands himself. Did you like what you heard? You can grab his book, The New Clean, online at Write Bloody any time!

So after all that good time, you’d almost think we were ready to wind down for the night… Except that we had a bar to close, and, as always, we did it with slam. Our Last Chance Slam had only six of the eight spots filled, but our participants made up for the missing quantity with exceptional, high-quality work. At the end of the night, the final pairing came down to Dawn Gabriel, veteran New England slammer, and the mysteriously named Danger Ranger. Despite burning an extra poem back in the semi-final round, Danger came out on top, securing the very last spot in the 2013 team selection process.

OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW WE START SELECTING THE TEAM NEXT WEEK! That’s right: on January 9, we’ll be invited 25 slam winners back to compete at the Team Selection Preliminaries, the biggest-est-est slam of the year! Poets who show up (we expect about 20) will fight through two rounds to cut the field down to the top twelve poets. Yes, your favorite performer is probably on the list: you can check it out here on our website. Remember, cover charge is $5 to help raise money for the 2013 National Poetry Slam in Boston!

Tips from the Bar: the Alexander Nemser Prompt

Why can’t your parents ever be president?