Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 21st, 2025

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Open Mic Highlights

This week’s open mic kicked off with a few first timers who brought great energy, including the legendary “If you can feel it… you can speak it” call and response by D. Ruff. The audience was especially attentive, listening to each and every line, such as Carl’s question, “Why do I feel so safe in my fear?” A major theme of the night was about healing, epitomized by Kai’s query, “Can I un-grow the scars baked into my skin?” or Eli’s mystery, “Shell is something I don’t know the taste of.”

Aparna announced that there will be spotlight features next week to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Month. Kaitie D had us hanging on every word with a moving piece about colonization and language that also teaches about vulnerability and love. The last line really hit: “I lick the last piece of oblivion like an ending that will always come back.”

Otto made us reimagine the world for a second week in a row with lines like “Every currency is a made up crypto currency.” Caroline shared a piece about being in line at the Cantab and how the experience of meeting folks inspired a new poem.

Myles said we need Michael F. Gill to come back to calculate how many Pagliacci and Luigi poems have happened on the mic. Michael is in Italy but will be back this upcoming week.

Ed keeps us grounded with an honest take on how “what gives me strength is a wound.” Katya introduced a poet on the express lane as having the name of a goat in Scandinavia. The poet replied, “I am three goats in a trench coat.”

Aparna covered a poem by Sam Cha who moved to New York but we miss him, and also we miss Kat Anderson who moved to New York as well! Brenna’s poem responding to the burning of a plantation moved the audience deeply, with devastating lines like “one man’s grave is another man’s mansion.” Aparna and Amy performed a classic piece called “Hot Girl Summer” that was an audience favorite, getting folks to chant, “hot girl keep walking.” Myles is in a basketball era and shared a fresh poem about Achilles, highlighting how one tends to focus on the things that don’t hurt as much to process what hurts so much more.

Feature

Our feature, Diannely Antigua, was present for the whole open mic and was an active listener. Diannely didn’t speak in the expected “poet voice” but rather in vivid experiences as they are lived, a specificity that was totally engaging without needing overemphasis. The variety of forms, from sonnet to aubade to pantoum, took us on a journey merging construction and content wonderfully. Definitely purchase their book, Good Monster, if you haven’t already done so.

Coming Up This Wednesday

We will have a feature from former regular and 2017 BPS slam team member, Brandon Melendez! There will also be an AAPI month spotlight throughout the open mic. A collaboration between BPS and @narrative bookstore Flow State, we will be featuring local poets Kris Cho, JP Legarte, and Munawwar Abdulla!

Bios:

Brandon Melendez is a Mexican-American poet and software engineer from California. He is the author of Gold That Frames The Mirror (Write Bloody, 2019). He is a National Poetry Slam finalist and two-time Berkeley Grand Slam Champion. A recipient of the 2018 Djanikian Scholarship from The Adroit Journal, and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Award, his poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, The Journal, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia.

Munawwar Abdulla is an Uyghur advocate, poet, and scientist born on Kaurna land and based in Massachusetts. She co-founded The Tarim Network, runs Uyghur Collective, and enjoys translating Uyghur literature into English. Her work has been published in places like The Margins, Asymptote, and Cordite Poetry, and she is currently working on an anthology of Uyghur diaspora arts.

Kris Cho (any pronouns/형) is an poet, performer, and educator hailing from Mid-Missouri. Since their start with the Brown/RISD collegiate slam team, their written work has been featured in Visions Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Glass Mountain Magazine. They are a 2023 Best of the Net nominee, a 2024 RWW Poetry Fellow, and 2025 Periplus Fellow. Their debut chapbook Chosun Cowboy (Abode Press) will be published in 2026

JP Legarte (he/him) is a Filipinx American graduate student at Emerson College pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry). Outside his studies, he serves as a senior editor and the Community and Grant Development Assistant for Brink Literacy Project and F(r)iction, as a senior poetry reader and the Digital Director for Redivider, and as the Director of Creative Operations for Collections of Transience. His in-progress manuscript of visual, experimental poetry focuses on exploring colonialism as extinction and how Filipino, Filipina, and Filipinx Americans survive and rebel against extinction and its different forms. You can follow him on Instagram at @jpl091.

See you soon!

– March Penn 📒

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 14th, 2025

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This past Wednesday, Boston Poetry Slam was around the corner at Pandemonium, an excellent home for our Nerd Slam event. The open mic included references to worms, meteorites, dinosaurs, video games, Pokemon, nominative determinism and more!

Open Mic Highlights

First timer Scott delivered a moving poem about worms that had the audience snapping and cheering with the line “Am I just a host for parasites?”

Logan’s poem was inspired by ICA paintings—a truly art-nerdy, reflective adventure! Jennifer’s piece was packed with jaw-dropping lines like “We were all trying to survive the same sinking ship.” Ed devastated us with “Suffering connects and alienates us from each other” in a poem about a video game no one in the room had played before. Ilse’s poem was a self-aware journey, including the line “It’s easier to be naked than to be honest,” and perhaps motivating us to also check out the work by an inspiration mentioned in the poem—the poet Alejandro Jimenez. Later on the mic, Shawn dropped some shiny Pokemon, followed by the audience singing a Backstreet Boys lyric as TJ took the mic. 

Featured Slam

Myles opened by sharing the history of the Nerd Slam at major Slam events like CUPSI and NPS where nerds met and shared trivia and poems with each other. Kai (via Facetime), Shawn, and TJ judged and asked each poet custom trivia questions as part of the slam. Some great lines from the slam:

“If it’s raining, the water is not wet; it wets us.” – Katya

“My heart burns with the flame of survival” – Isaiah

“Kmart is the bottom of my belly or the way station to God.”  – Kaitie D

In the final round, Cameron, Faith, and Otto were left as the top three, answering many trivia questions correctly that non-nerds (me) find totally incomprehensible. Cameron was out first and read a poem called “Questions about Pokemon” that delighted in all the questions we’re dying to know like “Can a fire Pokemon be cremated? What happens if Pokemon shit or piss in a Pokeball? Is Lickitung really good at you know what?” Faith and Otto were incredibly close in the trivia component but Faith won the match by a squeaker. Otto started with the statement ‘free Palestine” and then read a poem about video games in the pandemic and experiences with antisemitism. Faith, a first time slammer and NOW Nerd Slam champion, finished out the night with two sonnets, one about a bad dental experience and the other about Pokemon. Thanks to everyone who came out and slammed!

Coming Up This Wednesday

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy.

She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. From 2022-2024, she was the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry which seeks to make poetry accessible to all in a way that nourishes the soul.

See You Later!

– March Penn 📒

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, May 7th, 2025

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FYI: Our show this Wednesday 5/14 is at Pandemonium Books, located at 4 Pleasant St in Cambridge, one block from the Cantab lounge. This is an all ages show!

It was another unique night at the Cantab this past Wednesday, with a batch of new regulars on the mic, and a set of highlights that approached familiar topics from surprising angles. Side note: I (Michael) am writing this recap from abroad (🇮🇹) so expect March Penn at the door in my absence the next 2 Wednesday nights!

Open Mic Highlights

First timer Jecha showed great taste by covering Ross Gay, which led to a funny moment when host Myles (who has a tattoo of a Ross Gay line) had to contemplate “kicking” Ross Gay off the open mic at the 3 minute mark, or letting us hear just a few lines more.

The open mic returns of Sam Bucci and Allie Burke, who both wrote about loss and breaking up in very different ways.

Aparna’s persona poem from their plant that needs watering and Amy’s persona poem from their dislocated shoulder.

Grace D utilized the ghosts prompt from last week and wrote beautifully about her late friend Sarah. The poem ended with the beginning of a letter to Grace by Sarah herself, which was one of the most moving moment I’ve heard on the open mic this year.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was the EXPERIENCE that was David F, who continues to somehow be able to successfully ride the line between being darkly funny and very uncomfortable in a way that leaves us speechless. How else to describe a poem that was performed while reading from a children’s book about bears, yet also went into great detail about the father bear’s sex life?

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“(I’m) Dressed for the job I want, not the jabberwock I’ve become” – Bailey

“March presents to me an open mouth, a bargain” – Lily K

“I prayed something beautiful would crawl out of my ribs and collar bone” – First timer Charlotte 

Feature

Lauren Singer gave us a beautifully human set of poems that was a tour through their house, with each poem being located in a different room of their place. The poems cast a melancholy spell, offering up dry wit, wisdom, and the many-pronged consequences of long term relationships ending. For such a somber topic, Lauren delivered them all with an understated grace, an invitation to their truth that was more attractive and relatable than one might initially think. A lot of our audience left with a copy of their new book, Raised Ranch! Thank you Lauren.

Coming Up This Wednesday

It’s the return of the Nerd Slam! Poets will face off with poems about their specialized niche knowledge, and will also be tested with some trivia regarding their area of expertise! This special show will not be taking place at the Cantab, but down the block at nerd-haven Pandemonium Books, located at 4 Pleasant St in Cambridge. Same time, same Wednesday night, but this is an ALL AGES SHOW!

See you then!

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

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It was packed night at the Cantab this past week, not only for the open mic and open slam, but as we said goodbye (for now) to beloved staff member / bartender / poet Kat Anderson, who is moving to New York to be closer to their family. We had a lot of funny and poignant stories about Kat on the mic, and we will all miss her presence and poems.

Open Mic Highlights

Juliet’s charming theatrical piece about being a microcelebrity (read while wearing dark sunglasses and posing around the stage)

Hallie Carton’s “pattern seeker” poem about how every time they get close to someone with red hair, they feel something bad will happen to them. As the poem progressed, it openly wondered that if you never see someone again, does that make them immortal?

Mahathi’s poem titled “That one second where you gave a shit”

The welcome return of Briana and Meredith L to the mic, the former in extended visceral glory, the latter with a very meaty plot-heavy 1 minute piece during the express land that left us all wanting more.

The syncopated rhythms of Katya’s “Cocaine Bear: A Love Story”, which makes this recapper ponder if it will one day be performed/merged with her poem about the family of Charmin Bears

Kelsey, Meg Ford, Amy wrote bravely about recovery, the death of a parent, and all the personal thoughts and emotions that are behind grocery lists.

First Timers Section

Megan S brought us three painterly love poems, awash in evening rain and purple-blues, Cade gave us an ode to the mystic river, and Mer gave us a metaphorical (and literal) piece about the concept of hands. Special shoutout to Cyrus, who has been coming to our show for over a year and celebrated their newly legal name with their first time on the open mic. Welcome new poets!

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“My mother calls me hope like I’m a wildcat breaking free of the cage” – Kai W
“If I was a drag performer, my stage name would be ‘Male Hysteria'” – Keaton
“Love derives from a set of aching teeth” – Nick Roberts

This week’s writing prompt: Write a poem about your most charming ghost, the sickening and haunting thing that you can’t stop feeling attached to

Feature

8 poets faced off in the Fresh Ink Slam, where all the work was new and/or never-been-performed on our stage! Highlights were a SURPRISE group piece sacrifice from Meredith L and Kat Anderson, moving work from Ilse about being middle class, and an intense hybrid poem from Bailey, which was both meta and also a cry for the remembrance of the self. Making it the final round was newcomer Sarah Fox, and a truly raw and unhinged Edie Churchill. After a dramatic final round TIE, we went on to a BONUS poem round, where Edie prevailed! Congrats to Edie, who has been slamming for over a year here at BPS and finally got the big win!

This Week!

We have not only a feature by Lauren Singer, but an early bird workshop by Fin Leary, which will focus on how we can engage real life figures, such as Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, in writing poetry. Workshop starts at 6:30 pm, $10 / sliding scale. Workshoppers will have early access to the open mic list.

Bios:

Lauren Singer is an assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest and North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback, Feel the Word, Read This, Kosmosis, One Night Stanzas, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, among others. An attendee of the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute, she is a graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock and received her MSW at the University of Chicago in 2015. She has self-published three chapbooks and is a current attendant of Story Studio’s selective Novel in a Year program. In addition to her creative interests, Lauren works as a sex and relationship therapist and runs a private practice out of Northampton, MA. Her book-length poetry manuscript, Raised Ranch, will be published by Game Over Books in April of 2025. She prides herself on her wealth of useless pop culture knowledge, namely of nineties R&B lyrics, and she can pretty much quote “The X-Files”.

Fin Leary (they/he) is an author, program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and faculty in the MFA program at Emerson College and at GrubStreet. They are the editor of the sci fi anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2025) and a contributor to the horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken (Page Street, 2025). His young adult fiction has been supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, Changemaker Authors, and GrubStreet. Their creative nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His flash fiction was a finalist for Boston in 100 Words. Fin lives with their orange literary cat outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

See you soon,

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025

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One of the greatest things about our long open mic is not only its diversity and unpredictability, but the intensely personal work that is trusted to the audience, with a kind of blind faith that people will stop and listen for each other. There were a lot of personal demons, traumas, and familial ghosts exorcised on the open mic this week, yet the overall tone of the was uplifting, a cry of togetherness in a 2025 that hasn’t felt the most hopeful for a lot of us.

Open Mic Highlights

Erica Garcia’s “Texas was once underwater,” remembering a Texas devoid of dads.

Daivd F’s “Don’t check my browser history” poem that was interrupted by an advertisement read by Cameron, and then was immediately followed on the mic by Cameron’s satirical advertisement for the Calm app.

Gel’s poem about wanting to answer the phone despite the litany of “spam risk”/robocalls they receive, a desire that’s been complicated by the unexpected loss of a friend.

Mugs Myers gave us one of the bravest and most direct pieces about past trauma that I have heard on the mic in a long time, and it also included a line/reference to a previous Myles Taylor poem as a beacon of hope and perseverance.

Shout out to the large number of poets bringing memorized performance pieces to the mic this week: Jenn, Kaitie D, Will L, Myles, Ilse, and Bailey. Thank you!

First Timers Section!

Ali J read an excellently nuanced and winding take on the frayed edges/intersections of intimacy, therapy, the past, and feminism.

I’m not sure if this is a direct quote, but I have written down “Remember loving me at the corner of St. Botolph and West Newton?” for Laura R’s first time on the mic, and it feels like a good encapsulation of her piece.

Lisha gave us an intense extended metaphor/allegory about bees, buzzing, being touched, and disarming and detonating bombs.

Memorable Open Mic Lines Out Of Context:

“Mount me nicely. Bark.” – Aidan
“I’m attempting to raise my dopamine levels by eating mango popsicle sticks” – Portia*
“Cast your ballot for the dirty smell” – Tom Fowler

*I think most of our patrons are attempting to raise their dopamine levels by listening to poetry!

This month’s HAIKU SLAM was won by Kai over Cam S! Honorable mention goes to open mic regular Juliet, who humorously titled their first-round haiku “I always lose the haiku slam,” and their second-round haiku, “I never make it to the 2nd round”.

This week’s WRITING PROMPT comes courtesy of our feature Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah:

Start with a place in the city you are familiar with. How does it see you. What does it have to say about you. Imagine it loves you. It does. Write a love poem in its voice about you. Your working title is [Insert location in they city] romanticizes [Insert Your Name].

Feature!

Our feature was the NEW Poet Laureate of Boston, and long-time local writer/organizer Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah! Emmanuel opened by asking the audience to think about a childhood belief that they strongly believed but was later debunked. He then asked each person to discuss this belief with the person sitting next to them, and we got to hear some wild examples from the crowd after the discussion was over. Emmanuel’s own poetry shone brightly with fervent detours, including a revised January 6th poem that probes the meaning of culpability, a piece for student activist Mahmoud Khalil who was taken from his apartment by ICE, and the excellently titled “Poem In Which I Mouth Myself into A Caucus of Crows”. Be sure to check out Emmanuel’s new book, not without small joys, out now on Game Over Books.

This Week!

Come celebrate the end of National Poetry Month! We will be capping off the month with our annual FRESH INK SLAM. Have at least 3 poems prepared that are BRAND NEW TO THE STAGE. If you did a 30/30 for the month of April, this one’s for you! If you did a 3/30, this one’s also for you. Sign-ups are first-come, first-serve. $50 prize for the winner of the slam.

See you soon,

– MFG 🚪

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 16th, 2025

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Hey Cantab! A beautiful spring Wednesday was had last week, with poets rocking the mic left and right! We had wonderful poems from regulars Portia, Nick Roberts, and Kat Gunther, and waitlist warrior Meredith O discussing the perils of sitting down and remembering all 141 original Pokemon. Isaiah continued their tradition of reading a heartfelt poem addressed to their friends on their birthday (happy birthday Isaiah), and Bailey read a fabulous poem with a ton of horsepower, per say, after Will Leonard’s well-known horse poem(s). Later on, slam team members Jenn, Ilse, and Kaitie D. nearly knocked the mic over with their skillz. We also had a bittersweet farewell poem from Tony, who, though it was her first time on the mic, read about how she was processing leaving Boston for the time being, and how it feels “more like home” than where she grew up. 

The ✏️ Line of the Wednesday✏️  is from Tony, with “I think of love in very big words”

Our prompt from last week was inspired by Donovan Beck:  Write a poem using direct address.

Our features were Sara Mae and Zenaida Peterson, and we were honored to be the first stop on their tour, for what we experienced was such a treat! The pair not only read from their respective chapbooks, weaving in beautiful lines that wash over you like a wave, but there was so much more! They brought in a literal church pew, which was symbolically moved and repositioned on stage throughout the show. One would sit or lean on the church pew, reading, while the other would perform a poem, or they would both sit on the pew together, reading a piece together. There was additionally a cootie catcher, eyeshadow application, and an overall display of what true friendship means. It was a unique and wonderful show. 

Tonight! We have the NEWLY CROWNED POET LAUREATE OF BOSTON, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah!! Emmanuel is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator living out the diaspora in Boston, Massachusetts. They are both Black & alive. Born in 1993, Emmanuel is Boston’s newly appointed poet laureate, and the school librarian at the Joseph Lee School in Dorchester. In the past, Emmanuel has served as a teaching artist at organizations such as the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, the Cambridge Arts Council, Northeastern University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Emmanuel’s poem, “kra-din” (Kweli Journal), is a past recipient of the Pushcart Prize (XLIII). In his free time, Emmanuel enjoys hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, and the long sigh at the end of a good book.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for reading, as this will be my (Amy’s) last time writing the recap for the foreseeable future. I’m passing the baton to the very skilled archivist and poet, Michael F Gill, to tell you the tales of Wednesday nights moving forward. It has been so fun to write these for the past 2 years! I now have other BPS duties to attend to. Stay tuned!

See you tonight,

Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 9th, 2025

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Hey folks! We had a beautiful night here in our favorite basement. Our open mic was packed with a surprising percentage of first-timers: Mikumari visited us from NYC with a piece about his mother’s sunshine, Niveen rocked the mic with a memorized piece on injustice & genocide, Gavin gave us a touching tribute to a lost friend, and Cole, longtime listener and my personal MVP from the Chaos vs. Order slam, had his own technical debut on our mic. (For those not present, the slam involved him puppeteering and playing a trumpet, so if your face isn’t on the mic, I’m not gonna count it.) And that’s not even close to all of them! Please come back, newcomers!

Don’t worry — our beloved regulars showed out, too. 2025 team member Kaitie D gave us a fantastic rendition of her crowd favorite about meeting American Jesus, Kai weighed the pros and cons of comfort games, and Cam S gave us yet another installment of the Great Pagliacci series rapidly developing at our clown-and-doctor-filled venue. All of this culminated in a local feature from weekly regular Donovan Beck, whose new book, Sunbreak: Notes On Hope, filled many a hand at the end of the night. Donovan brought us into his world, guided us through the process of getting out the despair, and then finding the hope behind it. 

Our prompt of the week: “One year of…” or “The first year of…” — inspired by the culmination of our first full year of running Slam Adams! Slam Adams takes palce every first Monday at the Samuel Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain. Email myles@bostonpoetryslam.com to sign up for May’s slam. 

I’m gonna give our friend Gel the line of the week for their haiku on the Express Lane: “I finally washed / my drying rack. Now where the / fuck do I put it?” (That was from memory, so I hope I got it right.)

Next week! Usual open mic shenanigans ensue. GET THERE EARLY, because this feature is gonna be a big one: SARA MAE and ZENAIDA PETERSON return to the basement! The FEMS Tournament co-founders are running a dual-feature tour across New England for their respective new collections, Phantasmagossip (YesYes Books) and Sky Responds To Our Holler (Game Over Books). This is probably my most anticipated feature of the season, so you’d better get down here. 

See you all next week!

– Myles ✨

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025

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Hi Cantab, happy National Poetry Writing Month! We had a great Wednesday last week. Prince Shapiro returned to kick off the mic with another bilingual poem and the inclusion of a mouth-harp/kazoo-like instrument I’ve never seen before. Fun fact, during the break between the mic and the feature, Prince played the instrument while another regular beatboxed and Jelal Huyler (our feature last week!) freestyled. What a moment! Other open mic highlights: Cam S performed a poem that was sang at a punk show …. in a dream he had….. and we determined the genre was “northeast emo.” Mina did three short poems about a dead elephant in the room. First timer Sonny read a wonderful, winding, nostalgic poem about “company,” while Myles pulled someone off the waitlist and called it a “purely selfish yoink.” (the person was Jelal). Finally, Grace performed a found poem written that evening as part of the pre-show workshop, and first-timer Jordan blew us away with a love poem describing a “pink aura.”

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday ✏️ goes to tonight’s feature – Donovan Beck: “Heaven was never meant to be white roads and marble”

Our prompt this week was: Write about the terrors of love; a terrific perspective on loving/being loved.

Our feature was the astounding Catherine Weiss, who read from her collection “Big Money Porno Mommy.” Their poems were deeply analytical in a way that hits you over the head, and one of the best moments was the series of around five poems entitled “The Phone Sex Poem,” each leaving the audience with a slightly different but distinct feeling. Ending on a poem entitled “Inheritance” that left us all floored, we exited the basement still thinking about the impact their words had on how one can view sex, love, adolescence, and history.

This week our feature is our very own regular, DONOVAN BECK! Donovan Beck is an author, filmmaker, advocate, and multi-hyphenate storyteller dedicated to redefining how we talk about mental health, creativity, and ourselves, especially online. Through the lens of poetry and filmmaking, Donovan creates a safe place on social media for people to embrace vulnerability in their daily lives and use social media platforms like TikTok & Instagram for good. Donovan has launched his second book in March of 2025, a multi-form work on hope, creativity, and mental health, taking a poet’s view on “the aftermath of despair.” Sunbreak: Notes on Hope is published by Andrews McMeel Universal.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, March 26th, 2025

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We had quite a Wednesday last week! Before I get into a brief recap, I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Jeff Taylor, a beloved poet in the local scene who we lost far, far too soon. His impact was wide-reached and he inspired several poets. We encourage you to check out The Garage Poets and his own personal work online to consider and pay respect to his legacy. There is a page set up for donations to Jeff’s family here.

Moving into the open mic, we had a few tributes to Jeff himself, including his longtime friend and collaborator Anna Geoffrey, and Zeke read a wonderful cover/tribute poem during the smoking section. Throughout the mic, there were several themes of tenderness. Jordan took us through a touching metaphor about mental health, and Ash and Kaitie D brought us wonderful new pieces. First timer (and waitlist warrior) Ayonna blew us away with a very unique, interactive performance about memory that had the audience repeating “a memory of a memory of a memory of a time” as a slow murmur/beat to her poem. Also, we got to wish Will Leonard a triumphant 1-year Cantabiversary!

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday✏️ goes to Kaitie D. with “The closed sign swung across our body like a warning”

The writing prompt for last week was: “Write about a person or a thing you’d like to see remembered in this world; write a spell or use your words to invoke someone or something into the room with you”

Now, our feature! Jelal Huyler told us his story in a series of exhilarating performances, effortlessly weaving through wordplay while making each word hit the audience exactly where they were supposed to. All the sudden we were in scenes from his childhood and his dissociation at once. He spoke directly to this audience about our shared dissociation due to both what causes revolution and revolution itself. Repeating mantras like “we won’t fall,” and “hip hop,” he encouraged us to let the poems wash over us. Unsurprisingly, we sold out of his new book, and the room left bustling with conversations about his work.

Tonight: we have an incredible feature!! Catherine Weiss is a poet and artist living in Western Massachusetts. Their poetry has been published or is forthcoming in BOMB, Tinderbox, DIAGRAM, Up the Staircase, Fugue, and Taco Bell Quarterly. Catherine is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Big Money Porno Mommy, from Game Over Books in 2025. More at catherineweiss.com.

See you then!

– Amy ✈️

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Cantab Recap For Wednesday, March 19th, 2025

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Hi Cantab! Our show is every Wednesday nearly without fail. How much more orderly can it get? Also every Wednesday, we hear strings of words in poems that no one has ever spoken before. How much more chaotic can it get? We saw both ends of the spectrum during our second-ever Chaos vs Order slam, which you’ll hear more about in a moment, but for now let’s remember what happened on our wonderful open mic!!

There was an undercurrent of rage going on this past Wednesday, including second-timer Casey’s impassioned poem on standing up for themselves and their community against oppressive politics, and first-timer Aidan, who made a great debut as well. In some orderly fashion, Isaiah gave us a choice between a poem on Fleabag or a poem on Survivor (we chose Fleabag). On the flip side, Cameron did an incredible poem that began with a minute-long Nicole Kidman impression, reciting her iconic AMC Theaters introduction, then transitioned into a piece about togetherness. Striking a similarly chaotic note, surprise visitor Christopher Clauss from Slam Free or Die debuted a new poem on horror movies and suspense, going slightly over time but serendipitously allowing the host at the time (me) to act herself into the poem, becoming the monster the suspenseful music was alluding to. The chaos cake was taken, however, by occasional open mic-er Rin Ramos, reprising their iconic comedic bars and one-liners, one of which being so iconic that the whole audience chimed in during the punchline of “CHUM BUCKET.”

The ✏️Line of the Wednesday ✏️ also goes to Rin, with “I can’t think of a rhyme, POET QUACKERY.” Our writing prompt of the week was simply to write about “sweet resistance / the next generation.”

Then, the Chaos vs Order slam. We began with a show-stopping sacrificial round of Kai vs TJ (literally, the lights went out!), and barreled right into the orderly chaos of it all. Team chaoes featuried a cheetah girls group piece, not one but TWO puppet pieces, a bee defying all laws… of gravity, a crowd walking classic, a suspicious series of Amazon packages, and a case of stolen identity. Order responded with heartbreaking contrapuntals (Logan’s was so beautiful that even after Amy (aka me) beat him by a nose, she gave him her wings–used in her piece–as a token of her appreciation for his art,) a ghazal about egg salad (who could’ve known we would gain such enlightenment about egg salad, while not even eating egg salad), and an incredible, genius, and vulnerable group piece about OCD with two team members droning compulsive thoughts behind the main reader (Myles Taylor). Lastly, Ed Wilkinson turned out to be an order team DOUBLE AGENT, going up for team order and reading a chaos poem (which backfired as he ended up sweeping the round for team order anyway, how chaotic of a result!). Nearly every round was decided by a single vote, and the winner was decided by a single round! The winner was … drumroll please….

TEAM CHAOS!!!!!!!! *chaotic celebratory horn noises*

That’s right, team chaos took the crown, meaning a total of one win for team order, and one for chaos in the record book. Who will break the tie next year? [Editor’s note: if we count the sacrifice round, each team won 4 rounds this past week, which seems pretty neat and orderly, so maybe the captain of the winning team who happens to be writing this recap should re-consider who actually won]

TONIGHT!!! Our feature is Jelal Huyler. Jelal Huyler is a biracial-Black poet (and devout lover of yamz) who does not condone linear time.

/ he is the author of the book of poems, A MAN WAS LYNCHED TODAY (GAME OVER BOOKS)

/ his voice and work have been included in the documentary “Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity, exploring race and restorative justice in the United States”

/ published individual works can be found in 580 Split, The Change Agent, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Likely Red Press, & some other too and shit.

It’s not a show you want to miss!

See you then,

– Amy ✈️

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