Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 9, 2019: Julian Randall

2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Julian Randall. Photo by Nicholas Nichols.

2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Julian Randall. Photo by Nicholas Nichols.

Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT and The Watering Hole and was the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and is the curator of Winter Tangerine Review’s Lineage of Mirrors. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as New York Times Magazine, The Georgia Review, and Sixth Finch and in the anthologies Portrait in Blues, Nepantla and New Poetry from the Midwest. Julian is a candidate for his MFA in Poetry at Ole Miss. His first book, Refuse, is the winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry prize is available from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

The Boston Poetry Slam is pleased to announce that Julian will also present an early-bird generative writing workshop prior to the open mic portion of the show. For more information, including how to sign up in advance, please see our separate event page.

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 show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Happy new calendar year, Cantabbers! We celebrated this Wednesday with an exceptional journey and feature from Ilyus Evander, soon-to-be-gone-from-Providence poet, who touched down on just a few well-known poems amongst a terrific whirlwind of her new sci-fi-like ouevre. It was a sweet and sad and superbly high-energy start to 2019; if you are waving farewell to this poet having only just been introduced, we hope you’ll stick around in coming months for some of the great up-and-comers we have coming to the stage.

Next week, of course, our scheduled feature (and workshop leader! sign up at this link!) has fully emerged into the literary world and will be riding high on his prizewinning book, Refuse: the eminent Julian Randall will be packing the house, so we recommended showing up early to stake out a spot to listen.

Tips from the Bar: Crickets! Who Ordered Crickets!?

A box comes to your door; you open it, and something floods out, in great quantity, too much for you or your living space. Do you try to save yourself? Hold back the tide? Salvage the contents of the box?

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, January 2, 2019: Ilyus Evander

Ilyus Evander, transfem poet/activist from Providence. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ilyus Evander, transfem poet/activist from Providence. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Ilyus Evander is a transfem poet/activist based in Providence, RI. She has represented the Providence poetry slam at five national poetry tournaments including Brave New Voices and the National Poetry Slam. She is a two-time finalist at the Capturing Fire Queer Poetry Summit and a 2018 FEMSlam Champion. Her work aims to identify, explore, and deconstruct the stigmas found at the intersections of queerness and mental illness. She wants you to know her beard is a fem. She wants you to know her lipstick is masc. She wants you to know you are loved and you are seen and you are important.

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 show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Show for Wednesday, December 26, 2018: NO SHOW TONIGHT

No poetry show tonight! Enjoy an evening outside the bar and come see us with your new work at our next show on January 2, 2019.

Need inspiration in the meantime? You can always dial up a random Tip from the Bar: click here to get a writing prompt from Adam Stone‘s weekly series.

And you can see our upcoming shows page for the 2019 schedule so far:
http://bostonpoetryslam.com/see-a-show/weekly-show/upcoming-features-and-slams

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 19, 2019

Cantabbers! Our starriest of love to you for packing the house last night for our final show of 2018. (Our next show is January 2 and we hope you are hyped.) The theme was ASTROLOGY and both our open mic and 4×4 team slam really came through with on-theme work devised to surprise and delight and educate and welcome all in the room. The featured event, of course, was the Astrology Team Slam, wherein teams from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water faced off in the ultimate battle for astrological poetic supremacy! The fight was fierce (okay and really loving), but the ultimate winners of the show stole our hearts and also nearly all of the points: congratulations to Aquarius Zeke Russell, Libra Justice Ameer, Libra Ilyus Evander, and Gemini-cusp Truj.

Big thanks to those who made this night possible: especially HYOOG gratitude to Myles Taylor, who both recruited the night’s slam rosters and hosted the event beautifully; special mention to Ilyus Evander for her pre-show workshop; and a hat tip to doortender Michael F. Gill who provided the inspiration for this excellent night.

As we may have mentioned previously, there is NO SHOW ON DECEMBER 26; the Cantab, however, will be open for business if you’d like to pay cash for drinks and enjoy the blues jam. We’ll make up for our little break when we return on January 2: fortune will favor us with quadruple-Libra and soon-to-be-southbound poet Ilyus Evander for our feature to kick off 2019. See you there!

Tips from the Bar: Lease at Will

Write an ad to get the roommate you think you deserve.

Cantab Workshop for Wednesday, December 19, 2018 with Ilyus Evander

Join Ilyus Evander, Providence transfem poet/activist, for an early-bird poetry workshop at the Cantab Lounge before the Astrology Slam. The one-hour workshop has limited space and begins at 5:30, with latecomers admitted no later than 6:00. This is a generative workshop and all are welcome.

This workshop is entitled The Body Speaks: the neck bone is connected to the shoulder bone, but what are they saying to each other? Our bodies talk to us every single day. Our bodies put as much out into the world as they are fed from the world. This workshop is designed to explore what our bodies are telling us and how we can better listen to them. The goal of this workshop is that each participant leave with a better understanding of their bodies, a new poem, and a simple prompt that can be done anytime to overcome writers’ block.

Cover charge is $5-$20 sliding scale, which includes admission to the evening show. We ask financially stable poets to consider contributing the higher end of this scale (or more) in order to defer costs for others and support this teaching artist’s generous donation of time to our space.

Due to the constraints of the venue, this workshop has limited space; room can be guaranteed to poets who identify as POC or queer. The best way to secure a spot in the workshop is to directly email the SlamMaster.

The venue is 18+ and a photo ID is required. For more information on the night’s open mic and Astrology Slam, click here. For more info about Ilyus, please see the info on her upcoming feature, scheduled for January 2, 2019.

Cantab Slam for Wednesday, December 19, 2018: Astrology Team Slam

For the Boston Poetry Slam’s final show of 2018, we are pleased to presented a team theme slam welcoming the signs of the Western astrological zodiac to the stage. Teams representing Fire, Earth, Air, and Water will battle for poetic supremacy as the winter solstice draws near. This show will feature guest host and producer Myles Taylor in addition to local all-star poets.

This slam format will be a traditional 4×4 team slam, with prizes awarded to the poets of the winning team. All sign-ups will be taken in advance: to slam in the show, please email slammaster@bostonpoetryslam.com with the zodiac sign (Sun, Moon, Rising, or other) you would most like to represent.

Judges are also invited to offer their services in advance in return for free admission; please email slammaster@bostonpoetryslam.com. No experience is necessary, or even desired, although we’d love best to have judges prepared to enjoy investing in the theme of the show.

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 the slam will follow at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Another December show in the books, folks! Mary Boo Anderson came to us last week and brought us an unnerving parody of corporate performance, split between two fabulously different sets and ranging in character from the slightly unhinged cube farmer to the time-strapped-relay-race-much-maligned media poet; an character-intense night softened by the sincere gentleness of the real-life poet’s presence. Unforgettable!

This week: we’ve got one more show for 2019, folks, and it’s a doozy. We’ll kick off our December closer with an early-bird workshop with soon-to-depart-these-climes Ilyus Evander, then enjoy our nightly open mic before launching into our first-ever Astrology Team Slam, hosted and produced by Myles Taylor! Come out and celebrate your survival of 2018 with us, folks… And, in the meantime, you can enjoy a sneak peak ahead at our 2019 schedule.