Adam Stone rehashes a prompt given by Omoizele Okoawo in 2002:
“All I need is a room.”
Cantab Feature for Wednesday, March 21, 2018: Team Selection FINALS
The Cantab’s Team Selection Slams are the venue’s biggest, wildest poetry slams of the year. The venue’s late-winter selection is one of the earliest in the country, which gives them extra time to prepare for this year’s National Poetry Slam in Chicago this August.
The roster for this year’s three-round slam has been finalized, and the first round will proceed in this order:
1. Myles Taylor
2. Sara Mae
3. Meaghan Ford
4. George Abraham
5. John Pinkham
6. RebeccaLynn
7. Allison Truj
8. Neiel Israel
9. Brandon Melendez
sacrifice poems: Evan Cutts, Kieran Collier
After three previous slams in the last two months, already requiring four pieces in competition plus a brand new poem, you can expect competitive performance, tense strategic moves, and the most finely-polished work work of the slam season. The top five poets at the end of the evening will comprise the 2018 Boston Poetry Slam Team.
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 first round of the slam begins around 9:30. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $5; proceeds will go toward funding the team’s trip to the National Poetry Slam this August.
Cantab Recap for Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Snow? WHAT SNOW. Yes, we did hear that it is only scheduled to snow on Wednesdays from now until the end of the season, but weather, like metaphor, is fleeting, and our jones for poetry is eternal. So: our expectations were met perfectly last week when an ideal crowd of writers arrived early for C. Bain’s generative myth-and-truth workshop, and then the room filled in with a pleasant hum of wintertime excitement for the open mic and C’s feature. Our speed slam to close the night was a solidly awesome six-poet affair: let us offer congratulations to AJ Howell, taking second place in a first showing at the Cantab, and also to Lip McDonald, who took the top spot and the big $10.
Love the chance to workshop at the Cantab? We’ll be making a goal to offer these about once per month, on a slightly irregular basis, so please keep an eye on our schedule to see more pop up. Love C’s feature? You can check out more of his work on his personal website. Love to see some poetry slam? Well…
Next week: IT’S THE REAL DEAL, FOLKS! This is not a drill! On Wednesday, March 21, we’ll be out here selecting the team who will represent us at the 2018 National Poetry Slam in August! (Yes, that is a real month, with sunlight and bare knees and everything!) The hardiest nine Cantabbers you know will be slamming off in three rounds for just five spots; and if you like that kind of math, pack up $5 for the cover charge and bring your best judging brains, because we’re gonna need you to throw some numbers at these poets. See you there!
Cantab Feature for Wednesday, March 14, 2018: C. Bain
C. Bain, gender-liminal performer and Publishing Triangle finalist. Photo by Kyle Hislip.
C. Bain is a gender-liminal writer, performer, teaching artist and theatre-maker. His poems are at once fiercely contemporary and mythological in scope. In his work, Bain turns to his own queer body to find and illuminate the cell of resistance within the self, the self-knowledge that makes transformation possible. He offers audiences this gift of Tiresian sight, prophesies from a second life.
C.’s book of poetry, Debridement, was a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. His work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Muzzle Magazine, PANK, A Face to Meet the Faces, and the Everyman’s Library book Villanelles. He has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has an extensive background in poetry slam as a competitor and coach of several national-level teams. He has been selected for the showcases on Finals Stage at the National Poetry Slam multiple times. He has performed throughout the United States, and shared stages with diverse luminaries including Patricia Smith, Jim Carroll, Saul Williams, and Dorothy Allison.
As an out nonbinary trans person, C.’s more recent work has focused on the embodiment in performance, and the inseperability of body and text. He has studied acting and clown at the Barrow Group, and also has movement training in Butoh and martial arts. He is an Artistic Associate with the movement-based theatre company Sacred Circle. Most recently, C. collaborated with Sacred Circle to become Jokana’an in their production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomè at the Alchemical Theatre Laboratory in lower Manhattan. His delivery is known for its slow depth, searing emotion, and surgical clarity.
Note that tonight’s open poetry slam is a speed slam with 3-, 2-, and 1-minute rounds. Slam winners qualify for the 2018 World Qualifier.
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 Workshop for Wednesday, March 14, 2018 with C. Bain
Join C. Bain, the night’s scheduled feature, for an early-bird workshop at the Cantab Lounge before the show. The one-hour generative workshop has LIMITED SPACE and begins at 5:30, with latecomers admitted no later than 6:00.
Workshop description from the artist, with more available at the poet’s website:
How do we use myths while the truth is fracturing? The glory and the terror of our time is that systems of meaning-making which used to work have stopped functioning. What do we have now in place of myths? What stories do we agree on and live our lives by? In this workshop we explore how myths bridge us from the personal into the social and spiritual. We will enjoy the trove of images mythology makes available to us, and pull those tools into our contemporary landscape. This is a generative writing workshop and all are welcome.
Cover charge is $5-$20 sliding scale, which includes admission to the evening show. Note that this is an excellent bargain for workshop with this leader, so 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 the artist’s donation of time to our space.
Due to the constraints of the venue, this workshop has LIMITED SPACE. The best way to guarantee 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, slam, and feature from C. Bain, click here.
Announcing the Fourth Annual Grudge Match Poetry Slam!
Thursday, March 29, 2018: come to OBERON at 2 Arrow Street in Cambridge to spring into National Poetry Month! Let our all-star lineup of seven matches (plus one bonus sacrifice round) from House Slam and the Boston Poetry Slam spring you into National Poetry Month just a few days early.
This is an 18+ show with custom cocktails available when doors open at 6:30. Music and comedy will open the show at 7:00 with the slam beginning at 7:30. Tickets are $10/$12/$15 and will sell out before the night of the show, so click here to guarantee yourself a seat!
For more detailed info on our performing artists, click here.
CANCELLED: Cantab Feature for Wednesday, March 7, 2018: CUPSI Warm-Up
Poetry fans and hardy New Englanders! We regret to announce that due to weather concerns, there will be NO POETRY SHOW on Wednesday, March 7, 2018, at the Cantab Lounge. Although the forecast may not be reliable, we cannot justify asking our many out-of-towners to risk traveling for this slam.
The Cantab Lounge upstairs bar (21+, cash only) will remain open this evening, although no entertainment is scheduled.
Please join us next Wednesday, March 14, for an early-bird workshop and feature with C. Bain!
The annual collegiate national poetry slam tournament is the driving performative force behind a large number of the Cantab’s regular readers and listeners. This year, our local students (and some local familiar coaches as well) will be headed to Temple University for the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. To help our town favorites gear up for the national competition, we’ll be offering the CUPSI Warm-Up, a team slam featuring four teams in a nationals-style team slam, incorporating all the collegiate regulations, poetry, and intensity of competition we’ve come to expect from CUPSI.
This year’s event will feature Emerson College, Wheelock College, Wellesley College, Smith College, and sacrificial poems from UMass Boston! It’s (just some of) the future of slam, folks: bring your fight songs, flags, and/or tough, objective judging faces to help these poets prepare for their national tournament in April.
Host Kieran Collier performs in the Team Selection Slams. Photo by Marshall Goff.
Our host for the slam, by the way, will be familiar Cantab host Kieran Collier, a Boston-based writer and educator. He is the author of When the Gardener Has Left (Wilde Press, 2015) and This to You (Beard Poetry, 2016). His work has been featured in the anthologies MultiVerse: A Write Bloody Superhero Anthology and Again I Wait for This to Pull Apart, as well as multiple online and print journals. The only four-time CUPSI member of Emerson College’s existence, Kieran is uniquely qualified to heckle, cheer, and introduce all of the competing poets. If you look closely, you might catch him weeping into a Shirley Temple intermittently throughout the night.
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 slam begins at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.
Cantab Recap for Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Hot diggity dang! What a fabulous ending to Black History Month 2018, Cantabbers: our open mic was packed with good thinkers (and just a little sweet sweet love) to close out a truly excellent February. And then our feature, D. Colin, was everything we’d dreamed; she brought a carefully crafted, pull-no-punches set showing off all her poetic chops for the Women of the World Poetry Slam she’ll be competing at in just a few weeks.
Yes, yes, we, too, were super-sad that D was out of books to sell us last night. But listen: you can support the heckoutta a Black womxn’s art by checking out Empress Bohemia, D. Colin’s Etsy shop of her handcrafted, Afrocentric-inspired jewelry, paintings, and photos. (Oh, and, yes, if you want a copy of D’s book, Dreaming in Kreyol is available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.)
Our slam, by the way, was also full of sweet thinkers and good lovers (wait, is that the same or possibly better than the open mic?); the final pairing came down to Mugs Myers vs. Liv Mckee, with a squeaky-tight 0.3 margin in the final 1-minute round. Out-of-towner (and August 2017 feature) Liv took the win and the $10 home, leaving Mugs free to slam another day. And, cool news: that means that if you want to support two poets from upstate NY who made our show awesome last night, you can drop your cash on the YouCaring page for Liv and D’s tandem trip to WOWPS this month.
Next Wednesday: GET READY FOR A HOTT NIGHT FULLA NERVOUS CUPSI POETZ, KIDS! That’s right, it’s our annual CUPSI Warm-Up, the shake-the-dust slam we offer to our locals who are collegiate-nationals bound. Come for one of the most intense open mics of the season, and stay to judge some much-in-need-of-judging slam students from Emerson College, Wheelock College, Wellesley College, Smith College, and Tufts University! Yes, we are 18+, so bring your friends, buy a soda, tip your bartender and get some poetry in your ears in the dirtiest bar in Cambridge.
Boston Poetry Slam Online