Cantab Recap for Wednesday, November 5, 2016

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday! This past week, crowd favorite Joshua Elbaum played to a packed house, selecting almost entirely new-to-the-stage work for a super-solid and well-received feature. Josh journeyed with us through the daily questions of love and out the other side, touching on fidelity and personal space, identity and naming, and the future, and time, and stuff. Josh’s new chapbook is called The Future Is a Compost Pile / And I Will Love You Forever and he might just have a copy left for you to buy if you ask him nicely.

The slam was a hot-to-win eight-poet match, with a small but hardy audience and some extremely exciting matchups. The final round came down to newcomer Danny Deleón and not-as-newcomer Kieran Collier; in a tight matchup, Kieran took the win, the ten bucks, and the chance at making the 2017 Boston Poetry Slam Team.

Next Wednesday: no matter what happens on Tuesday, we promise to bring you the most excellent Will Evans from Columbus, Ohio, co-founder of the Writing Wrongs poetry slam and co-curator of Black Nerd Problems. Come for the open, stay for the feature, and, sure, sign up to judge our third open poetry slam in this 8×8 series.

Tips from the Bar: We Can Do It

Write a poem about how your parent’s (or parents’) occupation defined them.

Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic RELAUNCH PARTY Featuring April Penn on November 3, 2016

After a teneleven-month hiatus, we are exhilarated to announce that Moonlighting has returned! This reading is the RELAUNCH PARTY for our monthly LGBTA+ series, Moonlighting, now at a new location in Brighton. Click here for more information about the show.

Moonlighting relaunch feature April Penn.

Moonlighting relaunch feature April Penn.

The relaunch of Moonlighting will celebrate with feature April Penn. April’s poetry is published in The Offing, The Fem, Maps for Teeth, Provocateur, Hoax Zine, and Amethyst Arsenic. She has featured at the Boston Poetry Slam, Out of the Blue Gallery, Occupy Boston and UMass Amherst. Her second-latest chapbook chronicles life in a gluten-free dairy-free queer coop as well as the dissolution of self, reality, and relationships. Her newest chapbook is entitled Drunk Lesbian Dinosaurs Make Me Write Poetry.

This show in our monthly Thursday LGBTA+ series takes place at Article 24, 458 Western Ave. in the Brighton area of Boston. An open mic begins at approximately 8:00 p.m. and the headliners follow the open mic. The show is all-ages and a $3 donation is requested.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, November 2, 2016: Joshua Elbaum

Joshua Elbaum performs at the 2016 BPS Team Selection Slams. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Joshua Elbaum performs at the 2016 BPS Team Selection Slams. Photo by Marshall Goff.

Joshua Elbaum has been trying unsuccessfully to escape poetry for the past three years.

Joshua helped to lead the Berklee College Slam Team to its first semi-finals stage at CUPSI. He has performed and taught workshops around the Boston area and has been published mostly by his friends. In 2015 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A Young Adult fantasy villain, he is consistently underestimating and defeated by the power of love.

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, October 26, 2016

Did you feel it, folks? It was the first night that the Cantab Lounge had to turn on the heat in the basement this year, and once that stage got warm, the night never let up. A sweet selection of promising newcomers and promise-keeping regulars graced the open mic, and nearly everyone kept their seat for the much anticipated feature from 2016 Boston Poetry Slam Team member Zeke Russell. Zeke brought listeners on a journey from the cold hills of northern Maine through the defunct pubs of Lowell, stopping off for moments of tenderness along the way. If you missed the trip, check in with Zeke for a copy of his new chapbook, Some of Them Are Still People.

After the feature, we opened the new 8×8 slam series with the first slam of eight: a truly all-star, nationally-renowned roster took the stage for one of the most competitive opens we’ve seen all year. A fierce two rounds brought the show down to the night’s top competitors, Brandon Melendez and Meaghan Ford. These two poets went neck-and-neck in the final round, forcing a tiebreaker for the ten-dollar prize! Ultimately, Brandon emerged victorious, earning a trip to the 2017 Team Selection Slams and, of course, the cash.

Next week: yes, there’ll be another open slam, plus another long-awaited feature from the excellent Joshua Elbaum.

Tips from the Bar: The Happy Parakeet

Find something in the real world that seems especially unusual or out of context.

Don’t ask anyone involved to explain it. Write your own explanation.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, October 26, 2016: Zeke Russell

Zeke Russell, 2016 National Poetry Slam semi-finalist, pictured here performing at a prelim bout at NPS. Photo by Christopher Clauss.

Zeke Russell, 2016 National Poetry Slam semi-finalist, pictured here performing at a prelim bout at NPS. Photo by Christopher Clauss.

Zeke Russell grew up in Central Maine surrounded by artists and lumberjacks. Since then he’s been a cook, a teacher, a security guard and a social worker. He was a member of the 2016 Boston Poetry Slam Team and the 2011 Mill City Slam Team. He was the color commentator for the SlamCenter podcast that covered the 2013 National Poetry Slam. His work has appeared in Drunk In a Midnight Choir, Wyvern Lit, Maps For Teeth and Printer’s Devil Review. He lives in South Boston with his partner Emily and is the second best poet in the apartment. He owns the world’s worst behaved pug dog and usually needs a hair cut.

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, October 19, 2016

What an October night, folks! Local, national, and international all-stars all took a turn on our dingy little basement stage for an exceptionally excellent literary time. Our headliner was Marty McConnell, in town from Chicago en route to her booking at the Dodge Poetry Festival this year. Marty brought us a selection of work seemingly designed to speak to last night’s debate (yowza), including a few pieces to show off her still-impressive performance chops. The other half of our rockin’ double-bill, of course, was Mohamed Hassan, 2015 New Zealand national slam champ and currently ranked 23rd in the world after last week’s Individual World Poetry Slam; Mohamed brought us a stellar ten minutes that made it easy for us to see how he’s achieved international recognition. He’ll be the featured poet tonight at Slam Free or Die in Manchester, by the way, so get yourself together for a trip north if you want to catch this traveler before he returns to the other side of the world!

So it was a heckuva night even before 11:00 p.m., you know, but do you think we were ready to quit after all that goodness? Nopenopenope: instead, we rushed headlong into the Champion of Champions slam, where Ron, RebeccaLynn, Zeke Russell, Emily Taylor, and Adam Stone all dared to take the stage against Jess “Reign of Terror” Rizkallah, our fearless champion since August 10. After a two-round puppyfight (cuter than regular dogs, but with pointier teeth), RebeccaLynn and Zeke rose to the top of the pack of champs; RebeccaLynn dispatched her opponent within a casual two minutes and claimed the season championship! That wasn’t all, though: unsatisfied with the mere seasonal title, RebeccaLynn challenged Jess to the one-and-done all-new-poem final-final championship round… And after two brandy-new poems hit the stage, Jess Rizkallah was again our victor. Congrats again to RebeccaLynn for a top-notch season win, and to Champion Jess for retaining the venue’s greatest title.

After all that: can we do more poetry? Can we? WE CAN AND SHALL: next week we’ll welcome Zeke Russell, 2016 team member and longtime purveyor of Short Poems About Dead People, to our stage with a ghost-heavy set in time for the end of October. Go ahead, pack up your poems about complicated mourning and friends become strangers become ghosts: it’s the right time, the right featured poet, and just the right open mic to come peek beyond the veil.

Tips from the Bar: The Museum of Broken Relationships Is a Real Place

…Or at least as real as a place in L.A. can be.

Write about an exhibit in an unlikely museum, i.e., The Museum of Stolen Office Equipment or The Museum of Lost Teddy Bears. (Or: just write about your wing in the Museum of Broken Relationships.)

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, October 19, 2016: Marty McConnell, Mohamed Hassan, and the Champion of Champions Poetry Slam

Chicago poetry powerhouse Marty McConnell.

Chicago poetry powerhouse Marty McConnell.

Part of the vanguard of poets fusing and refusing the delineations between literary and oral poetry, Marty McConnell’s work blurs the lines between autobiography and personae to comment on and illuminate what it means to live and love outside the lines in early 21st century America. She is the author of wine for a shotgun, (EM Press, 2012), which received the Silver Medal in the 2013 Independent Publishers Awards, and was a finalist for both the Audre Lorde Award (Publishing Triangle) and the Lambda Literary Awards. She is also a seven-time National Poetry Slam team member, the 2012 National Underground Poetry Individual Competition (NUPIC) Champion, and appeared twice on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam.”

McConnell transplanted herself from Chicago to New York City in 1999, after completing the first of three national tours with The Morrigan, an all-female performance poetry troupe she co-founded. She received her MFA in creative writing/poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and for nearly a decade, co-curated the flagship reading series of the New York City-based louderARTS Project. She returned to Chicago in 2009 to launch Vox Ferus, an organization dedicated to empowering and energizing individuals and communities through the written and spoken word. Visit her at martyoutloud.com.

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 Jess Rizkallah, the reigning Champion of Champions.

Mohamed Hassan, New Zealand's 2015 National Slam Champion.

Mohamed Hassan, New Zealand’s 2015 National Slam Champion.

In addition to a nationally renowned feature and a championship slam, we will also offer an open mic spotlight from an international slam champion tonight! Mohamed Hassan is a journalist and poet from Auckland. He is the 2015 New Zealand National Slam Champion, winner of the 2013 Rising Voices Youth Grand Slam, a TEDx speaker and a member of the South Auckland Poets Collective. This year, he released his first collection of poetry, A Felling Of Things.

To see Mohamed feature on the open mic, we recommend arriving no later than 8:45… That is, if this grand heckuva show somehow doesn’t sell out when the doors open. Please plan ahead and remember that door time for the open mic is 7:15. In the case of a sold-out open mic, limited additional seating MAY become available for the headline feature around 9:45.

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