Cantab Recap for Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The 2016 Boston Poetry Slam Team Selection Semi-Finals have come and gone, poetry fans, laying waste to many beers and three very talented poets. Here are the results from last night’s epic slam:

1. Zeke Russell 53.2
2. Marshall Gillson 53.1
3. Simone Beaubien 52.6
4. Mckendy Fils-Aimé 52.5
5. JR Mahung 51.6
6. Neiel Israel 51.0
7. Joshua Elbaum 50.2
8. Manvir Singh 50.1
9. Meaghan Ford 49.9
10. Nora Meiners
11. Bobby Crawford
12. Emily O’Neill
Poets in bold have qualified to advance to Finals on March 16.

After room-flaming sacrifices from WOWPS-bound Jess Rizkallah and double-plus Last-Chance champ Colin Killick, last-minute add to the slam Emily kicked in the door with Rappelling, a heartrending family poem in the key of social media. Manvir followed up with a both surprisingly and unsurprisingly surreal tale of a chimpanzee and a town matriarch, with Joshua hot on his heels, breaking hearts with the dirtiest refrigerator in town (and the only time penalty of the night). All three poets held score until Marshall pumped up the judges with a little Stunting, breaking open the funny and setting up Mckendy for what would turn out to be the high score of the night with Via Negativa.

Now barely halfway through the round, the judges had settled into a terrifying groove, throwing sevens with the same frequency as nines, and with an occasional five thrown in for spice. Simone rode the score bump to safety, but the wave had passed as Nora’s newer, WOWPS-ready two-minute work on the threat of leaving left the judges split down the middle. Neiel surprised the crowd as the first to bring rhyme to the crowd in a powerfully voiced poem to a girl of the street, bringing snaps from the back corners of the room. JR held score with an understated family dynamics poem, then Zeke risked a brand-new-written-today poem for his niece that had the room wiping their eyes and the judges paying out the second-highest score of the round! The end of the round brought strange surprises, as Meaghan, a usual crowd favorite, couldn’t engage the judges with her hearing loss poem, and the night’s top seed Bobby brought some of the crowd to their feet for almost hitting Junot Diaz with his car, but didn’t see any reward in the scores.

At the end of one round of poems, Mckendy was sitting pretty with a 27.5 and more than a point ahead of Zeke, who led Marshall, Simone, and Neiel in the low 26.x range. Joshua was close behind, but JR, Emily, Bobby, Nora, Manvir, and Meaghan would all have to put forth a solid effort to make the top nine cut. Fortunately, with a remarkable average 2.48 point spread from the five judges (for reference, heats 1 and 2 of the prelims showed first-round spreads of 1.58 and 2.02, respectively), and a lot of room above the highest score, the second round was still anybody’s game.

Host Tom Slavin transitioned the show seamlessly into the second round, where Emily “Snake Eyes” O’Neill had drawn first in the round to kick in the door yet again, this time with a new essay-form food-and-body-image poem. Neiel rolled out Chad: The Invisible White Boy to a receptive audience, followed by Mckendy’s new-to-the-stage rendition of Half-Life (see his link above for the text). Looking to make up lost ground, Bobby flashed back to Guitar Hero, and Joshua took a stab at corralling his father’s boundless grief. And for all of this, the judges were willing to go no higher than a 25.0, putting Emily and Bobby on the brink of likely elimination and leaving Neiel and Joshua to wring their hands for the next seven performers.

The poet to take the stage next was Manvir, taking a page from Bobby’s book and bringing up a venue favorite: his ode to pants(!) shook the judges’ generosity awake for a full one-point score bump. Had they joined Mckendy at the bar in his quiet mathed-in celebration? Whatever it was, something had shifted, and JR’s Unsent Messages to a High School Crush and Simone’s Pour One out were rewarded in kind, and capped by the second-round top score for Marshall’s poem Instructions in the Event of My Death. Zeke Russell didn’t need to best his score from the previous round, but a solid performance on the topic of Maine ruggedness earned him the second highest score of round two, and bested Marshall’s total by just enough to take the top spot of the night.

However, with only Nora and Meaghan as the last remaining poets, the slam was far from over; both poets would have to stretch to defeat Bobby and Emily, and unless the judges suddenly started handing out nines like the Cantab bartenders do whiskey, there would be only one spot left for the four to fight for. Nora came to the stage with a fresh re-write of a poem on Avarice, inspired by last year’s Erotic Poetry Night; a suddenly sober set of judges remained impassive, paying out only enough points to bring Nora up to ninth place and cement Emily and Bobby’s fates. In a final and determined effort to beat the math, Meaghan brought her poem Trauma Game to the stage, taking the mic by storm and achieving the biggest comeback in the show to defeat Nora and punch her own ticket for Finals. Hot damn!

Special thanks to all our staff who made this show possible, including host Tom Slavin, bout manager Ed Wilkinson, scorekeeper/timekeeper Kieran Collier (gratefully borrowed from the Emerson Poetry Project), and our intrepid door staff, Michael Quigg and Michael F. Gill.

Next week: our schedule returns to glorious normality with all-but-predictable Columbus brilliance from Siaara Freeman, a regular-strength open mic, and an open speed slam to close out Black History Month. Poems on poems on poems! See you there!

Tips from the Bar: The Noel Fielding Prompt

Write about an inanimate object that has ceased to fulfill its purpose, so goes back to tell the other objects what awaits them.

Bonus MacKenzie family prompt: “The Future.”

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, February 17, 2016: Team Selection Semi-Finals

The Cantab’s Team Selection Slams are the venue’s biggest, wildest poetry slams of the year. This February, with Erotic Poetry Night safely behind us, we continue our selection process with the second round of three, the Team Selection Semi-Finals, hosted by in-house favorite Tom Slavin!

The top twelve poets from the first and second Preliminary heats (six from each) advance to the Semi-Finals show. Qualified poets will slam in the following order in the first round of the two-round show:

1. Emily O’Neill
2. Manvir Singh
3. Joshua Elbaum
4. Marshall Gillson
5. Mckendy Fils-Aimé
6. Simone Beaubien
7. Nora Meiners
8. Neiel Israel (Quentin Lucas dropped from slam on 2/17)
9. JR Mahung
10. Zeke Russell
11. Meaghan Ford
12. Bobby Crawford
Sacrificial poets: 1. Jess Rizkallah, 2. Colin Killick
Management: Ed Wilkinson, Scorekeeping: Kieran Collier

With two poems behind them and five to go, competing poets are likely to be reaching deep into their pockets on this particular night, or even trying out untested work in hope of saving some major ammunition for the upcoming three-poem Finals… Making Semi-Finals just possibly the most interesting night of the selection series.

Team Selection Slams go for three rounds at the Cantab, with the top five poets after seven poems comprising the venue’s National Poetry Slam Team. The 2016 Boston Poetry Slam Team will travel to the National Poetry Slam down south in Decateur, Georgia.

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 9:15. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $5; proceeds will go toward funding the team’s travel to the National Poetry Slam this August in Georgia.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, February 10, 2016

We survived another Erotic Poetry Night, Cantabbers! Huge, girthy, well-lubricated thanks to our really remarkable open mic poets, who brought us the sexy while almost unanimously bringing accompanying agency, personality, consent, and very creative language to the stage. Also, y’all are awkward as heck and that sure is hot. Nice work, poets!

Extra-enthusiastic thanks also go to our tumblr maven, Cassandra de Alba, who designed, printed, and not-especially-secretly distributed a fine selection of erotic slam bingo cards. Did you get an open mic bingo on pirates/dick size/fetish you’ve never heard of/fan fiction/audible noise of disgust from the audience? WAIT. Congratulations, but don’t tell us; we may not need to know.

The head-to-head Schmlatz Slam that followed our open featured flawless host/producer Emily Carroll, gloriously crafted Heart vs. Fedora judging flags, and a healthy dose of seasonal cynicism. Despite the best efforts of the Pick-Up Lines team (c’mon, give them credit! they put themselves out there!), the entire cadre of Cantab regulars was traumatized by the triumph of the Valentines: for the first time ever in this dive bar basement, Love won the day.

Don’t worry, folks, things will be back to normal next week… That is, if you consider it a regular night when you get to watch the venue’s top poets in a high-stakes fight on the road to Nationals. Next Wednesday will be the Team Selection Semi-Finals, where you can see Tom Slavin host for Manvir Singh, Joshua Elbaum, Marshall Gillson, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, Simone Beaubien, Nora Meiners, Neiel Israel, Quentin Lucas, JR Mahung, Zeke Russell, Meaghan Ford, and Bobby Crawford as they lay down two poems each, hoping to escape the night and qualify for Finals in March! Remember: it’s a $5 cover charge night for the big show, and the open mic will be a little shorter to accommodate the twelve-poet slam.

Tips from the Bar: You Get a Gold Star

Start your poem with a household chore.

Cantab Feature for February 10, 2016: Erotic Poetry Night and the Schmaltz Slam

Is it hot in here, or is it just you? As tradition decrees, the Wednesday closest to Valentine’s marks our wildly popular annual Erotic Poetry Night. We’ll present the best (and worst) of the erotic (and neurotic) all night long; open mic readers are strongly encouraged to bring original erotic poems, poems about sex, or poems about naughtiness in general.

Our featured event this year comes from the diabolical mind of Emily Carroll, Moonlighting founder/producer and heavy-handed Cantab bartender. Gird your loins (or whatever) for The Schmaltz Slam: Valentines vs. Pick-Up Lines! Participants will be offered a prompt from either category and paired off in a head-to-head slam for all the chalk-candy hearts they can stand.

Come check out the following steamy slam pairings:

VALENTINES PICK-UP LINES
Emily O’Neill Cassandra de Alba
Dawn Gabriel Sam Cha
April Penn Claudia Wilson
Gemma Cooper-Novack Chloé Cunha
Allison Truj Meaghan Ford
sacrifice: RebeccaLynne Gualtieri sacrifice: Elliot McLaughlin

The slam will be hosted (ruthlessly) by Emily Carroll. Sacrifices are TBA.

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 erotic-themed open mic begins at 8:00 and the featured event will commence after the 10:00 break. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, February 3, 2016

We had the best of luck last night for a windy February Wednesday, folks: Boston-based thinking poet Emmanual Oppong-Yeboah kicked in the door for Black History Month with a feature informed by life, loves, and philosophy. Performing almost entirely unencumbered by the page, Emmanuel brought us all along for the ride both inside and out of our own bodies, preparing us to bring joy and honor to the month ahead.

The speed slam was also a doozy, full of powerful work, painful time penalties, and sometimes raucous applause as a few poets in the slam met each other’s work for the first time! The finals came down to cross-river-commuter Jayy Dodd and north-side rising star RebeccaLynn. RebeccaLynn took top honors with her incisive thirty-nine-second finale (pro tip: that is how you speed slam), earning the $10 prize, a shot at the 2016 World Qualifier, and a berth in the springtime Champion of Champions Slam.

Next week: you are NOT ready for Erotic Poetry Night! Surely, no one can be… But if anyone is trying to get you in the mood, it’s Emily Carroll producing the Schmaltz Slam: twelve steamy local favorites will slam off with brand new work, representing either the Valentines or the Pick-Up Lines. Remember, it’s also the week to bring your hothot erotic poems to the open mic, so get your favorite sexy stories in order to share on the awkwardest date night of the year.

Tips from the Bar: The Aaron Rodgers Prompt

Write about something that shouldn’t be decided by a coin flip. Or: something that should.

Cantab Feature for Wednesday, February 3, 2016: Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah (was: Muggs Fogarty)

Due to circumstances beyond their control, Muggs Fogarty will be rescheduling their feature later in 2016. In the meantime, the Boston Poetry Slam is pleased to present an excellent last-minute fill-in of the utmost quality:

Boston poet, thinker, and teacher Emmanuel Oppong-Yeobah. Photo by Rachel Nyakako.

Boston poet, thinker, and teacher Emmanuel Oppong-Yeobah. Photo by Rachel Nyakako.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah is a Boston-based poet and a recent graduate of the University of Connecticut. As an English and Urban and Community Studies major, Emmanuel spent his time at UCONN considering space— its vastness— and how the very concept of space as real and social construct can simultaneously restrict and enable movement. Emmanuel also spent his time at UCONN writing essays and poems. As you can see he is fan of long sort of incongruous sentences. In 2015 he was proud to serve as performance crew leader to UCONN’s spoken word organization, Poetic Release, and to compete at the 2015 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational as a member of the UCONN slam team. He was also proud to co-found Exsistentia, a multimedia literary journal centered around addressing existential questions through art and artistic expression.

More recently, Emmanuel is proud to serve as the Director of Curriculum for Boston Pulse, a youth-empowerment organization focused on promoting positive change for young people and their communities through spoken word. Wow, there is a lot of pride going on here. This is a good thing; but while writing this personal biography, Emmanuel realized he was referring to himself in the third person. This upset him. He chose to write a list of some things that make him happy instead: hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, the long sigh at the end of a good book.

Note that tonight’s open poetry slam is a speed slam 3-, 2-, and 1-minute rounds. Slam winners qualify for the 2016 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.

Biography of the POSTPONED feature:

Providence poet Muggs Fogarty. Photo by Emma Glory.

Providence poet Muggs Fogarty. Photo by Emma Glory.

Muggs Fogarty is a genderqueer poet and teaching artist from Providence, Rhode Island. Since 2007, Muggs has represented Providence at seven inter/national spoken word competitions, and is the only person in Providence’s history to be a Grand Slam Champion in both the youth (2009) and adult (2015) finals. After graduating from The New School in 2013, Muggs has been mentoring with New Urban Arts, ¡CityArts!, ProvSlam Youth and is now serving as co-director at Providence Poetry Slam. Their published work can be found in FreezeRay, Wicked Banshee, and Bluestockings Magazine, among others. You can now send @muggsfogarty crystal ball emojis on Twitter.

Cantab Recap for Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Welcome back, Cantabbers! It was super to see lots of new faces alongside a great selection of long-lost returnees last night, all braving the January chill to catch a super easy-going open mic night featuring the very excellent Eve Ewing. Eve made leaving the house on a winter night one zillion percent worth it with her thoughtful, clever, and well-crafted set. Were you bummed that this Breakbeat poet didn’t have a book to sell you last night? No worries, you can still commission a custom poem from her of your very own: all you have to do is present her with proof that you’ve donated $50 (cash or goods via Amazon!) to the Liberation Library, an organization dedicated to providing books for incarcerated youth. That’s right, you can do everybody some good AND get yerself your very own Eve Ewing poem… Get at her via her website or @eveewing on Twitter.

Meanwhile, back in the slam series… It’s time for our annual SPEED SLAM series! That means that the next eight slams will consist of 3-, 2-, and 1-minute rounds, like a speeding train racing a cheetah to the other side of a MarioKart chevron yup yup yup, it’s that fast. The first slam in the series came down to newcomer Ian vs. crusty ol’ regular Ed Wilkinson. Ed dug deep for a last burst of energy to win the final round, but watch out, veterans: fresh legs are coming for your slam wins!

Next week: we’re back with teacher, philosopher, poet and proud UCONN grad Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah. And, yes (don’t blink): the second speed slam in the 8×8 series.