Write about a conversation between statues.
Bonus MacKenzie family prompt: write about a color. Don’t pick blue.
Cantab Feature for Wednesday, September 9, 2015: Franny Choi
Providence poet Franny Choi. Photo by Alex Kime.
Franny Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and a recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Frederick Bock Prize. Her work has been featured by the Huffington Post and appeared in journals including Poetry magazine, The Journal, PANK, and Redivider. She is a VONA Fellow, a Project VOICE teaching artist, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective. She lives in the biggest city in the smallest state.
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.
Moonlighting: A Queer Open Mic and Reading Series Featuring Jasmin Roberts on September 3, 2015
This reading is part of our monthly LGBTQ series, Moonlighting. Click here for more information about this recurring show.
The featured reader for September 3, 2015 is Jasmin Roberts.
Jasmin Roberts, Pioneer Valley poet.
Jasmin Roberts hails from Brooklyn, NY, and has lived in the Pioneer Valley for the last 7 years. She is a graduate of Oberlin College, where she majored in Creative Writing and Psychology. She joined the local poetry scene in 2013, and competed in the 2015 National Poetry Slam as a member of the Northampton Poetry team. She not only prides herself on creating new poetry weekly, but also new words. Some of her favorites include “fuckability” and “homotastic.” In the span of three minutes, she will make you laugh your ass off and question your place in the world, and she’ll do it all sporting 4-inch heels.
This show in our monthly Thursday LGBTQ series takes place at Fazenda Coffee Roasters, 3710 Washington St. in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. An open mic begins at approximately 7:00 p.m. and the headliner follows the open mic. The show is all-ages and a $3 donation is requested.
Cantab Recap for Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Did you survive move-in day, BPS fans? If you’re reading this, let’s hope it means you escaped your new apartment filled with boxes for the relative safety of the Cantab Lounge last night. A homey crowd was there to greet Tom Daley and House You Cannot Reach; Tom gave a rousing set, impeccably performed and blissfully uninterrupted, at the first outing for his new book. Lovely! The slam was a four-poet affair, boiling down to a venom-laden showdown between Bobby Crawford and Simone Beaubien. Simone took the win and the $10, which means Bobby earned the right to keep reading as many poems as possible in the subsequent season’s slams until he wins one.
Next week: we return refreshed from Labor Day for the extremely excellent Franny Choi. But first: TONIGHT is the September installation of Moonlighting! You can catch Jasmin Roberts rocking the house over at Fazenda Coffee Roasters starting around 7:30; get yourself free of your apartment chores one more time and get some well-deserved coffee and poetry
Cantab Feature for Wednesday, September 2, 2015: Tom Daley
Local poet, workshop leader, and listener Tom Daley. Photo by Devin Altobello.
Tom Daley leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and writers working in creative prose. Recipient of the Dana Award in Poetry and the Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Prize from the Academy of American Poets, his poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, Del Sol Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of two plays, Every Broom and Bridget—Emily Dickinson and Her Irish Servants and In His Ecstasy—The Passion of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which he performs as one-man shows. FutureCycle Press published his first-full length collection of poetry, House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems, in the summer of 2015.
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, August 26, 2015
Sure, it might not seem like a sold-out show and an open mic that fills by 7:30 is a slow night at the Cantab, but it’s worth remembering: the wildly popular months of September and October are approaching quickly, so you might join the regulars in being thankful for a little late-August elbow room downstairs at the show. This past Wednesday, a short-form-heavy open mic rocked the stage in time for an intimate feature from Ann Arbor’s Scott Beal. Scott read and performed from his latest book, Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems (Dzanc Books), drawing us into the woods and back, shaking up our natural sensibilities, and making forlorn but clever octopuses of us all.
The first slam of the new series was a six-man affair, culminating in a pitched battle between Ed Wilkinson’s maybe-weirdest-ever slammed poem and Marshall Gillson’s no-holds-barred off-stage performance of his final piece. Marshall took the win, qualifying this 2015 Boston Poetry Slam Team member for the 2016 team slams nice and early.
Next week: poems on poems on poems! On Wednesday, the Cantab will hear from regular Tom Daley, launching his new book, House You Cannot Reach, and the open poetry slam 8×8 will continue with the second slam in the series. Plus, we’ll celebrate September at Moonlighting on Thursday with Jasmin Roberts, Noho powerhouse poet. Yes!
Cantab Feature for Wednesday, August 26, 2015: Scott Beal
Scott Beal, Ann Arbor poet and educator.
Scott Beal’s first full-length collection, Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems, was published by Dzanc Books in November 2014. His poems have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Muzzle, Southern Indiana Review, Sonora Review, and the 2014 Pushcart Prize anthology. Scott teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and serves as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School. He co-authored Jangle the Threads with Rachel McKibbens and Aracelis Girmay (Red Beard Press, 2010) and Underneath: The Archaeological Approach to Creative Writing with Jeff Kass (Red Beard Press, 2011).
Scott has competed in the Individual World Poetry Slam and has been a featured performer at schools, bookstores, and poetry slams around the country, including the Green Mill in Chicago, the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe in New York, and the Cantab Lounge in Boston. He curates and co-hosts the Skazat! monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he plays cards and watches Adventure Time with his two daughters.
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, August 19, 2015
Welcome back, Cantabbers! And welcome back to our team, who returned home gloriously intact from the National Poetry Slam to take up their poems in the open mic and slam once again. The team placed a respectable 24th out of 72… And had the opportunity to support, in-person, NPS Finalist Melissa Newman-Evans (competing for Denver in her first post-Cantab NPS) and the Boston’s first championship team since 1993: HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to our across-the-river friends-and-rivals, The House Slam!
Our feature following the rambunctious NPS week was the similarly intense Sam Mercer: this Portland, Maine native put on all his voices to take us in (way in) to the grayest and greenest parts of depression, humor, sobriety, and breakfast. Welcome home, Sam; come hang with the Cantab’s listeners any time.
The evening closed with the only-slightly-misnamed Champion of Champions slam, hosted by outgoing champ Sean Patrick Mulroy. With Sean stepping down to move to his MFA program, the six qualified slammers found themselves fighting for any slim chance at taking over the title; the finals came down to relative newcomer and crowd favorite Christian vs. a hot-off-the-NPSes Mckendy Fils-Aimé. Mckendy took the win and the season championship title: he’ll have to wait for another season champ (who’ll be crowned on October 21) for his chance at the now-vacant Champion of Champions title.
Next week: open slams start again to qualify for that very special title bout. Oh, and of course: our feature will be the most excellent Scott Beal, published poet and teacher from Ann Arbor.
Boston Poetry Slam Online