Voices in Power

Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Doors: 6pm | Show: 7:30pm
$20 advance | $25 day of show

Featured Poet:  Jillian Hanesworth is an EMMY nominated spoken word artist, the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Buffalo, New York and a community organizer and activist. Jillian was born and raised on the east side of Buffalo where she developed a vision to use art and advocacy to help her community reimagine justice and work together to create a system where all people can thrive. Currently, Jillian travels the country performing poetry and speaking on various topics including; art for activism, the impacts of storytelling and the importance of honest and critical social and political conversations. In addition, Jillian oversees “Buffalo Books”, a nationally recognized program which aims to improve access to culturally relevant books for residents of the east side of Buffalo with the hopes of helping to increase literacy rates among Black and brown communities.

VENUE INFO – PLEASE READ!

  • This is a ticketed event. Everyone must have a ticket for entry.
  • You must make a table reservation in addition to your ticket purchase to guarantee seating. Without a reservation, seating will be first-come, first-served if available. There is standing room by the bar area.
  • The Lounge is a full-service restaurant – our full food & drink menu is available when doors open.
  • If you require accessible seating, please contact us at boxoffice@worldcafelive.org or 215-222-1400 prior to the show so we can best accommodate your needs.
  • World Cafe Live is a nonprofit independent venue where artistry meets social impact. Every purchase helps support our music education & community programs.
  • See FAQ for more information.
Whatʼs up family? We hope this finds you well and in good spirits. For those who have been with us before, you already know our vibe and for those who may be new to us, hereʼs some information that hopefully leads you to come experience what we do best. We are a National Poetry Open Mic Experience in multiple cities across the country with Philadelphia being where we began our journey. Weʼve been curating monthly experiences since April 2011 and have grown tremendously over the years, especially here in Philly, which brought us to introduce a second monthly experience – The Poetʼs Pit now at our new home location World Cafe Live. This will carry the same culture and vibes of our larger experience on 1st Saturdays – family, generosity, love, encouragement, passion, and of course – poetry while also highlighting local small business and visual artists. We knew once a month wasnʼt enough and we wanted to turn up with our family on a Tuesday evening over some food and drinks. If youʼre interested in being one of our vendors or live painters, please send us an email to findme@imsuperdope.com with “The Poets Pit” in the subject line. The Poetʼs Pit will be hosted by either Mic Phillips or Jovan McKoy with music by DJ G33k. We will have a recap video from each night shot and edited by Dolo and poetry performances recorded by Bagi Image. All videos will be up on our YouTube channel and posted on our social media. Again, if you know, you know, and if not, the best way you can find out is by grabbing your ticket and coming through to experience something that will feed your soul. Tickets are limited and always sell out so please donʼt hesitate on grabbing your tickets. For poets looking to perform, we have an all raffle open mic list and get between 14-17 poets on stage each night. The process is simple-once the doors open, by the stage youʼll find one of our team members who will have raffle tickets ready for you. Each poet gets one ticket and it gets tossed into our bowl. Poets have until 7:20 PM to sign a ticket to be considered for our open mic that night. At 7:30 PM one of our hosts will get on stage to start the night and tickets will be randomly selected and that poet will make their way to the stage to perform. We will do this throughout the night until we end it off with our featured poet. Please note: raffles can only be signed on site between 6:00 PM & 7:20 PM. No exceptions. We hope to see you there as we believe your soul needs this type of energy. With love always, Luis Marrero Founder Please note: We are a poetry only open mic experience, meaning we do not allow any other type of performances but poetry. No music is allowed, whether live or on a track, no comedians, no singers, etc. We know our heart is for poetry and we want to create a space for our poets.