the archive
A record of curated events, performances, gatherings, and creative collaborations.POETS cafe
POETRY NIGHT & CREATIVE JAM SESSIONSCOFFEE SPEAKS N TEA TALKS | TAMPA, FL | OCTOBER 2021Poets Café was born from a simple belief: every community deserves a space where people can gather, create, and speak their truth.
Hosted at Coffee Speaks N Tea Talks in Wesley Chapel, Poets Café was created as an inviting home for poets, artists, musicians, storytellers, and creative spirits seeking authentic connection through the arts. More than an open mic, it became a space where voices were encouraged, stories were honored, and creativity was celebrated as a vital part of community culture.
The inaugural gathering, themed Speak Your Truth, invited featured poets and audience members alike to share from a place of honesty, vulnerability, and self-expression. Accompanied by the soulful sounds of live jazz, the evening set the foundation for what Poets Café would become: a gathering place where art, poetry, music, and conversation could coexist and inspire one another.
Through each event, Poets Café sought to enrich the cultural landscape of Wesley Chapel and the surrounding communities by creating opportunities for emerging and established artists to be seen, heard, and supported. It served as a reminder that creativity thrives when people are given permission to show up fully as themselves.
This archive preserves moments from those gatherings—moments of courage, connection, expression, and community. While each event has passed, the stories shared, relationships formed, and voices amplified continue to echo beyond the walls where they were first spoken.
Rebel Poet
Founder, Host & Curator, ArtistCURATOR'S NOTE
"Some journeys are not meant to lead us somewhere new.
They are meant to return us to ourselves."what remains
jazz under the stars
JAZZ, POETRY, & WALK OF ARTTHE AVALON | WESLEY CHAPEL, FL | JANUARY 2022Some of the most meaningful galleries are not built within walls—they are created beneath open skies, where music becomes the ceiling and community becomes the canvas.
Each third Saturday, Jazz Under the Stars transformed Avalon Park into a living celebration of creativity. In collaboration with Coffee Speaks N Tea Talks, I had the privilege of curating , The Walk of Art, inviting three to five visual artists each month to create, paint, and share their work in real time while hosting a featured poet whose words moved alongside the rhythm of live jazz.
Surrounded by food trucks, local vendors, families, neighbors, and curious passersby, art became wonderfully accessible. It stepped out of the gallery and into the everyday, reminding us that beauty belongs wherever people gather with open hearts.
What made these evenings unforgettable was not only the artwork or the performances, but the conversations they inspired. Strangers became supporters. Artists became neighbors. Poetry found listeners who may never have sought it, and paintings found homes with those who discovered them beneath the stars.
From January 2022 through July 2023, Jazz Under the Stars became a testament to what is possible when a community chooses to make space for creativity. Together, we cultivated more than an event—we nurtured a cultural gathering where music, poetry, and visual art could exist in harmony, each illuminating the others.
Rebel Poet
Art & Poetry Curator & HostCURATOR'S NOTE
"This archive honors the artists who showed up with their gifts, the audiences who gathered with curiosity, and the belief that art is at its most powerful when it is shared freely, under an open sky, with a community willing to witness it.."what remains
wynword wednesdays
POETRY & R&B NIGHTROSEBAR | SOHO, TAMPA, FL | FEBRUARY 2023WynWord Wednesday at The Rosebar Tampa was conceived as a living invocation of R&B and poetry. Rooted in South Tampa, it carried the essence of something continually becoming: a rose pushing through concrete, not as metaphor alone, but as lived experience. Each gathering became a bloom in real time—an atmosphere where poetry and R&B did not compete for space, but expanded one another. Curated by The Growhouse Tampa Poetry Collective and Hosted by The Rebel Poet, a member of the GrowHouse Poetry Collective, the night was shaped by devotion to cultural remembrance and creative liberation.
At the center stood The Rebel Poet—not only as host, but as conduit—opening the space with presence, intention, and invocation. Setting the tone ; not as performance, but as calling!
Within this space, Tampa’s legends and emerging voices shared the same breath of air without hierarchy. Artists did not come to be observed, but to be released. To step out of containment and into expression that was unfiltered, embodied, and free.
R&B moved through the room like memory in motion. Poetry arrived as witness and truth. And community became the vessel that held both.
WynWord Wednesday was, and continues to be, a reminder: when art is curated with reverence, it stops performing and begins to live.
Rebel Poet
Host & Curator, ArtistCURATOR'S NOTE
"Is what the room awakened in us…
when the music became memory,
and the word became witness."
what remains
open heart in the park
POETRY, SOUNDBATH, & CACAORIVERHILLS PARK | TAMPA, FL | APRIL 2025On April 27, 2025, beneath the trees and golden light, a sacred circle gathered for Open Heart, In the Park—a three-hour offering of sound, poetry, cacao, and intentional presence.
Co-facilitated by Azura and Rebel Poet, the experience unfolded as a quiet portal of remembrance. Crystal bowl sound bathing, cacao ceremony, henna adornment, and spoken word moved through the space like layers of the same breath—each one inviting a deeper return to self.
What I remember most is not a moment, but a feeling: how quickly strangers became a circle, and a circle became something like home. The way presence softened everything it touched.
As we closed, there was a collective remembering—of intuition, sovereignty, and creative power—not as something to reach for, but something already within us.
Open Heart, In the Park remains, for me, a beautiful imprint: a day where nature held us, art opened us, and community reminded us who we are when we choose to be fully here.
Rebel Poet
Host & Cacao Facilitator, ArtistCURATOR'S NOTE
what remains
"The feeling that for a few sacred hours, we returned to ourselves through each other.."