Spoken word poetry, because of its roots in working-class communities and African American traditions, is often underfunded and relegated to underproduced open-mics. The Late(ish) Poetry Show honors spoken word poetry and gives it a place of prestige. 

With your support, we are stewarding the evolution of Philadelphia's performance poetry scene and witnessing the emergence of a cohort of poets who are pushing the bounds of poetry performances to incorporate music, theater, dance, lighting and visual art.

Your support will allow us to continue to invest time and resources into the work that is being performed on stage. 

“Who are ya'll??”

The Philly Pigeon is organized and run by Kai Davis, Jasmine Combs, Mateo Souada and co-founder Jacob Winterstein. We are friends, cultural organizers and artists. We're from Philly, except Mateo, they're from PG County, and we never hold it against them. 

The Late(ish) Poetry Show is a late-night style variety show that centers poetry of empowerment, personal narrative, and resistance. The Late(ish) Poetry Show features poets, live interviews, an open mic, and a poetry-centric gameshow segment. 

As event producers we create fun shows, infused with humor, dancing, games and joy.  This is intentionally done to ensure we’re not only preaching to the choir. Some members of our audience are on a date, out with a group of friends or seeing poetry for the first time. Guided by Toni Cade Bambara’s call “to make revolution irresistible,” we interweave our fun show with critiques of systems of oppression, encouragement to join organizations for social justice and opportunities to envision a better future.