VOCAB

04/02/2026

We're back next week and since every month is National Poetry Month for us, we gone stick to the script. Joining us this month will be !!!

Manòn Voice is a poet, storyteller, filmmaker, educator, and cultural worker whose work lives at the intersection of art and social change. Rooted in Hip Hop and spoken word, her practice explores identity, justice, and collective memory, creating spaces where storytelling becomes a vehicle for dialogue and transformation. A native of Indianapolis, she has performed on stages across the country and facilitated workshops with diverse communities. She is a Professor of Hip-Hop Music, History, and Culture at Butler University and the director of the IT WAS ALL A DREAM Hip Hop Ensemble, where she engages Hip Hop as a living tool for education, resilience, and cultural expression.

Through her creative practice, Manòn considers herself a poetic documentarian, attuned to the narratives that shape our social landscape. Her poetry has appeared in The Flying Island, The Indianapolis Review, The House Life Project: People + Property Series, Sidepiece Magazine, The World We Live(d) In anthology, Questions for a Resilient Future Series, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, and Aesthetic Ethics: Towards a Moral Imagination, and more.

Her work engages urgent issues such as housing insecurity, environmental justice, food access, and systemic inequality, while also holding space for beauty, healing, and possibility. Alongside her artistic practice, she is committed to land stewardship and Afro-Indigenous approaches to farming, exploring the relationship between cultivation, culture, and community healing. Her documentary ROOT BLACK, centered on Afro-Diasporic agrarian heritage and Black farming in the United States, premiered at the Indy International Film Festival. She is also the 2025 PitchDox Award winner for her upcoming documentary, Barbara Boyd: On Top of the World, which chronicles the life and legacy of Indiana’s first African Amer


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April 8th | 8pm | $10
Community Partners:

03/09/2026

We're back this week for another trip around the sun! VOCAB is another year closer to 20! We'll have some open mic regulars and folks that have helped shaped VOCAB spend a lil extra time on the mic celebrating the open mic with memories from over the years, so please join us in the celebration!


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February 11th | 8pm | $10
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11/10/2025

We're back this week! Our dear friend

Korie is a storyteller and sound healer who believes healing is both heard and felt. Through writing and vibration, they create containers for grief, remembrance, and regeneration; reminding others that healing is not walked alone.

The White Rabbit Cabaret
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November 12th | 8pm | $10
Community Partners:

Indianapolis Liberation Center
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10/03/2025

We're back next week! This month we're watching back

Makai Brown is an Indiana born artist who recently graduated from IUI. He is also a multifaceted performer being a classically trained musician, visual artist, award winning poet, and member of the non-profit youth writing organization Word As Bond (Inc.). He has competed in several spoken word competitions such as Brave New Voices and the Southern Fried Poetry Slam, most recently ranking in the top 10 in the Nation. Makai presently works as the Teaching Assistant for the Media Arts & Science program and through his works hopes to give voices to the people who look and love differently.


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October 8th | 8pm | $10
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08/31/2025

We're back this month with a feature currently touring,

Tracy ( T-Spirit) Stanton is a highly featured award winning International SpokenWord Artist, Trainer/Workshop Facilitator, Community organizer, and Peace Maker who uses the transformative power of spoken word poetry and storytelling as a tool for personal and societal transformation. She deeply understands the need for connection, collective liberation, and creative expression. Tracy speaks truth to power and healing to the heart as a form of resistance. She is also a founding member of Freedom Community Center which is a black led abolitionist organization that is building a movement of survivors who are intervening in interpersonal and systemic violence and the founder of Some Things Must Be Heard : Spitting & Politicking which is a community building and spoken word platform that features radical, revolutionary artists and community organizers that are dedicated to freedom dreaming and power building.


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September 10th | 8pm | $10
Community Partners:

08/06/2025

We're back next week! Featuring a longtime staple on the open mic and the poetry scene of this city, our friend

Steph Rec is a poet of resurrection—of voice, of body, of self. After years of shape-shifting, people-pleasing, and carrying silence like a second skin, she has found her way back to poetry through self-love, through truth, and through the pen she once put down.
Her work speaks from the tender spaces between undoing and becoming. With every poem, she honors the parts of herself she used to hide—the q***r, the spiritual, the soft, the strong. She writes as a form of healing, not only for herself but for anyone learning to love who they are without apology. Steph’s poetry is not about perfection. It’s about permission. To feel, to heal, to speak, and to take up space. She’s not just writing again—she’s living out loud.


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August 13th | 8pm | $10
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07/08/2025

Heyo! We're back tomorrow! Booking doesn't always go as planned, so instead of forcing anything we're gonna roll with the open mic. Same time and place. Tell a friend. Bring a friend. And if you can't make it, you can always pay for someone else to get in!


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July 9th | 8pm | $7
Community Partners:

06/03/2025

We're back next week with an old friend!

Sylvia Thomas is an internationally renowned musician and poet creating unique experiences for audiences to engage in storytelling and soundscapes.

For the last 10 years, she’s performed across the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Mexico, for the United Nations, and all over her hometown of Indianapolis. Sylvia is also part of the long-term artist residencies with Big Car Collaborative.

She’s excited to come back to where her career began at VOCAB!

The White Rabbit Cabaret
Hosted by the VOCAB team
June 11th | 8pm | $10
Community Partners:

Indianapolis Liberation Center

05/12/2025

We're back this week! This month we're welcoming back the Volta Slam Team! .taylored

Makai Brown is an Indiana born artist currently attending IUPUI. He is also a multifaceted performer being a classically trained musician, visual artist, award winning poet, and member of the non-profit youth writing organization Word As Bond (Inc.). He has competed in several spoken word competitions such as Brave New Voices and the Southern Fried Poetry Slam, most recently ranking in the top 10 in the Nation. Makai presently works as the Teaching Assistant for the Media Arts & Science program and through his works hopes to give voices to the people who look and love differently.

Slay Elena is an Indianapolis born and raised attorney, social worker, and slam poet whose writing focuses on feminism and women's issues, often juxtaposing religious imagery with personal experiences. She discovered her love for poetry as a freshman in college, when she started writing in therapy; she quickly moved on to performing on small local stages including Vocab and Iconoclast before eventually landing a national slam title as a junior in college and later placing 11th in the nation as an individual competitor at Southern Fried in 2022.

Auboni is an Indianapolis poet who uses words to make sense of the world around her. She has been writing creatively since the age of 12 and hopes that when people hear her poetry, they can make better sense of the world within themselves. An avid reader and a voracious video-watcher, Auboni loves to travel down the rabbit hole and uncover the nuisances of life's greatest pleasures, mysteries, and more.

White Dante turned childhood dreams into poetry and hustle. From sales to open mics and a published book, he now explores DJing while dreaming of opening a winery. For him, writing is a way to make sense of life’s chaos.


May 14th | 8pm | $10
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Community Partners:

Indianapolis Liberation Center

02/20/2025

The break is over! We're back next month! will be joining up from Chicago!

Chicago native Sunshine Lombre is a dancer & poet who specializes in expressing sensuality & emotional authenticity through her words & movements. Sunshine performs poetry and choreography while also curating seasonal artist showcases based around Black heritage. Sunshine strives to share her passion for Spoken Word and choreography while empowering Black communities worldwide through teaching creative writing classes through “Poetry for Personal Power”, the Chicago Public Library system, Hyde Park Art Center & other Arts Organizations. She’s been an opening act for Twista and has released debut poetry album “Fading Away."


March 12th | 8pm | $10
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02/13/2025

02/12/2025

No show this month!