Four Palm Beach County student poets will take center stage on Wednesday, October 6, from 6:30–8:30 p.m. as featured performers at Poetry Night at the Benz, held at the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts in West Palm Beach.
Poetry Night at the Benz is a monthly event hosted at the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts, bringing together poets, artists and members of the community through spoken word and creative expression. For the October event, held in recognition of Drug Prevention Month, founder Joanne Betkow of the Benzaiten Center has invited students from the National Poetry Month Youth Summit to be the evening’s featured performers.
The featured students are:
- Aiden Dixon, 12th grade, Palm Beach Lakes Community High School
- Brianna St. Fleur, 9th grade, Suncoast High School
- Charlotte “Charlie” Bastien, 11th grade, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts
- Alice Yang, 10th grade, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts
The students originally came together through the National Poetry Month Youth Summit, an initiative created to give young people a platform to express themselves through poetry and spoken word.
But for these students, the Summit was only the beginning.
Following the event, the students continued meeting with a larger goal: to explore how they could use their voices to make a difference in their community. They were encouraged to identify the issues that mattered most to them and determine where they wanted to focus their collective efforts.
For their first youth-led initiative, the students chose drug prevention.
Desiree Reavis, founder of the National Poetry Month Youth Summit, serves strictly in a mentorship and guidance capacity, helping the students access resources, make connections and turn their ideas into action while ensuring the direction remains theirs.
“I don’t want to tell these young people what they should care about I want to ask them,” said Reavis. “My role is simply to mentor, guide and help open doors. They chose drug prevention as their first initiative. They are deciding how they want to use their voices, and I’m there to help them turn those ideas into opportunities for impact.”
The invitation to perform at the October Poetry Night at the Benz provides the students with one of those opportunities.
Rather than creating a separate event for the students, the Benzaiten Center is opening the stage of its established monthly Poetry Night and giving young voices the opportunity to be featured before the broader community.
Through original poetry and spoken-word performances, the students hope to encourage conversations about drug prevention while demonstrating that young people do not have to wait until adulthood to become leaders in their communities.
The evening represents a natural next step for the National Poetry Month Youth Summit moving beyond giving young people a microphone for one day and helping them recognize what they can do with their voices once they have it.
EVENT DETAILS
Poetry Night at the Benz October Youth Feature
Wednesday, October 6
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts
1105 2nd Ave. S Lake Worth, FL 33460
