Best of Boston

Forget tepid evenings of meek verse and golf-clap applause. H.O.P.E. Inc.’s poetry is a full-contact sport. Every month at Dudley Café, the group’s performers work the room, spitting raw rhymes. The audience explodes in applause at particularly pleasing verbal gymnastics—sometimes even chanting along—between bites of soulful cuisine dished out by global street-food pop-up Chop Bar.