Yesterday we showed you Teen Poets in Lexington as they competed to win the title of Lexington Youth Poet Laureate.

Back in February, Zoya Arbus, the new Lexington Youth poet laureate, is only the second teen to hold the title.

Well, today we bring you the first teen poet to be in this position, Cattani Editor J. I'm going to continue to use the experience I had as Lexington Youth Poet Laureate for a building block for the rest of my life.

First time I wrote a poem was around elementary school.

The more and more I wrote, the more and more I just enjoyed it.

And I found so much love and so much expression within each piece that I write.

But I think it's also a tool.

A Carnegie Center has long been the place for developing your voice and for writing books and poetry.

But we found that there was another opportunity that we could provide with youth poets to elevate young voices with the urban word.

And we really wanted to part with them to show young people that they can engage in their community and be poets today.

I did a lot of speaking.

I got to meet so many great and amazing people.

I met Chris Crystal Wilkinson, the previous Kentucky youth poet laureate, and I read Damaris Ho.

She has like three published books of poetry, and I got to interact with these great people and just have them give me advice or have them listen to my poetry, which really introduced to me the type of impact writing can have on people and the type of importance writing has on your community and society.

It's also important to write for yourself and then you write for yourself and you understand yourself, and then you can also share that understanding with the people around you.

And when you share with other people, there becomes a connection.

It takes a lot of courage and bravery to stand up in front of an audience of not only your peers, but maybe some folks that you've really looked up to and you aspire to be.

And for them to have that courage and bravery to stand and deliver something, not just something that they think, but something they truly feel and something that maybe is a part of them that is scary to talk about or uncomfortable.

That's what poetry is all about.

I definitely think my poetry has grown since the position.

To me right now, it's about making sure that my poetry has meaning.

I write about different topics.

I write a lot about race and how that affects me, but also like historical racial inequality.

I'm definitely not who I was at beginning of high school, and I think I've grown along not just as a poet, but also just as a person.

Because I've matured, I've learned what it is, you know, to talk to people, to connect to people, to use people as resources, to enjoy yourself, even if it's kind of a stressful situation.

I'm very grateful for all the black poets, all the poets of color, all the LGBTQ plus poets in Kentucky, because their stories are being told and they're being heard around us.

A lot of times in society, people of color have had a way of assimilating or keeping themselves quiet.

But when you see other people sharing their voices and sharing their stories, it makes you want to share your voice and your stories well.

And the more people we have, sharing what they got, sharing what they go through, the more awareness we can have and the more the more opportunities we have to fight all the injustices around us.

Congratulations to her, of course.

And March guitar and placed first in the Young Black Voices Writing contest put on by the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.