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On February 7th, at 7:00pm, Lanza’s cafe was packed with people spilling off couches and seats, crowding tables, all looking towards a single microphone. Among them, youth poets from local high schools waited for their turn to speak about environmental issues at the EcoPoetry event titled EcoHopeful. This workshop and subsequent performance is just another example of the rapidly growing poetry community at Carrboro High, with other events such as the Poetry Out Loud and Poet Laureate competitions garnering more participation, as well as West End Poetry Festival involvement from students at the school. 

The event included a Saturday workshop with Carrboro Poet Laureate Liza Wolff-Francis, where participants discussed environmentalism with a focus on hope, then created poems to read at the public event at Lanza’s Cafe the following Friday. 

To many of the youth, the environmental aspect was a large factor in their participation in not just EcoPoetry, but also poetry as a whole. Ever Harris, a sophomore at Carrboro High and prolific poet, said she was drawn to the event because “two of my greatest passions [are] poetry and also environmentalism because it's just such a growing problem that never seems to stop escalating. And so I just found it important to express my concerns in a way that I know well.” 

“Poetry is political…all art's political, there's always going to be a bias, a perspective, a message that an author has and [poetry is] just another art form that people can use to express their beliefs, and to reach a broader audience,” said Hannah Reeves-Cowell, Carrboro High’s Poet Laureate and a participant in the EcoPoetry event.

Both Reeves-Cowell and Harris are very active in the local poetry community. Reeves-Cowell performed at the West End Poetry Festival and championed poetry events in her role as poet laureate. Harris participated in last year’s EcoPoetry event and multiple poetry competitions. She has also taken multiple Creative Writing courses at Carrboro High and focused on poetry throughout them. 

The focus on poetry at Carrboro is deeply entwined with youth poetry involvement: “Sometimes youth poets can see things that adult poets maybe don't even notice or see, or don't feel like they have a voice to talk about. And often poetry is a good way to speak about these things, and youth poets bring in what they see, and what they feel, and what they notice, what they learn, all the things, into the poetry without a lot of fear. And I think [it] really just makes for a stronger poetic voice,” said Wolff-Francis.

Youth poets themselves agreed with Wolff-Francis, with Reeves-Cowell stating, “Someone who's younger is gonna have a more plastic view on life, they're gonna have more hope, maybe, they're not sort of cemented in their views and their ideologies, maybe prejudice, bias… kids are gonna be more hopeful, they're gonna have more welcomeness, more opportunity to kind of adopt new ideas.”

The evolving nature of the Carrboro High Creative Writing classes may also be part of the increase in youth poets. Creative Writing 1 began in the 2022-2023 school year, and has since expanded to Creative Writing 2, and, starting in the 2025-2026 school year, Creative Writing 3. 

Ms. Harris, the Creative Writing teacher, said that how she approaches poetry in the popular class has changed over time, “When I teach Creative Writing 1, we have a poetry unit, and I used to format [it] where everyone had to write poetry. And then I realized that there's genuinely space for both creators and curators.”

As the poet laureate competition continues, with the finalists having just finished their three day field trip, and the Poetry Out Loud winner and runner up preparing to compete at regionals, it seems Carrboro High may just be getting started in fostering a flourishing poetry community.