Last Saturday, high school poets from communities throughout Monterey County, their families, friends, and teachers gathered at the Library. The event was a Library-sponsored reading by the award-winning poets of this year’s Robert Campbell Monterey High School Poetry competition, a project of the Carl Cherry Center of the Arts.

The Library engages the community in the literary arts all year round, but this event is a special opportunity to bring people together in a celebration of poetry, to hear a new generation of creative voices, and to publicly recognize the achievements of these talented and courageous young writers. The poems of thirty-three teenage poets were selected from about 350 submissions to this year’s competition. Each of the award winners read their poem aloud and received certificates, book awards, and cash prizes.

Thanks our friends at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts for allowing us to host this special event, and another big "thank you" to the Friends of the Monterey Public Library for providing funds for cash prizes. Congratulations to all of the award-winning teen poets. Keep on writing!