Students at Lafayette Parish Juvenile Correctional Center are transforming their written diaries into a piece of art for the entire community to see.

Alex Johnson, also known as PoeticSoul, was hired by the Lafayette Parish School System nearly four years ago to conduct poetry workshops with students incarcerated.

Johnson and her students created a spoken-word performance and video. Each student contributed to a group poem, which Johnson read on camera.

“When I hear click-clack, I think about my life. I’m hungry as a pit bull and money is like food,” Johnson read the opening line.

The students writing speaks on pain, anger and hardship during their upbringings.

“If you go to the hood in the summer time, you may find some angry people. The AC may not be working. No, the landlord does not care,” said Johnson as she describes the struggles of living in low-income communities.

Johnson believes neighborhoods filled with crime and drugs are putting more teens at-risk and behind bars daily.

“Recognizing that we have the tools of figurative writing. Poetic devices. Metaphors. Similes,” Johnson added.

Students spent almost a year writing their emotions on paper as a coping mechanism and that’s when the poem began flourishing. 

“I used to be in poverty, but now people think I’m infamous. Untamed. But my future is true and it’s bright as light,” Johnson continues to read.

“Eyes of the Sun,” is the title of the piece that recently won the 24-Hour Citizen Project. For the third time in 2018, the Citizen project matched people with community focused ideas with experts and financial backers who could turn them into reality.

“It’s Their attempt to self reflect. Address their personal issue and heal from it,” said Johnson.

“This wall is people in our community coping. Expressing motivational ideas and thoughts and words and images,” she added.

The mural will also be at Meches Donuts on Willow Street in Lafayette. Workshops are held at the Martin Luther King Center to educate the community on the project.