The following is a message from Lexington Poetry Month co-founder, Hap Houlihan!

First of all, thank you for your great contributions. The poetry is flowing, and we will have created a truly impressive body of work by month’s end.

Each Friday in June (Thursday night, to be precise), I will send out a writing prompt to all the Writing Challenge participants. The prompts will come from one of the many great poetic educators that hail from the area.

You are completely free to ignore this prompt and write upon whatever subject suits you, but it should be fun to see the diverse results of a bunch of us writing on one subject, so please consider playing along!

Tomorrow’s prompt comes from Nikky Finney. For those of you recently rescued from a desert island, Nikky is the author of Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for poetry in 2011. For the past two decades, she has taught English and creative writing at the University of Kentucky, and we wish her continued joy and success as she returns to her native ground to teach at the University of South Carolina later this year.

Nikky supports our efforts during the Writing Challenge, and offers this one-word prompt as inspiration: “Succor.” Incidentally, Nikky will deliver the keynote address at tomorrow’s Books-In-Progress Conference at the Carnegie Center, which is a great opportunity for writers of all stripes to improve their craft…

I can’t wait to see how this prompt affects our work tomorrow. Now, get back to work!