Dear Lexington Poets,

We at Accents Publishing cannot be prouder of the participants in Lexington Poetry Month. The month is just over halfway finished and we have published over 600 poems from Lexingtonians and Lexington lovers.

For a brief update, here are a few statistics for those of you who are into that sort of thing:

•  82 poets have registered for Lexington Poetry Month.
• Those participants (aka, you guys!) have submitted 613 poems.
• 22 participants have already submitted the minimum required ten poems.
• Of those participants, 11 poets have submitted a poem every single day!

And out of 82 participants, only 4 have not submitted any poems yet. But fortunately for those proud procrastinators, there’s still time! Because it’s only the 17th, that means there are 14 more days (including today) to get your best ten LPM poems submitted.

June 15th was the deadline for notifying us if you did not want your submitted poems used in a future Accents book compiling our favorite Lexington Poetry Month poems. Because I’m a nice guy (and don’t know when enough is enough), I’ll gladly extend that until the 20th. (Of course, this is against the official rules, so don’t tell Katerina or Hap that I’m doing this. Shhh!)

Speaking of rules, there are a few rules and technical issues I want to clarify:

• Each participant is allowed to submit at most one poem per day. If you write seven poems in one day, that’s awesome, but only submit one at a time. This is for your benefit, so we can more easily keep track of your progress and don’t lose any of your poems.
• While we try to keep the posts in order of submission, technical problems and human error occasionally rear their ugly heads. So if you see several submissions from the same poet in a row, it’s probably because I made a mistake. Sorry!
• The date on the poem’s blog post does not always correspond to the date the poem was submitted. If you submitted your poem on June 14th, but the post says June 15th, don’t worry: we have it recorded as June 14th.
• This isn’t an official rule, but try to include your preferred name with every poem submitted. With 82 people, it’s difficult to correctly attribute people I know in real life, let alone people I’ve never met. Fortunately, I know most of your names by now. Unfortunately, I might not be the only one posting your poems, so if your e-mail says Jane Doe but you prefer to go by Janet R. Doe, Jr., then please sign Janet R. Doe, Jr. at the bottom of each submission.

Rules aside, we want to thank you once again for everything you’ve done this month. Seriously, what the whole community has accomplished is truly amazing. We are proud and you should be, too.

And while I began this post thanking y’all on behalf of Accents Publishing, I personally want to thank everyone for their support. The kind words you guys have given in e-mails and comments, both to me and each other, is what makes an event like this worth doing. It’s a testament to the kindness and nurturing energy of our beautiful community. So seriously, thank you all so very much!

Blog Editor-in-Chief,

Bronson O’Quinn