Category Archives: prompt

Writing Challenge: “Common Object POV” by Leigh Anne Hornfeldt

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Leigh Anne reading a poem on Accents Radio.

Leigh Anne reading a poem on Accents Radio.

To start the week off proper, we thought it would be fun to have another writing challenge. Presenting today’s prompt is Kentucky native Leigh Anne Hornfeldt.

Write a poem from the perspective of a common, everyday object. What does the kitchen sink see? How does the dryer feel about being a dryer? What’s the mailbox got to say?

Post your attempt in the comments. And if today’s not your day, go ahead and give one of the other brave souls some congratulations!

Also, we want to thank everyone who contributed to our last poetry contest, courtesy of Jeremy Paden. I am consistently amazed at what our readers are doing.

Related links:

A Kentucky native, Leigh Anne Hornfeldt’s work has appeared widely in journals and placed in several contests. In 2012 she was the recipient of the Kudzu Prize in Poetry and her debut chapbook, East Main Aviary, was released through Flutter Press. Currently she is co-editing an anthology of bourbon related poetry due for publication July 2013 from Two of Cups Press.

Writing challenge: “Discarded Ideas & Revised Beliefs” by Jeremy Paden

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Jeremy Paden

Jeremy Paden, author of Broken Tulips.

Accents is all about serving the community. As such, we challenge you guys to write a poem based on the following prompt by Accents author Jeremy Paden:

The history of science is littered with discarded ideas and revised beliefs. Pick one or many and write a poem, any kind of poem you like so long as a principal metaphor and/or image of the poem is one of these discarded ideas.

For those brave souls among you, go ahead and post your work in the comments below. For those still building up the courage, congratulate your fellow poets on a job well done!

Jeremy Paden published Broken Tulips through Accents in 2013. You can check out Jeremy’s interview with Accents Junior Editor Chris McCurry by clicking here and read all of Jeremy’s submissions for Lexington Poetry Month here.

I also want to congratulate Steven Lindbergh for winning our Communion writing contest last week. He recently submitted a painting and biography in verse, which you can check out on the updated version of that announcement here.

Steven Lindbergh

Jeremy Dae Paden was born in Italy and raised in Central America and the Caribbean. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Emory. His poems have appeared in such places as the Atlanta Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, Naugatuck River Review, pluck! and Rattle, among other journals and anthologies. This is his first published collection of poems. He is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and a member of the Affrilachian Poets.

 

Writing Prompt and Chapbook Giveaway w/ Nettie Farris

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CommunionThroughout Lexington Poetry Month, we had a few prompts from celebrated poets, such as Nikky Finney, Martha Gehringer, Rebecca Gayle Howell, and Maurice Manning. The best part was watching how you all used the prompts for inspiration, crafting new poems you otherwise might never have written.

With that in mind, and to celebrate the release of our newest chapbook, we have invited Nettie Farris, author of Communion, to provide today’s prompt:

“What’s your favorite letter of the alphabet?”

Think for a moment, write down a poem, and then post it in the comments section below. And best of all, whoever’s (whomever’s?) poem Nettie likes most gets a free copy of Communion courtesy of Accents Publishing.

So bust out the pens and get to it!

(The deadline for this contest is 11:59PM on this upcoming Saturday, July 13th. The winner will be announced early next week.)

Note: We moderate comments to avoid spambots, so if you’ve never left a comment here before, it might take a few hours for the comment to appear on the blog.

Friday’s Prompt #4: “Sevens”

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The following is a message from Lexington Poetry Month co-founder and overall nice guy, Hap Houlihan.

Hello Gang,

As we wind into the final days of LexPoMo, I want to thank everyone for participating. It’s been a great experience for me, and I hope for you as well. I hope to see each of you at Morris Book Shop for Frank X Walker’s reading at 4:00 and that you’ll stay to share your own work at the LexPoMo Finale Reading at 5:00.

Tomorrow’s prompt comes from Transylvania professor, Yale Younger Poet, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Maurice Manning. Maurice’s most recent collection, The Gone and the Going Away, is quickly becoming one of my favorite books to dip into.

Maurice doesn’t always play by the rules: when I asked him for a one-word prompt, this was his reply:

A few weeks ago at Transy I asked my students to do a writing assignment I called 7 X 7. I made a grid of seven by seven and asked students to fill in each square with “something” so that the completed grid made sense. Some students put a word in each square, others drew a little picture or symbol. I had originally thought they could place a syllable in each square so that the completed grid would have 49 syllables–7 lines and 7 syllables per line. I like making up these little puzzles and have found my students enjoy the exercise as well and in fact come up with finished poems they admire.


So, please feel free to adapt this little exercise however you see fit. Otherwise, you could simply send the one-word prompt, Sevens.


I hope that suits! I expect the LexPoMo Writing Challenge will be a big success.

Soooo, now you have a challenging prompt from one of America’s leading poets. Will you answer the call, or are you just a great big chicken? OK, that’s not fair, but I do hope you’ll step up and create a 7X7 masterpiece.

Have a wonderful weekend and I hope to see you on Sunday!
Cheers,
Hap

Friday’s Prompt #3: Grace

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The following is a message from Lexington Poetry Month co-founder and upstanding gentleman, Hap Houlihan.

Greetings Poets,

It’s Friday Prompt time! The Severance prompts from last week inspired some solid work—Thanks, Martha Gehringer!

This week’s prompt is sent to us by Rebecca Gayle Howell. Rebecca is currently pursuing a PhD at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, but she calls Lexington home. Her powerful debut collection from earlier this year is Render / An Apocalypse, and she has a beautiful chapbook published by Larkspur Press entitled The Hatchet Buddha. Rebecca’s translation of Amal al-Jubouri’s Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation was listed by Library Journal as a Best Book of 2011 and was a finalist for Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award.

Rebecca’s prompt is Grace. Let’s all see how much grace we can exhibit for the hungry readers of Lexington…

Have a great weekend,
Hap

Friday’s Prompt #2: Severance

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The following is a message from Lexington Poetry Month co-founder and Morris book shop manager Hap Houlihan.

Howdy Poets,

It’s time again for the Friday Prompt—a little late this week, sorry. Note that this prompt is yours to use or ignore: no points will be deducted. Last week’s prompt produced some great results, so do please consider playing along.

Today’s prompt is from Martha Gehringer. Martha has taught creative writing and poetry for over 35 years. She’s at the center of Transylvania University’s writing universe: Martha founded Transy’s Writing Center and served as its director for over 20 years; she co-founded Transy’s writing, rhetoric, and communication program; and is an integral part of their First Year Seminar Program. Her poetic work appears most recently in Accents Publishing’s 2011 compilation Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems.

Martha’s prompt is Severance. Get your fertile minds around that one, and don’t forget to check back to see what everyone else came up with on this theme.

Have a great weekend,
Hap

Friday’s Prompt #1: Succor

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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!