Tag Archives: lexington poetry month

LexPoMo 2016 Writing Challenge Stats

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This has been the best Lexington Poetry Month yet, and we can’t express how grateful we are to have such an amazing community of supportive and talented poets. We also can’t say enough good things about our sponsors, Apex Publications and The Morris Book Shop, and how much of a blessing they have been to the local writing community as well as their specific communities at large. Thank you so much!

Below are some numbers.

  • 156 poets registered for the event
  • Together, we posted 1,542 poems during the Writing Challenge
  • We commented 3,485 times on people’s poems
  • We had 8% more views than last year
  • 2,583 people came to our site from Facebook
  • Of our overall audience, 99% came from the United States
  • Of our international audience,
    • 15% came from the United Kingdom
    • 13% came from Bulgaria
    • 12% came from Canada

Once again, thank you so much for your support, and please sign up for our mailing list for information on new releases and important news from Accents Publishing!

LexPoMo 2016 Writing Challenge Sign Ups Are Open, plus 2015 Book Release

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Dear Lexington poets,

The signups for the Lexington Poetry Month 2016 Writing Challenge are currently open!

Please click here to sign up. If you signed up last year, then you will have the option to send yourself an email to register for this year.

& Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015Also, everyone is invited to our release party for & Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015, which will be tonight at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky next to Gratz Park. (If you will need parking, you may come early and get a pass from the front desk to park at a neighboring Transylvania lot).

If you are coming to the event and you participated in last year’s event, then you are invited to come and read your piece in front of a live audience. Refreshments will be served.

We hope you join us for this year’s challenge, and please come celebrate with us tonight!

& Grace Book Release Party

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& Grace: selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015We will be selling & Grace: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015 at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 6pm.

If you are one of the featured reader (please click here to see the complete list), then you are welcome to come and read your poem.

This book could not have happened without the commitment and dedication from the Lexington Poetry Month poets and the amazing community that has been supporting the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge for so long. Once again, thank you so much.

Click the Facebook Event page for more details.

When: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 @ 6PM
Where: The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 W. Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507
(859) 254-4175

Communicating with a Fat Crayon: Nettie Farris on Lexington Poetry Month, Miscommunication, and Contemporary Poetry

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Let’s talk about Fat Crayons!

Fat Crayons by Nettie FarrisYou’re a jewel!

The manuscript was produced largely during Lexington Poetry month. (I’ve produced 2 chapbooks and 1 full-length manuscript over the course of 3 Lexington Poetry Months!)

I began writing the Fat Crayon poems after I’d been writing sonnets, so they have the sonnet form embedded in them, even though they are prose. I consider them prose sonnets. I’m still using this form now, after several years, after several other series of poems have spun off. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever use a line break again, but of course the line breaks came back for The Wendy Bird Poems, so I’m not sure what I’m worried about. Maybe it’s because I feel that prose is underrated in the same way that chapbooks are underrated.   Continue reading →

& Grace: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015

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We are pleased to announce the title of the upcoming Lexington Poetry Month Anthology:

“& Grace: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015”

The title is taken from Jeremy Paden’s poem “Wreck: A Noun” which is one of the 141 poems by 141 poets featured in the anthology.

Stay tuned for more details about the cover and the release.

This Wretched Vessel is Now Available

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This Wretched VesselWe are proud to present our anthology for the Lexington Poetry Month 2014 writing challenge!

This Wretched Vessel  is a 162-page collection of poems written and submitted by a diverse group of poets during the 2014 Lexington Poetry Month, in which participants were challenged to write at least one poem a day. Our favorite poems were selected (by editors Hap Houlihan, Christopher McCurry, and Robin LaMer-Rahija) from those submitted, and the result is an emotional, courageous, and sometimes funny poetry collection featuring the work of 114 authors.

The stunning cover art was created by Theo Edmonds.

What others had to say:

As I write this, it is April, National Poetry Month, and I am thinking about Lexington’s place in National Poetry Month, and its choice to have its poetry month in June, a move that goes against the grain. Accents Publishing, the marvelous publisher of this collection, once again goes against the grain with This Wretched Vessel. Selected by three of Lexington’s fine poets, Hap Houlihan, Robin LaMer Rahija, and Christopher McCurry, this anthology is an exciting and varied gathering of poems written during Lexington Poetry Month by an exciting and varied gathering of poets—a showcase of the diverse, vibrant, new and established voices coming out of (and to) Lexington—reading This Wretched Vessel is a lot like taking a drive on a Kentucky road in the month of June—”night air sticky at our backs, we roam” (Erin Mathew’s “Calluses”); “haunches quivers” (tina andry); “The color of dry earth before a summer rain” (Jen Parks); “Ideal isolation” (Chuck Clenney).

– Julia Johnson

The complete list of poets is below, but you can also find their entries (formatted for the web) by clicking right here.

Authors

yahieisha adams, Mary Allen, tina andry, Bobby Steve Baker, Jenni B. Baker, Eduardo Ballestero, Jennifer Barricklow, Leslie Bartley, Allie Marini Batts, Elizabeth Beck, Gaby Bedetti, Maggie Brewer, Mattie Bruton, Jennifer Burchett, Joan Burke, Elizabeth Burton, Nora Burton, Linda Caldwell, Amy Camuglia, Erin Chandler, Sherry Chandler, David Cole, Deborah Adams Cooper, Sean L Corbin, Chuck Clenney, Naomi Clewett, Roger Conner, Taylor Emily Copeland, bront davis, Andrew Depew, Serena Devi, Bernie Deville, Julian DeVille, Laurel Dixon, Marta Dorton, M J Eaton, hb elam, Kate Fadick, Nettie Farris, Matt Finley, Chloe Forsting, Morghan Fuller, Duke Gatsos, Barry George, Karen George, S.R. Gollihue, Jaria Gordon, Pauletta Hansel, Marvis Lisso Hartman, Matthew Haughton, Pamela Gibbs Hirschler, Kristy Horine, Leigh Anne Hornfeldt, Sue Neufarth Howard, carole johnston, Elizabeth Kilcoyne, Robert S. King, corey kirby, Michelle Knickerbocker, Zlatna Kostova, Jim Lally, Jude Lally, Ann Neuser Lederer, George Ella Lyon, Patrick Maloney, Erin Mathews, Jay McCoy, Christopher McCurry, Chaiya Miller, Samantha Jean Moore, Ryan D. Mosley, J W Mullins, Cheyenne Neckmonster, Joseph Allen Nichols, Carmen Norris, Kristine Nowak, Bronson O’Quinn, Andres Ortiz, Pat Owen, jeremy dae paden, Rayny Palmer, Jen Parks, Catherine Perkins, Melva Sue Priddy, Robin LaMer Rahija, Katie Riley, Jonel Sallee, Douglas Self, Vijay Singh, Savannah Sipple, meadow dawn smith, MC Spam Bot, Matt Spencer, Bianca Spriggs, Jay St. Orts, Tina Parker, Liz Prather, Dennis Preston, Keith Stewart, Travis Stidham, Karah Stokes, Victoria Sullivan, Eric Scott Sutherland, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Rudy Thomas, Alexis Tipton, Beatrice Underwood-Sweet, Milena Valkanova, Maggie Wells, Shuntella Whitfield, K. Nicole Wilson, J. Wise, Tyler Worthington

Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge 2015

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The sign-ups have officially started for the 2015 Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge! Just click here.

For those who don’t know, June is Lexington Poetry Month (or “LexPoMo” as the kids might say). LexPoMo was founded by Hap Houlihan and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer in 2013 as a month-long community-wide celebration of poetry, and June was officially declared “Lexington Poetry Month” by Mayor Jim Gray in 2013.

The LexPoMo Writing Challenge takes place on the Accents Blog and challenges everyone to write a poem every day during the month of June. That’s one new poem every single day! And if you want, you may submit that poem to be published on the Accents Blog. You don’t have to submit every day, but if you submit at least five poems, then one of your poems will be chosen to be printed in an annual anthology. Our first anthology, Her Limestone Bones, came out on April 15th, 2014. We will be having a release party for the newest anthology at The Carnegie Center on May 28.

So if you’d like to sign up for this year’s LexPoMo Writing Challenge, you can click here and fill out the information. If you’d like more information about the writing challenge, check out this page of Frequently Asked Questions. And if you’d like to see who’s already signed up, check out this page!

And if you have any questions—or would like us to mention a LexPoMo event you’ve planned—please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can write to the blog administrator, Bronson, by filling out a form on this page.

Lexington Poetry Month 2013

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Every June is Lexington Poetry Month, and the Accents Blog hosts the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge. The Challenge encourages Lexington’s brilliant voices to express themselves, and challenges everyone to write a poem every day throughout the month of June. At the end of the month, the Lexington Public Library’s Farish Theater hosts a reading with some of the participants. Continue reading →