Lexington Poetry Month (#LexPoMo) is a month-long celebration of all things poetry in Lexington, Kentucky. Everyone in the community is welcome to use the phrase “Lexington Poetry Month” for any events or activities.
#LexPoMo was founded in 2013 by Hap Houlihan and Katerina Stoykova. On June 30th, 2013, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray declared June as “Lexington Poetry Month”.
Lexington Poetry Month is often conflated with the LexPoMo Writing Challenge, since they were founded by the same people and have continued for just as long. But they are (technically) different ideas and events.
The #LexPoMo Writing Challenge is an annual event during June where all participants are challenged to write a poem every day and (if they want) post it to the blog. Poems appear on the homepage and other members of the community can comment on your poem.
If you post at least five (5) poems during LexPoMo, your poems will be reviewed by a guest editor for inclusion in an annual anthology. The editor picks one poem, using their own criteria and discretion, from each poet1. If our publisher – Workhorse – has raised enough money for the year, then each published poet will receive a free copy of the anthology.
For more information, please consult our Frequently Asked Questions or send us a message.
The #LexPoMo Writing Challenge was hosted on the Accents Publishing Blog from 2013-2016. Poems were emailed directly to an account monitored by Accents intern Bronson O’Quinn, who manually posted them to the site. After the first year, Bronson taught himself to code to make the process easier on himself and is now a web developer at Mediocre Creative.
In 2017, the responsibility of hosting the event was handed to Workhorse, a local initiative of writers founded by Accents interns Christopher McCurry and Robin LaMer-Rahija. Workhorse is home to The Gauntlet writing workshop and is currently operated by Christopher.
Rayny Palmer joined Workhorse and the LexPoMo Writing Challenge in 2022 for the 10th anniversary where he started answering contact form submissions and remedying any issues in the site’s “backend”.
Check out our Participants by year and the associated Anthology: