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.
For more information, check out our About page.
Yes. Every year requires you register because you’re agreeing to participate in a new event, much like you need to register for every marathon you enter.
You may use your same email address and log in before registering. However, you must enter a new Pen Name (if you use one), profile picture, Bio, and “Reason for Signing Up”. This is because we want your information to be up-to-date, but also because not everyone chooses to write under their real name and wants to protect their identity.
If you experience an error, please go to the Contact page and fill out the form with as much information as you can. We will try to correct the issue as soon as we are able. Please allow up to 48 hours before sending a follow-up response.
We currently have one Lexington-based web developer working on the site and we don’t outsource our tech/customer support, so we appreciate your patience and understanding in remedying any issues.
The Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge has been offered free since 2013. Please check out our Support page for ways you can help keep the event running, including donating to our Patreon, sharing our site on social media, and participating in the event.
According to US copyright law, all works are technically copyrighted “as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression.” For our purposes, this means it is copyrighted as soon as you submit the poem through the site’s text form.
As far as who owns the copyright, you maintain the copyright to all of your poems submitted to this website. The copyright text in our website’s footer refers to the website itself, i.e. the structure, code, layout, original text (like this FAQ), etc. We do not, nor do we intend to, claim ownership to your creative works.
That being said, by agreeing to the the terms of service, you give us permission to copy these poems for our printed anthology. In other words, you give us a “license” to copy your poem onto this website and in the aforementioned book.
However, most people who ask this question aren’t asking about copyright; they are asking about copyright violations. If you actually mean “How do I prevent someone from copying my poems?” the answer is “You can’t.” Once a poem is published anywhere, it can be copied by anyone with access to the words, even if they have to transcribe them by hand. There exists no technology that could meaningfully prevent someone from copying a poem from a website.
If your question is actually “How do I defend my work if it is stolen?” then we recommend consulting a lawyer. In the US, copyrights must be defended by their creators, which gives an advantage to large corporations who can afford legal teams to do this full-time. While we don’t have the resources to defend each and every poet’s copyright for each poem posted, we would hate to see our platform used to exploit any of our participants. So if you believe someone is using work you’ve posted to this site, please use the contact form and let us know.