Welcome to the second half of the month! Whether you write and post every day or write, agonize, and revise to post only the 5 poems required to be considered for publication, you’ve contributed to the 1,700+ poems already posted this month.

Each June, I’m amazed by you all. If this is your first time writing with us, thank you for trusting us with your writing. If you’ve been with us for years, know that you’ve built an inviting safe community for people to create and explore life through poetry.

A short anecdote before I let you get back to your line breaks: I was in a non-poetry related meeting, when I happened to mention Lexington Poetry Month (as I often do during June), and one of the members of the meeting said, “Do you mean LexPoMo?!” He was just as excited to talk about it as I was. Funny thing though, he isn’t writing with us. He just liked “reading all the different kinds of poems.” A friend had introduced him to the site a year ago.

That floored me.

So, I invite you all to share the work you are doing this month those around you who may not write or even read poetry, you never know what could happen. And for the second half of this month of writing, ask yourself: what evokes awe and wonder in your life?

Chris

Head on over to the Sign-Up page, if you haven’t already, and join our 11th consecutive Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge.

Howdy Poets! It’s the holiday season so here’s a little gift: a poem of yours has been selected to be published in the 2022 Lexington Poetry Month Anthology! You can scroll down and see all the poems selected (or crtl+f the name you wrote under last June to find yours). Thank you for writing with us last June, and if you feel like it, consider supporting our community through our Patreon Page!

Pauletta Hansel has made her choices for the 2021 anthology! Checkout which of your poems will be published in the print anthology and join the ever growing number of poets supporting the publication of this anthology, chapbooks, and a new literary journal called Yearling by becoming a Workhorse Writer on Patreon!

Don’t see badges for all the years you’ve participated? Well, we’ve finally caught up for demand and assigned them. All you need to do is go to your Dashboard and make them visible by following these instructions:

Meet our Guest Editor: Pauletta Hansel!

Below is last year’s video with some instructions about navigating the website!

We finally added a search bar to the top of the page!

If things look broken, please clear your browser cache and refresh!

I know I’m not the only person annoyed with having to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page just to search for someone’s poems, so I finally did something about it.

You’ll also notice a “Sponsors” Section in the upper-right corner underneath the user functions:

If you’re worried that this is some corporate takeover of Lexington Poetry Month: don’t be. We’ve always listed sponsors in the footer and meant to include them somewhere else, so this is really just us finally getting it done. (However, if you would like more info about sponsorships, contact Christopher McCurry through the form on the Contact Page.)

Speaking of updates, expect several revisions in the next couple of weeks before the event. You can always see my developer change-log on the “System Updates” page. And if you experience an issue, use that same contact form to send us some feedback. It might take a few days but someone ALWAYS responds.

While the design for these new additions were technically done under the umbrella of my employer, Mediocre Creative, I’d love to give a “shout out” to Ethan Wooldridge for designing these humble features (plus a few we haven’t yet seen…) So be sure to browse his Instagram, his Behance, or some of the branding Case Studies made by Mediocre Creative.

And as always, you can support the site in myriad ways, not the least of which is donating to the Workhorse Patreon.

Now that’s enough coding for the day. Time to go write something!

– Bronson