#AandIPoetryChallenge: Aug 2018 – let’s write a limerick

New Zealand blogger and writer, Ineke, from I scrap 2 and blogger, Amanda, from Something to Ponder About in Australia are jointly hosting the A and I Poetry Challenge in English and Afrikaans, in the WordPress community.

For the month of July I decided to try my hand at writing a limerick, but due to time, connectivity and other constraints, I never published the poem and only finished it today.

What I actually said to myself (back in July) was: “Myself, let’s write a limerick. It is a short humorous poem, meaning that you can write it in no time and you can always use some humour to cheer yourself up”.

So, I followed the usual route and went googling. I found a lot of conflicting information but in the end, I decided that I could live with the following:

• A limerick is a short, humorous poem which is often bawdy or non-sensical. (No, no, opines someone else, the poem can be a little naughty but stay away from the obscene and the vulgar and remember! a non-sensical poem is not always a limerick.) O well, mine is a blog for the whole family, which means that I’ll behave myself.
• The poem tells a simple story, usually about a person and a place.
• The limerick follows a particular form:
  • It is a five-line verse with a determined rhyme scheme of AABBA;
  • The first, second and fifth lines contain 7-10 syllables; the third and fourth lines are shorter and have 5-7 syllables each (there were differences of opinion about the syllable count); and
  • All lines have the same verbal rhythm [ta-TUM-ta-ta-TUM-ta-ta-TUM=(ta)]

Two weeks later I was still trying to fit a few words into the desired form. Let me tell you, this is a difficult art form (for me, that is) and I have new found respect for poets who write these poems.

This is what I came up with: