Well, some of you certainly enjoyed last week’s writing challenge – Keith Channing! Scroll down to read some simply brilliant limericks.
This week’s writing challenge will gradually wean Keith off the limericks – it’s for a rhyming poem. Not every line has to rhyme, but they can if you like. It can be as short or as long as you like. Have fun!
Now you’re in for a treat:
Here are limerick king, Keith Channing‘s superb entries:
A feisty young female Etruscan
Wants to visit her cousin, a Tuscan
The rail line has blocks
From the fall of some rocks
So the train can’t get through; but a bus can.
***
I really did not have a clue
When asked for a lim’rick or two
So just as before
I started with four
And ended up with quite a few
***
The first to come out was okay
Though its content was really quite fey
Lines three and four rhyme
Well they do most the time
And that’s what is needed today
***
The next needed oodles of planning
As the poetic flames we were fanning
I pored o’er the metre
Drinking wine by the litre
I’ve forgotten my name; is it Channing?
***
I’m trying to write these for Esther
Whose home is in Berkshire, not Leicester
When she asks for this stuff
I go off in a huff
Like the Chester investor, Sylvester
***
I was hoping to find that hypnosis
Could help to relieve my psychosis
I asked Doc, “Will it work?”
He said, “Don’t be a jerk,
I can’t even give a prognosis.”
***
Un jeune auvergnat, je crois
A construit une maison en bois.
Quand l’hiver était dur
Il a brûlé les murs
Aujourd’hui il ne reste qu’un toit
***
Writing a lim’rick in French
Has a bit of a pretentious stench
Although it was tough
I think one was enough
Any more would prove too much a wrench.
***
Though most of my friends are conniving
To spend the whole evening jiving
I’ll have to write
For the rest of the night
Or I’ll be accused of skiving
***
So in front of my laptop I’ll sit
And edit my book bit by bit
Revising this draft
Is driving me daft
But I hope it will end up well writ
***
The news that I wanted a BAFTA
Prompted derogatory laughter
My film about Tosca
Was up for an Oscar
But that wasn’t what I was after.
***
Melanie went paragliding
While Jim Reeves sang about worlds colliding
The papers said Melanie
Had committed a felony
So she had to go into hiding.
***
The limerick moves with the times
While committing poetical crimes
But don’t count the cost
Or the meaning that’s lost
As long as the bloody thing rhymes
***
We started with something quite smelly
Followed by tinned fruit and jelly
Now both of the dogs
Are sleeping like logs
So we can sit back and watch telly
***
I once tried to eat andouillette
An experience I’d rather forget
It’s not haute cuisine
Tasting mid-way between
Tripe and something that died at the vet
***
When writing a lim’rick on cooking
I suddenly found myself looking
For a word to rhyme kitchen
Not bitchin’ or Hitchin
But something a little more hooking
***
When dealing with things theoretical
Don’t stray into regions heretical
You’ll anger the purists
While tickling the tourists
With expressions apologetical
***
If you find your beliefs disrespected
Don’t say that you just not affected
But sit round the table
As far as you’re able
And show we are interconnected
***
An overweight parliamentarian
Was reputedly disciplinarian
But it gave him some pause
When his favourite clause
Was described as completely barbarian
***
An eminent Harvard historian
While speaking in tones stentorian
Announced in a holler
“Why, I’m such a scholar,
They made me the valedictorian”
***
A priest who was octogenarian
Felt a calling to be vegetarian
He stopped eating meats
Lived on veggies and beets
And on various products agrarian
Naomi Harvey took up the challenge with a very entertaining limerick:
There once was a girl from the Shire
Whose writing practice was quite dire
She got quite a kick
Writing a Lymerick
Now her imagination’s on fire!
I’ll let Geoff Le Pard explain for himself:
Some of my father’s own or favourites (you will understand the man from these)
‘Fresh nose pickings,’ said Mrs McGroar
‘Can have practical uses galore
Fr’instance by folding
And carefully moulding
You can make condoms, cheap, for the poor.’
A non rhymer and non scanner…
There was a young lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in the lake
A man in a punt
Stuck a pole in her ear
And said, ‘You can’t swim here; it’s private
Jasdeep Kaur started with an ode to Keith and then soon found herself addicted:
Keith is definitely a limerick king,
whose limericks made me smile and sing.
I wonder though
where did he go
to fetch his magical golden ring!
***
Something mysterious held me back,
but now I’ve unbound my sack;
hope to never fail
or lose my trail.
It’s so difficult to keep our life on track.
***
Roses are red and violets are blue.
It’s so wonderful if the love is true.
But keep my warning.
It made Prince Charming
run in his palace carrying Cinderella’s shoe.
***
There’s no limerick without a pun,
rhyming trios and the element of fun,
the Duos with subtlety
placed within trinity
and the finale like a bullet from a gun.
Esther Chilton 
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