Thanks for the limericks
Limericks have been flowing in – mainly through my Facebook pages – and I’ve had a lot of fun reading them as I travelled around Ireland over the past nearly two weeks.
Now, I’m home and it’s time to pick a winner. There were a couple of clear contenders, my decision helped by the number of “likes” for them on Facebook.
While wandering around the city of Limerick for a few days, I came across a few limericks (like the one pictured above, on the wall of a pub) and also found that limerick-writing is alive and well, and being promoted during Limericks’ 2014 City of Culture events.
As part of Limerick’s Summer Literary Festival incorporating the Bring Your Limericks to Limerick International Poetry Competition 2014, which takes place on July 19, a series of creative writing workshops will be hosted by The Limerick Writers’ Centre at the University of Limerick. So if you find yourself in Limerick at that time…sign up and learn how to write a great limerick.
The city is also about to launch Limerick’s Limericks, an interactive walking trail with 10 points of interest. At each location, there is a “Limerick’s Limericks” poem explaining the history of the location. To walk the trail you just need to download a QR Code Reader to your smartphone from either The Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store. Unfortunately, I arrived about a week too early to do this!
Many of my friends who tried their hand at writing a limerick about me and my travels focussed on quite specific and personal connections we have. That made me smile, but probably meant little to other people!
One that I liked a lot was from my new friend Marianne Vanderauwera, a Belgian journalist who I met a few weeks ago in Switzerland. Marianne submitted a couple of limericks, but this was the one that I loved:
There once was a Kiwi called Lee
She travelled the oceans and the sea
She never got lost
Whatever the cost
She flew like a bird wild and free
But the clear winner was my old school friend Penny Ramsdale, a senior editor at Scholastic New Zealand. Penny’s secret desire seems to be a travel writer, despite the fact I keep telling her that she only sees the interesting and exciting bits of it! Here’s her winning entry:
There once was a writer called Lee,
Whose life was as sweet as can be,
If she weren’t flitting here,
She’d be flitting elsewhere,
Oh, lord, why couldn’t it be me!
Congratulations, Penny…a copy of my book A Glass Half Full and other travel stories will be winging its way across the Tasman Sea to you in the next couple of days.
And now it’s back to my desk, head down for a few weeks while I catch up on writing – and that includes blogging about my various travels over the past couple of months. Stay tuned for posts about everywhere from Western Australia to the wonderful Whitsundays, Switzerland, Ireland, England and more!
A Glass Half Full 
5 Responses to “Thanks for the limericks”
I simply loved your limerick competition. What a clever idea!
Thanks Goddess! It was fun, and great to see so many people having a go!
Great idea! Limmericks are such fun!
Shame you didn’t enter, Jane! It was fun to read them all…but hard to pick the winner.
This made me smile. I got to visit Limerick last fall and took part in a limerick writing contest. It was fun to hear all the different zingers people came up with. Makes me wish I could go back and experience Limerick again.