Limericks

Last night I taught a class on poetry as part of the 10 week beginners creative writing evening class I'm currently teaching at Leith Academy. I used the limerick as an accessible poetic form to start with, the get people thinking about rhthym and rhyme, plus it's short so you can write one quite quickly. The first class exercise was to write a limerick that starts in the general form: 'There once was a (person) from (place)'. Here's my attempt:

There once was a woman from Worsley
who wanted to learn how to ski
so she went to Hillend
but slipped on a bend
and got a big bruise on her knee.

(which is more or less what happened to me when I tried to learn to ski, a project I gave up on more or less immediately).

And (given that limericks can be strangely addictive) here's another, written now as Storm / Hurricane Abigail makes herself known

There was a hurricane called Abigail
she was bigger by far than a gale
When she hit the Uk
well what can i say@
We were hit pretty hard by her tail.

(As I write there is no major damage that I'm aware of in Edinburgh) 

If you like writing limericks, you may want to join in Mad Kane's weekly Limerick prompt.

Next term, I'm teaching an 8 week compressed version of the same beginners' creative writing class. Bookings open on 9 December and I'll post details of how to book on this blog at that time!