How to Write a Limerick

Video Transcript

"Hi', I'm Laura from YoungWritersWorkshops.com. I'm going to talk about how to write a limerick. Now a limerick is a five line humorous poem with a really specific rhyme scheme. Lines one, two and five rhyme with each other, as do lines three and four. A limerick, besides having the specific rhyme scheme also has a certain amount of stresses within stressed syllables. So lines one, two and five in the limerick have three stressed syllables, where lines three and four have two stressed syllables. To give you a little bit better idea of what a limerick, how that all translates and how it sounds, I'd like to just read a limerick. This one was written by Edward Leer. He's a eighteenth century poet, American poet. It goes like this. There was a young lady of Portugal whose ideas were excessively nautical. She climbed up a tree to examine the sea, but declared she would not leave Portugal. So as you noticed, the first, second and fifth line all rhyme. So there's a little bit of a stretch of a rhyme, and then lines three and four also rhyme. Sea and tree. Those lines three and four are a little bit shorter than the other lines. So just to keep in mind a few things about writing a limerick. Come up with a humorous subject, follow the rhyme scheme and use the right amount of stressed syllables in for each line. And that's how you write a limerick."