sherlock60 | Mrs. Hudson's Poetry Page: The Creeping Man

Welcome once again to my poetry page!

I hope each week you will read Dr. Watson’s delightful narrative and then be inspired to write a poem related to it in some way. All forms of poetry are permitted, and further down the page there is a selection you might like to consider using over the coming weeks.

Inspired by the unfortunate Professor Presbury’s desire to recapture the past, I decided to investigate a poetry form used by this community before I arrived. And so this week my featured form is the clerihew.

Wikipedia gives this definition:

A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually a famous person put in an absurd light. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes are often forced. The line length and metre are irregular.

A clerihew has the following properties:

It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people;

It has four lines of irregular length and metre (for comic effect);

The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages;

The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject's name. Bentley said that a true clerihew has to have the name "at the end of the first line", as the whole point was the skill in rhyming awkward names.

I realise many of you will already be greatly skilled at this form and so, as an extra challenge, why not try including some of your own portmanteau words—like Dr. Watson and his ‘Camford’?

Here is my example poem dedicated to someone, who though not famous, is quite well-known around Baker Street:

The excellent Mrs. Turner:
When single a wage earner.
But my girls give suitors something to burn over.
When it comes to cooks, I get quite a turnover.

As always, this is simply something to consider for the future. Any form of poetry is welcome this week—and every week! Here are a few suggestions for you:

221B verselet, abecedarian poetry, acrostic poetry, alexandrine, beeswing, blackout poetry, blues stanza, bref double, Burns stanza, call and response, chastushka, cinquain, circular poetry, clerihew, colour poems, concrete poetry, Cornish verse, curtal sonnet, diamante, doggerel, double dactyl, ekphrasis, elegiac couplet, elegiac stanza, elfje, englyn, epigram, epitaph, epulaeryu, Etheree, fable, found poetry, ghazal, haiku, Italian sonnet, kennings poem, lanturne, limerick, lyric poetry, mathnawī, palindrome poetry, pantoum, poem cycle, quintilla, renga, riddle, rime couée, Schüttelreim, sedoka, septet, sestina, sonnet, tanka, tercet, terza rima, tongue twister poetry, triangular triplet, triolet, tyburn, villanelle

Please leave all your poems inspired by The Creeping Man in the comments on this post. I look forward to seeing them!

Warm regards,

Mrs. Hudson