This year's judge: the Hobo Spider
Due to time constraints, and because it is sufficiently arbitrary and unconstrained by considerations such as fairness, the Hobo Spider was selected to judge this year’s limerick contest. (The entries are here.)
The Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2011 Daunting Proficiency Award both go to JANN this year, the first double award in the history of the contest. I think. I’m not sure and I can’t be arsed to go back and check.
2011 Poet I’d Most Like to Bite on the ankle award goes to Patti.
Snakebearer Award goes to Schnitzi for finding a rhyme for Ophiuchus.
2011 I Was In Your Shoe But I’m Not Anymore Award goes to Ian.
Honorable Mention goes to Michael Berry.
And, finally, this year’s winner is Joeri.
Congratulations and thanks to all participants!
Congratulations! You all were splendid. Thank you, Herr Hobo Spider, for your time and consideration.
Woo hoo! I appreciate the selection. Every year I put it off too long and only just got my entry in. In fact, I had another, which I present here, post-deadline…
Those corporate jerks down at Kaiser
Blow smoke like an Icelandic geyser.
They’re treating with shrugs
my requests for new drugs
(which are overpriced too, thanks to Pfizer).
Three cheers for first spider and el presidente
Hobo, the delight of all cognoscenti!
He’s savvy! He has a prodigious IQ,
and lots of panache, as all spiders do!
In his fancy chapeau, he’s a leader with taste!
May his orders be heeded and his views be embraced!
Surely you mean “The King’s Speech”?
This was a great contest, Mig. The topics were fun as well as challenging. I’m honored by my awards, and congratulations to the others. And, as usual, I enjoyed very much reading the other entries. The spider is very smart!
Thanks to all! I have really enjoyed your limericks. Totally agree on the Daunting Proficiency award … by the time I cook up one feeble rhyme, Jann has so many amazing entries that I slink away like a brown recluse. I mean, if that doesn’t offend the judge, who did a terrific job.
It was an honor to compete with such prolific limerick writers, and an honor to have my ankle bitten by the judge. I look forward to next year’s rematch.
Thank you, KayO, for the compliment. I’m proud of my Daunting Proficiency Award, but my hope was always that others would see my limericks and latch on to the idea that writing limericks was not such a difficult thing, and be encouraged to post more of their own. In ninth grade English class we each had to write a limerick for a homework assignment; I struggled with mine, thought it was very hard, and wasn’t happy with the result. I never even thought about writing another one until I entered Mig’s contest in 2007, and surprisingly, limerick writing seemed much easier, and lots of fun! I don’t know why, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that my father used to make my sisters and me memorize poetry to earn the privilege of watching TV; one line of poetry for each minute of TV. My father thought this was a wonderful idea, my sisters and I not so much, but we did it. And the poems we memorized were the old fashioned poems with very strict rhyming and rhythm patterns, and the unnatural, inverted word order required to get the rhyme and rhythm right. So now it seems normal to me to invert the word order for the sake of rhyme and rhythm, and I can easily see how to do it – well, that’s my theory anyway. I’m sure my father would be happy to know that I finally thought of some possible benefit from all that memorization ;-)