Limerick Competition

Closing soon! 31st October!

The Oxfam Limerick Quest: make us laugh and help Oxfam at the same time!

If you fancy yourself as a poet – or even if you don’t – book in now.

Email owf.wells@gmail.com.

After all, what do you have to lose, apart from your literary reputation? There will be cash prizes for the three entries our poet-judge considers the most poetic, the most droll, the most outrageous.

For just £5 the Limerick you are just going to write may earn you a pitifully small cash prize. Ama Bolton, convener of Wells Fountain Poets, will judge the entries, and we shall then be rewarding the authors of the top three.

To accept the challenge you need to do two things.

1          Send your entry fee to the Mid Somerset Oxfam Group, £5 for each Limerick you submit.            You may do this:

•           by cheque – make it out to Mid Somerset Oxfam Group and send it to the MSOG Treasurer,             Richard Corp, Strawberry Cottage, Church Street, Cheddar BS27 3RA,

•           or by bank transfer – Mid Somerset Oxfam Group; sort code 60 23 06; a/c number            75130289; reference Limericks.

2          Email your Limerick(s) to owf.wells@gmail.com. Job done!

Your five-line Limerick(s) should follow the traditional rhyme and rhythm patterns, for example

There was a young fellow from Spain
who fell down a fifty-foot drain.
The police said ‘Don’t mope,
for we have this long rope,
and tomorrow they’ll bring us the crane.’

There are no rules about subject matter, other than that it should not be libellous. Hilarious? Of course. Provocative? OK. Saucy, fine. Sexy, careful. Pornographic, no! no! Practice tells us that having established your theme, rhyming pattern and first line, you would do well to nail the last line before filling in the middle.

The deadline for entries is 31st October. All entries will be judged by a local published poet, then MSOG will allocate 20% of the entry fee total for three prizes. One of them could be yours. Oh yes!

Send an extra £2, to cover p. & p., and we’ll send you a copy of The MSOG Limerick Quest published in 2021. This is an anthology of Limericks written by over 50 budding poets, and may be safely described as a mosaic of sublime verse, terrible gibberish and much else in between.

We may feel moved to share hilarity by occasionally including a limerick on the MSOG website or in local newspapers; please say if you don’t want yours to be published, or if you don’t want your name to be published.

Thank you for joining us in a bit of honest fun – and all in a good cause. Every penny we make from this modest venture will go to Oxfam to help and support the poorest communities in the world as they face up to the challenges of their lives.