Clerihews are simple poems. They were created by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who also has the distinction of having one of the oddest middle names of all time, when he was a teenager. Essentially, they are four line “biographical” poems about an individual. They’re biographical in that, typically, they have at least one major fact about the person, though it’s usually played off in a humorous manner. They rhyme, in an AABB pattern, and the lines should be noticeably different in length and even meter. The first line is traditionally the subject’s name.
This form has a lot in common with the double dactyl, which, as that’s one of my favorite forms, might be why I enjoy clerihews so much. Both the clerihew and the double dactyl are semi-biographical poems and both are humorous light verse. Oddly enough, these forms are also the only two major and popular forms coming out of the twentieth century. That’s not to say that other forms weren’t created during the last century; I can think of a couple off of the top of my head, such as the dream song and the double exposure poems. But, most of those were only written by a poet or two, while plenty of poets write double dactyls and clerihews. Most other well-known forms that exist today can trace their roots to much older times. To me, it’s quite interesting that these two similar forms (at least similar in substance) are the only established forms to come out of the whirlwind that was twentieth-century poetry.
Clerihews are yet another form I became acquainted with through a college course. Honestly, college has done a great service to my poetry, but that’s another topic of itself. I’ve never found clerihews particularly difficult to produce; the lack of requirements that they must adhere to make them quite easy to throw out. Most of the next few will be ones I wrote a semester ago for class. Most of them are of historical and, often, literary figures I’m interested with, though not all. Certainly not the first one, anyways.
Nimbus in a Bottle 