If you were to bless me when I say 'clerihew', you'd be excused for not knowing that it's really a form of poetry. But it got me a book personally signed by my favourite author and I'm all excited about it.
Like, very.
Well, I'm as pleased as punch this morning. And from what I hear on the street these days, punch can get itself right happy, especially with a healthy dose of liquid courage. So just picture me grinning ear to ear.
My favouritest author in the whole wide world is a fella by the name of Guy Gavriel Kay. He's got an authorised website called Brightweavings. There's a very active forum there on which I am a fairly regular poster.
This forum recently hosted a competition to compose a winning Clerihew, a form of poetry defined by Wikipedia as:
A Clerihew (or clerihew) is a very specific kind of humorous verse, typically with the following properties:
- The first line consists solely (or almost solely) of a well-known person's name
- The verse is humorous and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; but it is hardly ever satirical, abusive or obscene
- It has four lines of irregular length
- The rhyme structure is AABB
- The metre and rhyme are often strained for humorous effect (like Ogden Nash's poems).
The form was invented by and is named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
Being officially sanctioned by the author himself, the winner was to receive a book of his/her choice, signed and delivered by Kay (!!) And when I say delivered, I mean mailed. It's not like he'd fly to wherever the winner lives, knock on the door and say "Here ya go! Ta!" He's got better things than that to do with his time.
And the entries were sooo good that the judge, an English professor at the University of Waterloo, selected, eventually, three winners. Of which mine was one!!
Mine was:
Rakoth
Got wroth.
Blew his lid,
Now he's did.
Which, if you've never read The Fionavar Tapestry, will make absolutely no sense to you, but again, I'm just pleased as punch (a very pleaseable substance if ever there was one) at having shared in the winnings and able to receive a personally signed Guy Kay book.
Gimme a w00t, w00t !!
Well done, Simon! And by the way, I have a signed omnibus Fionavar, too :). Like yours, personally delivered.
Posted by: Paula | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 01:04 PM
Congrats! That was a totally cool clerihew to be sure.
Posted by: fv | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 01:54 PM
Yer just lucky I was on vacation and couldn't play < /bluster>. Congratulations on your winning wit.
Posted by: Paul | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 03:18 PM
I don't get it.
Posted by: Jaquandor | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 06:15 PM
Jaquandor,
Which part?
The:
Blew his lid
Now he's did ?
I used the 'did' to put Rakoth in the past tense (ie - dead) and to force the rhyme with 'lid', to fit the requisite structure of a Clerihew.
Unless that's not it, in which case you'll have to enlighten me.
Posted by: Simon | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 11:07 PM
Congratulations again. This brightweavings place sounds pretty cool; I think I'll have to check it out.
-Alec Lynch
Posted by: Alec Lynch | Thursday, 13 October 2005 at 11:27 PM
Congratulations Simon!
Just out of curiosity, which book will you / did you choose?
I would be hard pressed to choose between..
The Summer Tree (as the first GGK book I ever read, 17 or 18 years ago), Tigana (which for me was GGK's first "more serious" work, or "Lions of Al Rassan", my current favorite (and apparently most everyone else's too!).
Posted by: Jim | Friday, 14 October 2005 at 04:57 AM
Jim,
There's a Canadian Omnibus edition of the Fionavar Tapestry that includes the whole trilogy. It was released a couple years ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Summer Tree.
And since I gave my original Tapestry hardbacks away as a gift last Christmas, this is the perfect opportunity to replace them all in one volume!
(Lions is my favourite to date as well. I can't wait for the movie to come out. You do know about that as well, don't you?!)
Posted by: Simon | Friday, 14 October 2005 at 06:08 AM
I saw an offhand mention of the movie when browsing the Brightweavings forums ... but couldn't find much detailed information on the subject. I just re-googled and discovered that Ed Zwick will be directing it; he did a pretty good job with Last Samurai, so it seems to have potential.
I'm very curious as to how this will be treated in film ... do you know who is doing the screenplay? Will they be "historicizing" it or maintain the pseudo-fictional / historical world of Al Rassan? Funny thing is that GGK's novels as fiction are usually more historically accurate than most movies that claim to be "historical"!
I guess I should be asking this stuff over on Brightweavings! What's the best source of info you've got for the movie?
Posted by: Jim | Friday, 14 October 2005 at 07:46 AM