Lawrence Howard
In the middle of January, I received an email, out of the blue, from a man named Dan. I had never met him or even heard of him before, but he told me that he is a fellow lover of limericks and that he had come across a clip of me reciting (singing, actually) limericks online. He
had seen the clip from Portland Story Theater’s 2016 St. Paddy’s Day show. Dan was especially interested in the idea that I did not merely recite the limericks, but sang them,
with a little chorus in between the verses.
Turns out that Dan is an artist and one of his many projects is to compose limericks and then paint them on the walls of buildings and other public spaces. I checked out his website (angrydan) and was very impressed by the cleverness of his limericks. Oh, and don’t let the “angry” part of “angrydan” fool you; he is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. Well, Dan tells me that he is working on an hour-long radio show about limericks for Soho Radio, based in London and New York City, and that he has already interviewed a number of poets, scholars, and limerick aficionados, including the editor-in-chief of the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form (OEDILF), an ambitious project that aims to create a limerick for every entry in the dictionary (www.oedilf.com), as well as the world’s foremost collector of limericks and limerick memorabilia. Long story short: Dan wants to interview me and include me in his radio show! So before another week is out, Dan and I are on a Zoom call from Portland to London, talking about limericks and how my family always sang them and the different choruses between the verses, and the most interesting topic of all: what do limericks have to do with the town or the county of Limerick, Ireland, anyway?
I am honored to have been included in this project and I can’t wait to
hear how it all turns out. Dan says it could be three or four more weeks before he’s done with all the editing. Stay tuned to this space and we’ll let you know when the show is up and ready for listening.