Clerihew
Quick answer: A clerihew is a four-line comic poem about a named person, rhyming aabb with deliberately uneven lines. Learn the form's rules and how to write a good one.
A clerihew is a four-line comic poem about a real, named person, rhyming aabb, in which the first line consists of (or ends with) the person's name and the meter is deliberately irregular. The form is one of the few with a precise birth certificate: Edmund Clerihew Bentley invented it as a bored sixteen-year-old schoolboy in the 1890s, reportedly during a chemistry lesson, and his first specimen skewered the scientist Sir Humphry Davy.
The clerihew's genius is its tone. Unlike the limerick, which gallops and guffaws, the clerihew ambles and raises an eyebrow. Its wonky lines and strained rhymes are features, not bugs: the form pretends to be biography, delivers absurdity, and makes clumsiness itself part of the joke. It remains the best four-line machine ever built for affectionate mockery of the famous.
How It Works
Four rules, strictly kept: the poem is about a named person; the name appears in line one, ideally as its rhyme word; the rhyme scheme is aabb; and the lines should be metrically lumpy, with comic mismatches of length. The content is pseudo-biographical, attributing to the subject one absurd deed, opinion, or failing.
An original example about an invented professor: 'Professor Enid Vail / considered all punctuation a betrayal. / Her students, bereft, / read everything she wrote until no breath was left.' Name-rhyme, aabb, a ludicrous claim, and a last line that waddles on purpose.
Where You Will See It
Bentley published Biography for Beginners in 1905, with illustrations by his school friend G. K. Chesterton, and followed with further volumes; his lines on Sir Christopher Wren going to dine with some men remain the form's calling card. Chesterton and W. H. Auden both wrote clerihews, Auden's collected in Academic Graffiti (1971). The form thrives today in newspaper competitions, science writing (clerihews about physicists are a minor industry), and classrooms, where it is the friendliest possible introduction to writing about real people.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Start with the name, because the name is your hardest rhyme. List every rhyme and near-rhyme it offers, pick the most ridiculous, and let that rhyme dictate the biography you invent. The falser the fact, the better, provided it comically fits something the person is known for.
Calibrate the clumsiness. Lines should lurch, but deliberately, the way a good clown trips. If every line scans neatly you have written a quatrain, not a clerihew; if nothing lands on the rhyme, you have written prose. Aim the mockery at reputation, never cruelty; the form's charm is fondness wearing a smirk.
What poets can take from this
- Put the subject's name at the end of line one and rhyme on it.
- Choose the most absurd available rhyme for the name.
- Invent a false fact that comically fits the person's reputation.
- Keep lines unequal; tidy meter kills the joke.
- Stay affectionate; the clerihew teases, it does not wound.
Try it yourself
Write clerihews for three poets you have actually read, living or dead. In each, attribute to the poet one domestic habit that comically explains their entire style.
Questions
What is the difference between a clerihew and a limerick?
A limerick has five lines, strict bouncing meter, and can be about anything. A clerihew has four lines, deliberately irregular meter, and must be about a named person, with the name in the first line. The limerick belly-laughs; the clerihew smirks.
Who invented the clerihew?
Edmund Clerihew Bentley, later a journalist and detective novelist, devised it as a schoolboy in the 1890s. His middle name became the form's name, and his 1905 Biography for Beginners established it.
Does a clerihew have to be about a famous person?
Tradition says a real and recognisable one, since the humour plays against a known reputation. In practice poets also write them about colleagues, teachers, and friends, where the audience knows the subject.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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