There was a poet called Lear, whose anniversary’s here

The reason, of course, is that 2012 is the bicentenary of Edward Lear, poet, intrepid traveller, artist and populariser of one of the most enduring of all poetic forms, the limerick. So no doubt we’ll have 12 months of men from Leeds swallowing packets of seeds, lasses from Tong getting it wrong and kids from Shelf having to do it themself. That last one only works grammatically in a limerick, I reckon. And, as far as I know, nothing rhymes with Thirsk.

For some reason, however, the limerick has a continuing hold on the national consciousness, and I’m sure its staccato rhythms and comedy lines feel most natural when spoken in a Yorkshire accent. And perhaps that why I feel that next year could be the year Yorkshire reclaims the limerick.

So in the first week of 2012, I’ve a good mind to start a campaign to get the Limerick renamed the Rotherham. Then there can be a sign outside the town that says “Welcome to Rotherham, home of the Rotherham” although it should really say “Welcome to Rotherham, home of the Rotherham, formerly known as the Limerick” which doesn’t really have the same ring.

I think that we may be in for a time like the phenomenon that historians know as The Great Limerick Craze of 1907. This madness was sparked by a magazine called The London Opinion; its readers were invited to compose a last line to a limerick that began “There was a young lady of Ryde/whose locks were considerably dyed/The hue of her hair/made everyone stare…”

Lots of different magazines and newspapers ran limerick competitions that year and sales of sixpenny postal orders, which was the standard entry fee for the competition, topped 11m, which qualifies as something far beyond a craze. The winning line, by the way, was “‘She’s piebald, she’ll die bald!’ they cried” which isn’t bad. Prepare yourselves for all manner of similar Limerick-related frivolity this year.

We’ll also be inundated with books of limericks of all shapes and sizes. The first of them has just plopped through my letterbox, and it’s a good one that shows the depth and also the limitations of the limerick and why it feels like, despite what history says, it could have been invented in Yorkshire.

Martin Rowson is one of the best cartoonists in Britain; his savage and satirical drawings puncture pomposity and hold the pretentious and the powerful to account. I should know: he’s punctured me a couple of times, marvellously. His new book is called The Limerickiad, and it’s a history of English literature in Limerick form.

This is the first volume of a projected series, and it takes us from the ancient epic Gilgamesh (“the first written tale, all concur/was scratched on clay tablets in Ur”) to Shakespeare (Lear demands that his daughters declare/their love so his realm they can share) via The Faerie Queen (“There once was a poet called Spenser/so smart that he could have joined MENSA!”).

Rowson keeps the Limerick rhythm going all the way through and although the rhymes can sometimes make you groan, they’re meant to, and they delight you with their inventiveness.

There’s Dante and Asti Spumante and there’s “doth avow” and “hausfrau”. In one set of Limericks about Shakespeare the rhyming reaches ecstatic heights: he works towards the name of the bard via “cakes. Jeer” and “lake’s weir” and “rakes sneer” and by the end of the sequence the reader is standing up and applauding. I searched in vain for any Limericks in Yorkshire dialect but I did find one, by Lisa Speight of Pateley Bridge, that had won a place name Limerick competition in 2007. It’s a cracker: “One musician from Dalton, Kirklees/Had extraordinarily knobbly knees/they were hired for percussion/ and caused much discussion/ and earned him a packet in fees!” Brilliant!

But here’s my linguistic point, as we prepare to celebrate what could become the Year of the Limerick: read Lisa’s poem aloud in a Yorkshire accent and it works perfectly. Now try reading it in a posh drawl, or in RP. It fails. Proof if proof were needed that the Limerick’s true cultural home is Yorkshire.

And I will find a rhyme for Thirsk if it kills me. Nurse doesn’t count. Nor Purse. Nor Hearse. Brusque? Not quite. I think I’ll read my Martin Rowson book again for some inspiration.

The Limerickiad by Martin Rowson is published by Smokestack Books, priced £12.99.