Making a Sinterklaas poem, we will all do that in the coming days. But if you don’t like rhyming, that’s far from ideal. We do it for you, and make a complete article in rhyme. But for some extra help we have to turn to Mick’s Rhyming Dictionary. We spoke with the creator of this site, just before Sinterklaas. Because yes, this Brabander is the one and only rhyme boss.
Cold and throbbing headache. These days are less pleasant for 48-year-old Michael Janus from Vlijmen. While his website ‘Mick’s Rhyming Dictionary’ receives a sky-high number of visitors this week, he lives on paracetamol (which he hates).
Because we Brabanders prefer to make poems at the last minute, which is why his site has so many visitors this last week before Christmas Eve.
Michael’s computer is constantly on in the family’s living room. And he does random checks to see whether online rhyming with all those visitors can continue.
Because with more than three million page views on the day before Christmas Eve, online rhyming failed to get off the ground last year. Fortunately, he got everything going again with a double click. Yes, he is prepared this year and has little fright.
What started in 1999 as a fun tool to experience limericks in his student days, is now a successful fact 23 years later. The nineties look still has the website, but behind the scenes Michael updates the rhyming dictionary every year into something complete.
New words such as ‘nitrogen measures’ and ‘climate activist’ were not included this year. It turns out words that are welcome in 2022 for that perfect sentence.
In total there are now about 25,000 words in his rhyming dictionary, all of equal importance. Michael: “There should be no more, because then the list would be too long.”
According to him, the list is now quite complete. Although readers are always welcome to contact him in case he forgets a very important word.
But what makes a poem really good and fun to read? According to Michael, those are the personal notes with which you have praised the other.
But also humor and, if necessary, a ‘snack from the pan’, lead to the best poems with a lot of elan. “A poem about the gift you are going to give is not that interesting, tell something about what you have been through together. That is certainly so relevant.”
Michael tried to build an even more complete poem maker with artificial intelligence, but according to him we have come to love the nostalgic rhyming. “It has its charm when it’s not such perfect poems,” he says enthusiastically.
In any case, that is a motto that fits the writer of this article.