Our Newsroom Doesn’t Have a Poet Laureate. But This Retired Circus Clown Is Pretty Close.

Tim Torkildson is a retired clown who got the attention of New York Times journalists when he began emailing original limericks to the newsroom several times a week.

By Lela Moore  

Tim Torkildson’s limericks — he calls them “Timericks” — are a familiar sight in the email inboxes of New York Times journalists.

Several times a week, he sends them to 22 journalists, including eight at The Times.

“He is often clever and on point regarding human foibles, the press and our current national situation,” said Dennis Overbye, a science reporter at The Times who regularly receives Mr. Torkildson’s poems. Often, Mr. Overbye said, they relate to articles that he has written.

At 64, Mr. Torkildson is retired from clowning and lives in Provo, Utah. “I was born different,” he said. “I truly believe I was born to make people laugh.” He was born in Minneapolis; his father was a bartender and his mother a homemaker.

“To them, the best thing in the world was to have a good steady job, even if it was boring,” Mr. Torkildson said.

During his senior year of high school, he applied to and was accepted by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. He said that after his mother called the Better Business Bureau to determine if the school was legitimate, she gave him her blessing.

Then Mr. Torkildson hitchhiked to Venice, Fla., in 1970 to begin what he called “boot camp for funnymen.”

He did not expect to end up with a job. “I was the worst, least funny student they’d ever seen,” he said. “I couldn’t juggle, couldn’t ride a unicycle, my makeup was horrible. I never expected that they’d hire me.”

In 1974, he left the circus to serve as a Mormon missionary. He worked in Thailand under the auspices of the Red Cross, performing his clown show in schools, prisons and other venues.

Upon completing his two-year mission, he briefly performed again with Ringling Brothers.

One of his early recipients was Lizette Alvarez, a former New York Times Miami bureau chief. She shared some of his poems with her husband, Don Van Natta, Jr., a senior writer for ESPN who is the founder of The Sunday Long Read and a former New York Times correspondent.

“Tim was sending her limericks off Florida news stories; Lizette thought they were fun and funny and she’d share some with me,” Mr. Van Natta said in an email. “He has a particularly sharp eye for stories that skew writers and editors.”

Mr. Torkildson now serves as senior limerick editor for the online edition of The Sunday Long Read. To craft his news poetry, he reads four newspapers online daily and, depending on what stories strike his fancy, constructs a limerick or two.

“I usually choose my stories by first going to Google news and entering keywords of current interest to me,” Mr. Torkildson said.

“I don’t have a TV, I don’t watch local news, don’t listen to radio news. My news comes from newspapers — the last best defense against tyranny and against falsehood,” he said.