Skip to main content

Nonsense Poetry

A Little Bit of Poetry Nonsense



It's fun to create new words and apply them to various situations. I can't imagine Lewis Carroll didn't have a smile on his face when writing his famous poem, Jabberwocky with its numerous invented words:





`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Well, this humble poem contains a single invented word.'Neelywos' but I have written it how I imagine it should be written, and the poem was fun to write. Word play and fun and inventiveness are an integral part of poetry. So, dive in at the deep end and enjoy a little bit of serious silliness and encourage your student poets to follow your lead...

Neelywos

I neelywos a plumber
But that became a drain
I neelywos a pilot
But I found it somewhat plain
I neelywos an author
Things didn’t work out write
I neelywos an electrician
Until I saw the light
I neelywos a juggler
But things got out of hand
I neelywos a singer
The musicians had me banned
I neelywos a lawyer
But my spirit wasn’t willing
I neelywos a dentist
The job was not fulfilling
I neelywos a banker
But it offered little change
So I became a neelywos

Don’t you find that strange ?

Alan j Wright
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co...
20 comments
Read more

Opposite Poems

O pp o s ite P oem s In his book, ' How To Write Poetry,'  Paul Janeczko presents the idea of opposite poems. Paul suggests they could also be referred to as antonym poems. This is wordplay and it's fun to try. Here are some examples Paul provides to help us see very clearly how these short little poems work. I think the opposite of chair Is sitting down with nothing there What is the opposite of kind? A goat that butts you from behind Paul Janeczko You will  notice the poems are written in rhyming couplets. They can be extended so long as you remember to write in couplets. Paul shows us how this is done. What is the opposite of new? Stale gum that's hard to chew A hot-dog roll as hard as rock Or a soiled and smelly forgotten sock You might notice that some of Paul's opposite Poems begin with a question. The remainder of the poem answer the question posed. Opposite poems are a challenge, but it is a challenge worth trying. N...
26 comments
Read more

Powerful Poetry, 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston

  This week, Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully  @ Salt City Verse where Janice shares some original words and offers us a taste of Thomas Carlyle to ponder. I encourage you to join a host of poets from all around the globe and visit Janice's page... Almost two years to the day, I wrote a post featuring the poem 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston. The poem was included in Brian's first book of poetry, 'You Took The Last Bus Home.' A very powerful Reverso poem and technically brilliant.  A Reverso poem can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. It will often express opposite opinions depending on which way you read it. Such poems really make us think. A Reverso poem is like a picture turned upside down, a frowning face upended to reveal a smiling one. The poem read in reverse, contradicts itself with an opposing message. In 'Refugee' Brian Bilston focuses on a societal issue that tends to polarize feelings and the opposing views are clearly in eviden...
14 comments
Read more