Jabberwocky

Despite being classified as “nonsense,” what makes Carroll’s poem effective and memorable is all the ways it succeeds in making sense, despite the large number of words that have no official meaning in the English language. “Jabberwocky” clearly tells a story of a heroic encounter between an unnamed swordsman and a monster. Yet many of the key words are made up and have no meaning beyond that which we might imagine from the context or the sound. Writing nonsense of this kind is not as easy as it looks. Try your hand at it by writing a nonsense poem of your own that tells an identifiable story using made-up vocabulary.