Beware The Gringlecrunch, My Son!

I’m currently working my way through a superb course on Picture Book writing by the brilliant Julia Donaldson.

(For a link to all the BBC Maestro Courses, click here: https://www.bbcmaestro.com/)

The course content is not only helpful, but wonderfully inspiring and at the end of every session, there is an exercise to try. The most recent was to read the classic ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll – writer of the Alice in Wonderland books – and use it as a basis for writing your own story or poem.

In case you haven’t read it, ‘Jabberwocky’ is a poem which intersperses plain English with totally nonsensical, made-up words resulting in a totally brilliant bit of balderdash which the reader can still understand!

If you’ve never read it, please do!: https://www.owleyes.org/text/jabberwocky/read/text-poem

For the sake of time, I decided to stick largely to the original text, but try to come up with my own nonsensical words in place of Carroll’s! And here is the result.

T’was flinkle, and the smurky glurg,
Did chire and chunder in the floom,
All boggy were the swampaleeze,
And the qualm fligs downrume.

‘Beware the Gringlecrunch, my son,
His knees go creak, his knuckles crack.
Beware the Howling Jowl and run
From terrifying Bladdersmack!’

He took his runsome sword in hand,
Longtime the vexious foe he sought,
So rested he by the Plickadee
And stood a while in thought.

And as in flonder thought he stood
The Gringlecrunch with breath most foul,
Came hortling through the greeping wood
Skarooming with a howl!

One two! One two! And through and through,
The runsome blade went Bammleboff!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went marading off!

‘”And hast thou slain the Gringlecrunch?
Come to my arms my lubbish lad,
Oh vumshious night, Skooreeh! Skoorite!
My heart is minsely glad.

T’was flinkle, and the smurky glurg,
Did chire and chunder in the floom,
All boggy were the swampaleeze,
And the qualm fligs downrume.

I found this exercise heaps of fun, but also challenging. Believe it or not, it’s trickier than you might think to to come up with a word that sounds vaguely recognisable, whilst at the same time being utter nonsense – especially whilst sticking to a rhyming scheme.

So in honour of National Poetry Day, (which is tomorrow by the way) why not have a go at writing your own rendition of ‘Jabberwocky?’ I’d love to hear how you get on!

Happy writing!