A Celebration Of Nonsense Poetry

“When you see those words dancing it is irresistible.”

For his visit to the Hendrick’s Carnival Of Knowledge this weekend, poet Murray Lachlan Young has been set the task of penning a nonsense poem.

Its world premiere will be part of a celebration of the form made famous by Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll in poems such as Jabberwocky, The Owl And The Pussycat and The Quangle Wangle’s Hat.

He will be joined by poetry expert Clare Pollard, who will look into the stories and history of the craft, which was carried on into the 20th century by the likes of chief Goon Spike Milligan, and The Beatles with songs such as Yellow Submarine, I Am The Walrus and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

The show is part of The Idler Academy’s Day Of Merriment, which has been programmed at the pop-up Fringe venue by founders of the London coffee house and venue, Tom Hodgkinson and Victoria Hull.

“I’m a big fan of the Idler Academy,” says Young, a regular guest of BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show host Shaun Keaveney, who briefly gained notoriety in 1997 when he was signed to EMI Records for £1 million.

“It’s like a salon, classroom, coffee house and an exchanging place of ideas.

“The Hendrick’s Carnival Of Knowledge is very much part of this same thrust for knowledge, beyond what is taught to us in formal education.

“We are looking to the past to add to a present which is caught up in the ways of consumerism, looking for interesting things we don’t have to pay for.”

Young is looking to the folklore traditions of the UK as a subject for his nonsense poem.

“I’m just starting the major building of my poem at the moment, using the core theme of ancient games, such as cheese rolling and bog snorkelling,” he says.

“I found out about a thing that happens in Orkney called The Blackening. When a couple is getting married, they kidnap the groom, strip him, put him on the back of a tractor or flatbed truck and cover him in rotting fish guts, tar and pitch.

“There’s something nonsensical about that – I’m taking those ideas and working them into a new nonsense poem.

“The thing I like about poems such as Jabberwocky is embracing the nonsense darkness – I quite like the dark turn in verses.”

His own relationship with nonsense poetry dates back to his childhood, reading selections from the Oxford Book Of Children’s Verse.

“There was a lot of nonsense poetry growing up in the 1970s,” he says. “I don’t know a lot about it but it is part of me and my writing. I try to push the reality into the nonsense, so it is a nonsense hybrid.

“There is something incredibly freeing in writing about nonsense. There is a pure appreciation of words and the relationship they create with each other.

“When you’re writing nonsense poetry, it’s like having another writer in the room – at certain points you don’t know what is going to happen or where it is going. The things that don’t make sense are the gifts, as opposed to the problems. You are looking for things that don’t make sense – like cutting a lawn with a hairdryer – doing something bizarre but which works.”

He believes the accessibility of nonsense poetry is often the reason why it is dismissed as work aimed at children.

“They go way into instinctual human feelings and trigger things that you don’t really understand,” he says. “We are not being required to show how clever we are, it doesn’t require a high intelligence or any previous knowledge. The flow and rhythm takes over and it becomes a magical process.

“I write children’s poetry – poo, truth and dancing are the things that children can do as well as anyone else – you can’t attaching a grown-upness to pooing.

“The adult world places great importance on things that children can’t do. Nonsense poetry is about finding that childlike part of ourselves, the invention that comes from children who aren’t tied up with ideas and have a much fairer view.

“Nonsense verse is like free expressive dancing – it’s cross-generational. Creating magical characters out of nothing and making them live in a nonsense world is a wonderful thing for people to be able to share with any age group.

“As an adult, you put away childish things – you can’t scream, shout, cry and go mental in a doctor’s surgery or bank otherwise society starts falling apart.

“But if you put away that basic level of unadulterated joy that children feel in discovery, then you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

“Nonsense poetry is a way to express our barking madness in a way that doesn’t mean we are losing our minds. Hopefully people will feel inspired to go away and write their own.”

• Hendrick’s Carnival Of Knowledge, Angel House, Brunswick Terrace, Hove, Saturday, May 25. Starts 1.45pm, tickets £12. Call 01273 917272
• Read our interview with Idler founder Tom Hodgkinson in tomorrow’s Seven Days magazine