Nonsense Verse
Quick answer: Nonsense verse pairs strict form with absurd sense, from Lear's limericks to Carroll's Jabberwocky. Learn how it works and how to write your own nonsense.
Here is the paradox at the heart of nonsense verse: it only works when everything except the meaning is in perfect order. Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, published in Through the Looking-Glass in 1871, is stuffed with invented words, yet every reader knows a monster is hunted and killed. The grammar is impeccable, the ballad meter is regular, the rhymes are true. Only the dictionary has been sacked.
The Victorian masters, Edward Lear and Carroll, turned nonsense into a literary genre, but the impulse is older: nursery rhymes, counting songs and folk charms have always carried words that mean nothing and rhythms that mean everything. Good nonsense is not chaos. It is logic wearing a false moustache.
What counts as nonsense verse
Nonsense verse is poetry in which sound, rhythm and formal pattern are foregrounded while conventional sense is suspended, inverted or invented. It includes poems built from portmanteau and coined words, in the Jabberwocky line; poems whose words are ordinary but whose events are impossible, like Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat from 1871, in which the couple sail off in a pea-green boat and are married by a turkey; and rhymes whose appeal is purely phonetic, as in much of Mother Goose.
There is no single prescribed form. Nonsense borrows forms, most often ballads, limericks and songs, precisely because a familiar container makes the strange contents legible.
The craft rules hiding underneath
Carroll's coinages follow English phonology exactly: slithy, mimsy, galumphing all obey the sound rules of the language, which is why they feel translatable. When you invent words, build them from real English roots and affixes so readers can guess a grammatical role at once. A noun should sit where a noun sits and wear a noun's clothing.
Keep your meter and rhyme stricter than you would in a serious poem. The reader's trust rests entirely on the pattern; the moment your rhythm wobbles, the poem stops being nonsense and becomes mere noise. Lear understood this, and his wildest inventions ride on some of the most regular verse of the nineteenth century.
What nonsense is good for, and how it goes wrong
Nonsense verse suits children's poetry, satire, and any moment when ordinary language feels exhausted. It also trains the ear better than almost any exercise, since you are composing with pure sound. Poets from W. S. Gilbert to Spike Milligan and Dr. Seuss used nonsense to smuggle sharp observations past the reader's defences.
Beginners ruin it by confusing nonsense with randomness. A string of unrelated absurd images has no tension; the reader needs a consistent world with its own bent rules. Decide what is true inside the poem and never contradict it. Judges scoring creativity reward invention, but invention with a spine, and a nonsense poem that follows its own mad logic to the end will always beat one that merely scatters oddities.
What poets can take from this
- Anchor the poem in a strict, familiar meter before you break any sense.
- Coin words from real English roots so their grammar stays readable.
- Give your nonsense world consistent internal rules and obey them.
- Read Lear and Carroll aloud to absorb the sound logic.
- Keep one clear story or situation running under the absurdity.
- Cut any line that is random rather than strange; the two are different.
Try it yourself
Invent five new English-sounding words, write a short glossary defining them, then write a ballad-stanza poem that uses all five so naturally the glossary becomes unnecessary.
Questions
What is the most famous nonsense poem?
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass (1871), is usually cited first, with Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat close behind. Both pair invented or impossible content with flawless traditional form.
Is nonsense verse only for children?
No. It began as adult literary play, and writers have long used it for satire and experiment. Children's publishing adopted it because children relish sound patterns, but the craft demands are fully adult.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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