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Poetic form

What are Nonsense Poems?

Definition

Nonsense poems use invented words, impossible creatures, and flawless meter to make absurdity sound inevitable.

Nonsense verse is silliness performed with a completely straight face. Edward Lear sent an owl and a pussycat to sea in a pea-green boat; Lewis Carroll built 'Jabberwocky' from invented words — 'brillig,' 'slithy,' 'frabjous' — that somehow parse perfectly, because the grammar stays sane while the vocabulary goes mad. That's the form's secret engine: strict meter, clean rhyme, impeccable syntax, deranged content.

Children get it instantly; adults take a stanza longer. The best nonsense isn't random — it's an alternate world run on consistent, ridiculous rules, narrated by someone who believes every word. Carroll's portmanteaus ('slithy' = slimy + lithe) gave English a new word-making machine, and the tradition runs unbroken from Lear through Dr. Seuss.

Structure of nonsense poems

  • Strict, bouncy meter and rhyme — the form stays sane while the content goes mad
  • Invented words, often portmanteaus (Carroll's 'slithy' = slimy + lithe), that still obey grammar
  • Impossible creatures, voyages, and logic taken completely seriously
  • Often narrative: nonsense loves a quest

How to write nonsense poems

  1. Pick a strict form first — ballad stanza or limerick. Nonsense needs rules to break against.
  2. Invent words by blending real ones; readers should half-understand them on sight.
  3. Keep the grammar perfect: 'the borogoves were mimsy' works because the sentence is sound.
  4. Play it absolutely straight — the narrator must believe every word.

5 nonsense poems examples

Classic and original nonsense poems poems, free to read in full.

The Monster Under My Bed (An Update)

The QuillOak Editors

There IS a monster under my bed —I met him Tuesday night:enormous, fanged, with seven eyes,

8 lines · rhyming

The Escaped Yawn

The QuillOak Editors

A yawn escaped at dinner(I'd kept it in all day);it leapt from me to Papa,

8 lines · rhyming

You Are Old, Father William

Lewis Carroll · 1865

"You are old, Father william," the young man said,"And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head —

32 lines · nonsense

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Edward Lear · 1871

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat;They took some honey, and plenty of money

23 lines · nonsense

Chapter I

Lewis Carroll · 1871

’Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wade;All mimsy were the borogoves,

28 lines · nonsense

Common questions

What is a nonsense poem?

A poem that uses made-up words, absurd logic, or impossible events inside strict, musical verse — serious craft in service of pure silliness.

Who wrote the most famous nonsense poems?

Edward Lear ('The Owl and the Pussy-Cat') and Lewis Carroll ('Jabberwocky') made the form immortal in the 1800s; Dr. Seuss and Spike Milligan carried it into the twentieth century.