TBPL Staff Poetry Favourites

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’re featuring the favourite poems or poets of Thunder Bay Public Library Staff.

From Laura Prinselaar, Children & Youth Services Librarian at Brodie:

I’ve loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass since I first read them. I’m all about words, and Lewis Carroll’s language is tastier than most. Introducing Jabberwocky to a group of kids is so fun – helping them recognize what words might mean with context clues, using the rhymes to determine pronunciation, and explaining the term portmanteau. Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty defines it as “two meanings packed up in one word, and kids are usually quick to grasp the inherent Carrollian logic of flimsy + miserable = mimsy.

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

-Lewis Carroll

Listen to Christopher Lee – Saruman himself! – read you Jabberwocky on YouTube.
Click here for books about Carroll at TBPL, or here to place your hold on an annotated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.