Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Elegy for Jabber

ok I know it's not a patch on the original, but it was fun to write.Yes, Lewis Dodgeson got it wrong...


'Twas brillig that redoubted world
where mimsy has been placed
I stood between the Boros' graves
and hid my wretched face.

The Jabberwock, he’s gone my sons
those evil Raths took him away,
your uffish friend is dead and gone
I know not what to say,

They took him on a vorpal ship,
it cut gallumphing through the night
to man’s home world of blue and green
and scrumbled out of sight

I landed fast and found a man,
with curly hair, and flame-blue eyes,
just standing there with book and pen,
his open mouth caught flies.

I told him of the Jabber-wock,
And you; my sons, left far behind,
I told him of the vorpal ship.
The man replied in kind,

Though his news was greevly bitter,
I’ll always fleer his words so black
for they did slay the Jabber-wock
with blades of snicker-snack.'

I cried, 'my heart is slain this day
Oh Frabjous Foe, Callooh, Callay
My tail brelucks, my spines reflay,'
And gortled in dismay.

'Twas brillig that redoubted world
where mimsy has been placed
I stood between the Boros’ graves
and hid my wretched face.

A..J. Ponder - author page

And for those of you who are interested in such things Massey University has got a school journal display up until the end of the week celebrating 12 years of collaboration - where students have a brief to illustrate a story/play.  Peter Friend and my play, "Touchdown"  was selected this year - so that was fun - you can see the winners art, past winners, the design process,etc.  It was fascinating - esp for me, seeing different versions of our characters and how the designers worked with the brief etc. Being last year students in an intensive design course I found all the work on display pretty amazing, and the winners especially so.

http://prodesign.co.nz/imagine-that/2010/08/06/  "Ima­gine That! Stephen Olsen reports back from the open­ing night of the exhibition."  

"While not phys­ic­ally present these char­ac­ters from a sci-fi play soon to appear in the pages of the School Journal were undoubtedly in star­ring roles at the open­ing of the Ima­gine That! exhib­i­tion in Wel­ling­ton this week which runs until Sunday 15 August."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/editors-picks/3992058/Steaming-ahead-in-her-art

5 comments:

  1. Did you know Helen Lowe put Jabberwocky up on her blog for her Tuesday Poem this week Alicia? Or was it pure coincidence... curiouser and curiouser....Great news about the Massey exhibition, I'll try and pop in...

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  2. Cheers, Mary - yes it was absolutely deliberate - I saw it and went wow how did Helen get my absolute favourite poem of all time up before I did - so I congratulated her on her good taste and posted this instead!

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  3. I enjoyed the poem - vorpal ships indeed! - and that's great news about the exhibition, though it's a pity the articles don't say more about the play. Is the exhibition somewhere in Massey's Buckle St campus?

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  4. Cheers Tim.
    The exhibition is in the tea rooms in the old museum building. Truth be told Peter and I were completely in the dark it had anything to do with us even passingly - we saw the "Touchdown" title after the big opening - and went - hang on - isn't that our play!!! And some detective work later discovered it was...

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  5. Hey, I love it Alicia--great riposte on the Jabberwock as Tuesday Poem!

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