Porridge poetry — A Reader’s Guide

Invented Words and Nonsense Names

Lofting populates his verses with characters and terms that seem to spring from pure sound-play. The Lollipopinjay, a creature that lives on lollipops, leaps and swirls with a refrain of “Hip, hip, hooray!” The names Scallywag and Gollywog suggest mischief and nonsense, and their voyage aboard a log dissolves into an endless argument over captaincy. In “Latitudes and Longitudes,” the poet extends the pattern by coining words like platitudes, chit-chatitudes, and wrongitude—rhyming suffixes that turn abstract concepts into playful, tangible objects. These inventions are not random; they follow consistent phonetic logic, making the poems feel like language games.

Rhythm, Dance, and Repetition

Several poems are built around dance rhythms and repetitive structures. Vera Virginia Ham boasts of her prowess in the barn-dance, two-step, sausage-roll trot, pig-jig, and hog-jog, each name adding a comic, animalistic twist to familiar steps. The Lollipopinjay’s lines alternate between short, energetic actions—“I jump, I crouch and pop away”—and the repeated exclamation “Hip, hip, hooray!” This pattern gives the poem a chant-like quality suitable for reading aloud. Even the picnic poem, “Picnic,” uses a series of imperative commands (“Ella, fell a Maple tree. / Hilda, build a Fire for me.”) that accumulate into a rhythmic list, ending with the exclamation “Fancy, Nancy, / What a spree!”

Dialogue and Dramatic Exchange

Not all poems are monologues; some feature brief, pointed exchanges. In “The Fledgeling and the Bug,” a young bird asks a Sweet Potato Bug if it is “digestible,” only to be rebuffed with a shrug and the retort that the bug’s taste is “detestable.” The dialogue is minimal but reveals a comic mismatch of expectations—the fledgling’s naive inquiry versus the bug’s indignant refusal. This dramatic structure, rare in children’s verse of the period, gives the poem a fable-like quality without moralizing. Similarly, “Scallywag and Gollywog” implies a quarrel through the narrator’s report, leaving the reader to imagine the ongoing dispute.

Readers will find that Lofting’s verses reward oral performance: the strong rhythms, invented words, and abrupt dialogues come alive when spoken aloud. The poems are short, often no more than a single stanza, making the collection suitable for dipping into at random. Pay attention to the way Lofting plays with suffixes and compound words—these are not mere nonsense but deliberate linguistic constructions that give each poem its distinctive flavour.

Years at the reference desk have taught me that nonsense verse, like the Porridge Poet’s kitchen dances, often hides the truest heart. There is a similar quiet wink in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. — Key Ideas to Explore, a shared fondness for life’s odd, fleeting music. Both books sit together on my shelf, whispering old, unhurried truths.