Rewriting Alice in Wonderland

As a kid I used to day dream a lot, especially at school, when I was supposed to be concentrating. I found most classes boring. They were too long and irrelevant for what I wanted to do which was to spend my days writing. One of the tales I would go back to over and over again during this period in my life was Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I thought that if Alice could escape her boring life, even for a bit, I could too, even if it was just in my head.

I am running a poetry workshop on Rewriting Alice in Wonderland later this month and as part of the preparation work I have been re reading the tale over and over. What strikes me now as an adult, is not what Alice goes to, but what she leaves behind and what she is and isn’t willing to give up. Her tale is different to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in that she isn’t constantly trying to get back home.
Perhaps because of this apparent lack of interest in home this tale continues of interest me in a way Dorothy’s doesn’t.