Poetry

A poem uses imaginative language to express feelings and ideas. There are many types of poetry, and not all of them rhyme.

Narrative poems 

Some poems tell stories. These poems tend to be quite long and often rhyme. Before writing and books were common, people used narrative poetry to tell stories. The rhymes and the rhythm made the stories easy to remember and pass on to other people.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a good example of a narrative poem.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

It tells the story of a sailor left alone on a boat when the rest of the crew dies.

Poems that follow a pattern

Some types of poetry follow a particular pattern. Haiku, for example, is a form of Japanese poetry where there must be only three lines. The first line must have 5 syllables, the second 7 syllables and the third 5 syllables.

Revising English

Learning about poetry

Not all poems rhyme!

Shape or concrete poetry

Some poems are written in a shape that shows what the poem is about.

Features of poetry

There are some particular types of language you can look out for in poetry.

Rhyme

This is where words with the same sound are used.

Shushup right now

That squalky row

Is keeping me from sleep!

Now and row rhyme.

Alliteration

This is when words start with the same sound. You’ll also find this used in advertising and newspaper headlines.

The slippery snake came sliding.

Nonsense poetry

Some poems use made up words to describe things, or just to make a nice sound.

In the froogle

Did the Boogle

Make a grabjous cheep

Shushup right now

That squalky row

Is keeping me from sleep!

Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and Spike Milligan are good authors to read if you like nonsense poetry.

Similes, metaphors and personification

A simile describes something by comparing it to something else using like or as.

The snake moved like a ripple on a pond.
It was as slippery as an eel.

Metaphors

A metaphor is a word or a phrase used to describe something as if it were something else.

A wave of terror washed over him

The terror isn’t actually a wave, but a wave is a good way of describing the feeling.
Metaphors and similes make poetry more descriptive and interesting and are often used in other forms of writing.

Personification

Poets often give human feelings and actions to objects or ideas.

The friendly rain fell gently over the fields.

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