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Poetry Language Features Guide

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Poetry Language Features Guide

Explore the language features, gather ideas with your senses, then draft and check your poem. Choose a theme that interests you. There is no single correct poem.

Language features

Use these features as a toolkit. You can use more than one in a line.

Alliteration: nearby words begin with the same sound. Example: Bright boats bobbed beside the bay. Simile: compares things using like or as. Example: The clouds drifted like slow ships. Metaphor: describes one thing as if it were another. Example: The playground was a whirlwind. Personification: gives human actions or feelings to something non-human. Example: The old gate groaned in the wind. Imagery: sensory words help a reader imagine a scene. Example: Cold rain tapped my cheeks and blurred the streetlights. Onomatopoeia: a word imitates a sound. Example: A twig snapped underfoot. Rhythm: a pattern of beats that can be heard when words are read aloud. Repetition: repeats a word or phrase for emphasis. Example: Wait for the dawn, wait for the light. Rhyme or near rhyme: words at line endings have matching or similar sounds. Hyperbole: a deliberate, impossible exaggeration. Example: My bag weighs a tonne. Symbolism: an image or object stands for a larger idea, such as a candle representing hope. Rhetorical question: a question asked to make the reader think, not to get an answer.

Gather ideas

Choose a theme such as a beach, a forest walk, a windy day, evening, or a place of your own. Jot sensory details that could help a reader picture it.

1.What might you see in your chosen setting? Write one specific detail.
2.What sound could you hear there? Write a detail that could become part of a poem.
3.What smell might be in the air in your chosen setting?
4.Describe one thing you could feel against your skin in that setting.
5.Would there be a taste connected to your setting? If so, describe it; if not, note that there is no particular taste.

Try out poetic lines

Write three practice lines about your chosen theme. Try a different language feature in each line.

6.Write a simile about your theme, using like or as to make a comparison.
7.Write a metaphor about your theme, describing one thing as if it were another.
8.Write a line that gives a non-human thing in your setting a human action or feeling.

Draft your poem

Give your poem a title. Aim to use at least three language features from the feature bank. Read your lines aloud and adjust any parts that sound awkward.

9.Write your poem here. Include a title and use language features to help the reader imagine your theme.

Poem check

Tick the features you used. Then count how many different features you included. For an extra challenge, add symbolism or a rhetorical question and revise a line to improve its rhythm.

10.Which language features did you use in your poem? Name each one and give a word or line from your draft as evidence.

3 printable pages

  • Poetry language feature bank with an illustrated notebook and examples of imagery, metaphor and sound devices.

    Page 1

  • Poetry planning prompts for gathering details through sight, sound, smell, touch and taste, with space to try poetic lines.

    Page 2

  • Poem drafting and self-check page for identifying language features and revising for rhythm.

    Page 3

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