Poetic forms and devices | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

Alliteration

Alliteration can be defined as a series of words, occurring close together in the phrases or lines of poetry, that have ...

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of the vowel sound across words within the lines of the poem creating internal rhymes ...

Ballad

A ballad is a poem which tells a story - most often about the community. In it's earliest forms the ballad was the ...

Blank Verse

Blank Verse is a poetic form which doesn't rhyme but instead a rhythmic pattern marks it out. Blank Verse is written in ...

Calligram

A calligram is a poem in which the calligraphy, the formation of the letters or the font selected, represents an aspect ...

Cinquains

Cinquains are a form of syllabic poetry characterised by a distinctive 5 line structure: 1st line: 2 syllables 2nd line ...

Clerihew

Named after its inventor E. Clerihew Bentley who died in 1956, a clerihew is a four line comic verse with two rhyming ...

Comic Verse

Comic verse focusses on the way words sound. It is often used to play with language and involves a lot of word play. It ...

Concrete Poem

A concrete poem is written in the shape of its subject. As form is the highest consideration here sometimes the poems ...

Couplets

A couplet is a pair of lines in a poem which have both the same rhythm (meter) and that rhyme. The lines can be ...

Echo Verse

Echo verse is a type of verse in which repetition of the end of a line or stanza imitates an echo. The repetition ...

Elfje

The Elfje form originated in The Netherlands where it is used to teach young children to write poetry. The word Elfje ...

Epistolary (letter) poems and poems that use direct address

Epistolary poems, from the Latin epistola for "letter" are poems that read as letters. Like letters they can be ...

Epitaph

An epitaph is a short poem remembering the life of someone who has died. Like elegies they are commemorative. Epitaphs ...

Free Verse

Free Verse poems have no rhyming structure and often don't have a particular rhythm or syllable patterns; like their ...

Haiku

Haiku are seventeen syllable poems with the following structure: Line 1: 5 syllables Line 2: 7 syllables Line 3: 5 ...

I am

I am poems use the repeated line starter I am to build up a picture of the person/animal that the poem is describing ...

Imagery

Imagery, in a literary or poetic sense, is the author's use of description and vivid language, deepening the reader's ...

Kenning

A Kenning names something by describing its qualities in a two word compound expression (often consiting of a noun and a ...

Limericks

Limericks are ‘a five-line comic verse following the syllable pattern 8, 8, 6, 6, 8 with the rhyme scheme AABBA – where ...

List Poem

A list poem does exactly as described and collects content in a list form. It can be purely a list without tranisitional ...

Metaphor

Metaphor is a common poetic device where an object in, or the subject of, a poem is described as being the same as ...

Narrative

Narrative poems tell a story, usually about a very specific moment in time. They can be written in rhyme and with strict ...

Ode

Odes are formal poems written in honour of a person, thing or place They tend to be formal in tone and are addressed to ...

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the 'formation of a word which describes its sound'. Examples of ...

Personification

Personification is a poetic device where animals, plants or even inanimate objects, are given human qualities – ...

Playground Rhyme

Playground rhymes and chants often accompany a skipping or clapping game and are therefore rhythmic in nature. They ...

Question and Answer

Whilst this is not a traditional poetic structure it is one which poets for children use, often for comic effect? The ...

Rap

Raps, originating from American street culture and which unlike a song which is set to music is spoken over a musical ...

Refrain

In poetry, a refrain is a word, line or phrase that is repeated within the lines or stanzas of the poem itself. There ...

Renga

A renga is a form written by multiple collaborating poets. To create a renga, one poet writes the first stanza, which is ...

Repetition

Repetition either of a word or a phrase is used in poetry for emphasis. Some poetic forms such as Villanelles rely on ...

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. Rhymed words conventionally share all sounds ...

Rhythm

Rhythmic pattern in poetry is used to make it easier on the ear. Different types of poetry have different rhythms and ...

Riddle

A riddle is a type of word puzzle where ambiguous clues to an object or person's identity are offered requiring the ...

Rondel

A rondel, also spelled rondelle, a fixed poetic form that runs on two rhymes. It is a variant of the rondeau. The rondel ...

Simile

Simile is common poetic device. The subject of the poem is described by comparing it to another object or subject, using ...

Song

A song is simply words that are intended to be set to music. Music and poetry have always gone together. As Jennifer ...

Sonnet

A sonnet is a formal poem with a fixed structure. It is 14 lines long and each line contains 10 syllables. Sonnet lines ...

Stanzas

Stanzas can be defined as groups of lines, sometimes referred to (less precisely) as verses. Poems can be broken up into ...

Strict Verse

Poems written in strict verse have stanzas of equal length and a repeating rhyme pattern.

Tongue-Twister

Tongue Twisters are short poems, sometimes even single sentences which are hard to say because they contain the similar ...

Triolet

The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. In a triolet, the first line is ...

Verse Novel

A verse novel is a narrative poem, or poems which are the length of a novel. Sarah Crossan describes more about the form ...

Word Play

Word play is a poetic device in which the words are used in the poem specifically as main subject of the poem itself ...