Poetry is a genre that uses various literary devices and figurative language to convey powerful feelings, emotions, and ideas in a rhythmic way. It utilizes elements like stanzas, imagery, metaphor, rhyme and rhythm. Poems can be interpreted on both a literal and figurative level and use devices such as simile, alliteration and assonance to establish mood, tone and evoke sensory experiences for the reader. Characteristics include the use of figurative language, sound devices, and evoking intense emotions through themes, style, and imagery.

1. Poetry

2. is a genre that is very different from prose and drama. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". used to express feelings, emotions, experiences and ideas.

3. Characteristics of PoetryThe ‘paragraph’ in a poem is called a stanza or a verse. Poetry does not necessarily have to have ordered/regular standards.Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger and love.Predominant use of imagery which appeals to the senses - of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. You might be interested in the terminology of the different imagery. They are as follows:Visual imagery – sense of sight e.g. It was as strange as an ocean without water.

4. Poems contain figurative language (e.g. simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, etc.)Poems may include rhythm (the regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed beats)Poems may contain rhyme.Poems contain sound devices (e.g. assonance, alliteration, consonance）to support the content of a poem.

5. Characteristics of Poetry

6. Elements of Poetry- The elements in prose and poetry are similar. The table below illustrate the terminology used where the elements are concerned.

7. Literal and Figurative meaningsPoems can be interpreted at two levels: - Literal level -the basic, original meaning of a poem - Figurative level – the deeper, imaginative meaning of a poem

8. ThemeRepresents the main subject or idea of a poem.

9. A poem can have more than one theme because different people would interpret the same poem in various ways.Style and LanguageRefer to how the poet uses the language to convey his or her ideas. This would affect the tone, mood and meaning of a poem.MoodRefers to the feeling a poem creates for the readersToneReflects the poet’s attitude towards the subject of the poem.Poetic Devices-used to enhance the poem as they evoke emotional and sensual responses.

10. Poetic DevicesRhythm Gives a distinct beat to the poem and it is for a smooth flow of expression.

11. It is a regular, repeated pattern of sounds or stressed/ unstressed syllables.AlliterationIs two or more words which have the same sound at the beginning of the word.

12. The repetition of an initial sound or consonant in two or more words next to each other in a line of a poem.

13. E.g: “between bloated carcasses” RhymeThe last words of the lines match with each other in similar sounding words.

14. Gives a good flow to the poem because it maintains the reader’s interest.SimileIs a figure of speech comparing two things using words “like” or “as”ImageryInvolves our senses, e.g: visual, smell and sound.

15. Draws the reader into an experience by stimulating their senses which contributes to the mood of the poem.

16. Assonance

17. The repetition of a vowel sound in two or more words in the line of a poem.

18. e.g: their soaky clothes torn and approached the stove