A guided system of annotation for Poetic techniques and rhyme and rhythm patterns, students are taken through all of the relevant metalanguage they may require. A total of 27 techniques are discussed, with images, explanations and guidance around how to locate and analyse each technique. Students task is to complete a notation of these techniques on their copy of the poem for reference to the deeper analysis necessary to analyse a poem effectively.

1. Locating techniques
9W – 2015 – The Super Useful
PowerPoint that will help you locate
techniques and sound smart when you
refer to them.

2. Make your
Poem Look
like this –
Then your
Homework is
just putting
it into a
PowerPoint
For Thursday

3. 1. Does it rhyme? Circle where.
• If it doesn’t: The poem is free verse
• If the rhyming parts are within the middle of
the sentence: internal rhyme
• If the rhyming parts are at the end: end rhyme

4. 2. Where does it rhyme?
• Does ever line end with a rhyme with the next
line?
• Then it is end rhyme or tail rhyme
• Does every first and third, second and forth
line rhyme?
• Alternate rhyme

5. 3. Alliteration?
• Same sound repeated
• Is the vowel sound repeated? This is called
Assonance
• “Meat, sheet, heat, pleat, crete”
• Is the consonant sound repeated? This is called
Consonance
• “Rapid Regular Repeating Rifle”

6. 4. Questions / Rhetorical Questions?
• Are there any question marks? Are the
questions answerable or rhetorical?
• “Who’s for the game?”

7. 5. Onomatopoeia? Sound effects?
• Does your poem have any sound effect words,
any words that sound like the thing they
describe?
• “Bang, Smash, boom”

8. 6. Personification, does your poem use
emotional language?
• If the things being given emotions do not
usually have them, then this is personification.
• “Angry bombs rained down across the
battlefield”

9. 7. Similes?
• Look for the word ‘like’ this is probably a
simile
• “War is like a cancerous cell that foreshadows
your own death.”

10. 8. Metaphors?
• Look for the word ‘is’
• This is probably a metaphor if it is comparing
two different things.
• “War is mixed blood,
War is true sadness,
War is wet mud,
War is ultimate madness.”

11. 9. Enjambment
• Do any of the sentences in your poem run over
more than one line without a full stop, this is
called enjambment, and we say that the lines
have been “enjambed”.
• “THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is
looking,
Down a new-made double grave.”

12. 10. Stanzas
• How many paragraphs
does your poem have?
• These are called stanzas
• “This poem contains three
stanas” 

13. 11. How many lines in each stanza?
• Two lines = couplet
• Three lines = tercet / triplet
• Four lines = quatrain
• Five lines = quintain / quintet
• Six lines = sixain / sextet
• Seven lines = septet
• Eight lines = huitain
• Nine lines = hexameter

14. 12. Repetition
• Are there any words that are repeated?
• “Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall
rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not; “

15. 13. Imagery
• What types of images does your poem contain
• “Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.”
• Sun Imagery

16. 14. Motif / Symbol
• Is there a certain images or word or group of
words that is referred to frequently.
• This is the poems motif or symbol
• “You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought
confined. We stumble and we do not
understand.”
• Motif of vision, blindness and awareness

17. 15. Euphemistic or Dysphemistic
• Is your poem more direct and forceful when it
describes war = dysphemistic
• Is your poem more ‘around about’ and polite
when it describes war = euphemistic
• “War is a noble service” = Euphemistic
• “ War is a bloodbath of guts and gore” =
Dysphemistic

18. 16. Connotations
• What connotations (thoughts associated) are
attached to the key words of the poem?
• Are the connotations positive or negative?
• “War as honourable service” = positive, law-
based, service connotations
• “War is a murderous rampages” = negative, law-
based connotations

19. 17. Juxtaposition
• This is two things that do not often go together,
or be compared, being put together or compared.
• War and Peace
• Babies and War
• Guns and young people
• “A toddler with a grenade launcher”

20. 18. Patriotic Language
• Is a country referred to?
• Is a nation mentioned?
• Does the poem show that one country is the
good side, whilst the other is the bad side?
• “Our glorious homeland, our fortunate
motherland”

21. 19. Formal / Informal language
• Is your poem in informal, casual or everyday
language? = Informal
• Is your poem in formal, professional and
poetic language? = Formal
• “Me and me mates went into the fray” =
informal
• “The ninth battalion swept around the
enemies flanks” = formal

22. 20. Punctuation and Pause
• Does your poem have punctuation? What
effect does this give the poem? Rhyme?
Rhythm? Pauses?
• Does your poem not make use of
punctuation? What effect does this have on
the poem and its rhythm?
• “Even, when the, men, took pause, to
consider, their plight, they felt consumed.”

23. 21. Does your poem contain
References?
• To other texts?
• The bible? The Khoran? The Torah? A famous
story? A line in another language? A line from
another poem?
• “Like David and Goliath, the lads charged into
the oncoming machine gun fire”

24. 22. Refrain?
• Does your poem repeat a phrase or statement
more than once? This is referred to as a
refrain.
• “Who’s for the game?”
• “Who’s for the game?”
• “Who’s for the game?”

25. 23. Allegory
• Is your poem an allegory for
something.
• An allegory is a story where the
characters are substituted for
something else, such as animals,
vegetables or something other
than the obvious.
• Animal Farm is a well known
example of this, as is ‘The Tortoise
and the Hare’.
• “The men marched like roaches”

26. 24. Dialogue
• Does your poem have these marks
• “”
• Then your poem contains dialogue
• “She had to ask, "What was it, dear?"

27. 25. Personal Pronouns / Inclusive
language?
• Does your poem contain the words ‘I, we, me,
you, he, she’?
• Then it contains personal pronouns.
• Or collective / inclusive language?
• We, us, all of us, us lads, our forces, our soldiers?
• “Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes”

28. 26. Emotive language
• Does your poem make use of a great deal of
emotional, or emotive language?
• “For the proud tears of a sister! come you
back, or never come!
And the weary Elder Brother, looking after
things at home—”

29. 27. Extended Metaphor
• A metaphor that is taken to its fullest extent.
• Metaphor:
• Love is a rose.
• Extended Metaphor:
• “Love is a rose, it has thorns, it comes in many
colours, and at the bottom of it all it is ringed by
unpleasant fertiliser.”