Download Poetry Café

Poetry Café
On Tuesday, June 27th, 2017, we will be hosting our Grade 8 Poetry Café. In
preparation for this event, you will have to complete the following:
1. Select a poem of your choice that resonates with you – either you can relate
to it in some way, it’s part of your past, or you agree with the message. You
must memorize a section (at least 8 lines) of the poem, or the entire poem.
2. Create your own poem. Investigate different types of poetic forms (haiku,
free verse, spoken word, found poetry, limerick etc). Be sure to follow the
poem’s structure. Your poem must be at least 12 lines. You must also
include at least three different poetic devices in your poem (see below)
Submit Friday, June 23rd
 Provide the full poem you decide to recite. Include a brief explanation as to
why you chose your poem and how it resonated with you.

Include your poem. Identify and bold the figurative language you use.
Presentation Tuesday, June 27th
You will be expected to share both poems to the class. If you choose to, you can
recite one, or both, during our combined grade 8 café.
Literary Devices – Poetry
Hyperbole: Use of exaggeration for emphasis, serious, or humorous effects: “There
were tons of people trying to get tickets to that concert.”
Metaphor: A common figure of speech which a direct comparison or identification
is made between two unlike objects (not using like or as): “Juliet is the sun”;
“Thumb: an odd friendless boy raised by four aunts.”
Personification: A figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects
or abstract ideas: “The houses gazed at each other”; “the yellow fog rubs its back
upon the window pane.”
Simile: A figure of speech comparing two dissimilar things, using the words like or
as: “My love is like a rose”; “the thunder sounded like a mean dog’s growl”.
Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds: “wild and wooly”; “do or
die”.
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds, which may add to euphony: “slap
dash”; “mad as a hatter”.
Consonance: The close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after
different vowels: “slip – slop”; “creak – croak”; black – block”; “struts and frets”.
Meter: A system for identifying and measuring the rhythmic pattern according to
its stressed and unstressed syllables. E.g. Iambic pentameter: five metrical feet,
each composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (an iamb):
Following is an example from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet XVIII”:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . .
Onomatopoeia: Words which represent a sound. (“SHAZAM!”; “click”)
Prose: Language which is not in meter. Sometimes even poems can be written in
prose.