Page 25 - Year 10 Knowledge Organiser

Engineering: Solving Engineering Problems: 5 of 5 English Literature: Poetry: 1 of 4

Key Poetry Terminology

Mood – the tone or atmosphere created by the poet, affecting the readers’ feelings.

Narrator – voice from whose perspective the poem is written: not the same as the poet.
Perspective – The point of view from which the poem is written.
Persona – If the voice in the poem is a specific person or character it is referred to as the persona.
Colloquial – informal, everyday speech and language which may include slang.

Form - the way the poem is laid out on the page. (It can refer to a specific verse form in which a number of lines in a verse or
stanza is repeated. It can also refer to a specific type of poem that follows a set of rules such as those for a sonnet.)
Structure – the pattern, order or organisation of language and ideas and how they develop and change throughout the poem.
Enjambment – when a line runs on into the next line without pause, carrying the thought, image, pace and sometimes the sound
with it.
Caesura – a pause or break in the line of a poem that affects the rhythm and pace.

Stanza – a specific group of lines forming a unit, like a verse in a song.
• 2 lines – couplet 4 lines – quatrain
Volta – a turning point in the poem that marks a change of thought or emotion.
Imagery – a picture created by words.

Metaphor – one thing is used to describe another in a way that is not literally true.
Simile – one thing compared to another using “like” or “as”
Connotation – word association – ideas that spring to mind when a word or phrase is used.
Personification – when ideas or things are given human feelings and characteristics.
Alliteration – repetition of the same sound (not necessarily the same letter) in a group of words, often at the beginning of

words.
Ambiguity – when writers, perhaps deliberately, use words or images with more than one meaning or interpretation.
Sibilance – a hissing sound made by using “s”, “ss” “sh” or “z”.