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Young Writers Society


Let's talk about poetry.



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Wed Dec 16, 2020 2:22 am
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Liminality says...



silented1 wrote:One of the things I think that I should learn is how the sounds of words flow together when writing a poem to help control the impact of lines as they speed up or slow down to make the information more or less readily available. That's close to why I want to learn it.

What's something you want to learn? Maybe we could share books that have helped us learn to write.


Oh I love using sound-related techniques in poetry! I think alliterative effects are the most flexible when it comes to changing the impact of a line. If you use alliteration with harsher consonants, you tend to get a harsher impact:

breaking the back of a bone-brick wall


Alliteration combined with sibilance (that is, any hissing consonant like 's' and 'sh' in English) gives a different effect, maybe slowing down or making a creepy atmosphere:

silence in the sirens' sorrowful sea

Can't think of any books myself at the moment, but articles on Poetry Foundation are a good source outside of YWS to start with. There's also a great section on assonance (another sound technique!) in this Knowledge Base entry: Kiss My Assonance - 5 ways to improve your poetry

I'm also interested in improving the rhythm in my poetry this year, so it's great to review all those resources I was looking at when I first started out~
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