Imagery and Personification
A poetic activity
Personification
Personification is giving human qualities, feelings,
action, or characteristics to things that are not human.
The mirror is a fortune teller,
It shows images for concern.
Hair clumped like seaweed,
From yesterday’s bad perm.
The mirror sneers and laughs
As I battle with my brush,
I have curled my hair to death,
It is no longer shiny and lush.
Personification
"The ancient car groaned into third gear."
"The cloud scattered rain throughout the city."
"The tropical storm slept for two days.”
The nonliving objects in the above sentences
(car, cloud, storm) have been given human
qualities (groaned, scattered, slept).
Adding meaning to nonliving or nonhuman
objects in this manner is called
personification.
Personification
 Personify the following sentences. Change the
words in parentheses to words that would
describe a human's actions:
My bedroom door yawned.
1.My bedroom door (opened).
2.The puppy (barked) when I left for school.
3.The leaf (fell) from the tree.
4.The flashlight (went on).
5.Hair (is) on my head.
6.The CD player (made a noise).
7.The net (moves) when the basketball goes through.
8.The player piano keys (moved up and down).
9.The space shuttle (took off).
10.The little arrow (moves) across the computer screen.
Step One: Create vivid, active
and interesting imagery
Imagery is language that appeals to the five senses
(taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound.)
You have one minute to arrange the nouns and verbs at
the top of your worksheet into random pairs.
Do not try to arrange the words to make sense — the
stranger the combination, the better!
For example, don’t choose ‘fly’ and ‘swoop’ because a fly
can swoop. You could choose fly and mumbles because
a fly doesn’t mumble in real life.
Step Two: Link words
•Choose you favorite word pairs and link them together with a theme.
•For example, I might link my favorite word pairs by the themes of
either sleeping and dreaming.
Word Pairs
Moon/ Boils
Eyes/ Swing
Mind/ Dances
Smile/Shouts
Why?
How?
Where?
Step Three: Let your mind create
crazy images of your pairs
•Answer the following questions about each pair.
•Try to keep the theme in mind when answering them.
Word Pairs
Why?
How?
Where?
In a shimmering
glow
In a starless sky
Moon/ Boils
Because it is the
stroke of
midnight
Smile/ Shouts
Because I don’t
want to wake up
With all my teeth
as the trumpets
Out into the
emptiness of
space
Eyes/ Swing
Because I’m
dreaming
Like rolling
marbles
Under blankets
Mind/ dances
Because I have
seen a blue
unicorn
Like an excited
dog
On cotton candy
clouds
Step Four: Edit (because more is
less when it comes to poetry)
Cross out the words you don’t want, circle the ones you do want to
keep and then try to make a line of poetry.
Word Pairs
Why?
How?
Where?
In a shimmering
glow
In a starless sky
Moon/ Boils
Because it is the
stroke of
midnight
Smile/ Shouts
Because I don’t
want to wake up
With all my teeth
as the trumpets
Out into the
emptiness of
space
Eyes/ Swing
Because I’m
dreaming
Like rolling
marbles
Under blankets
Mind/ dances
Because I have
seen a blue
unicorn
Like an excited
dog
On cotton candy
clouds
Step Four: Edit (because more is
less when it comes to poetry)
•Cross out the words you don’t want to keep .
•Circle the words you do want to keep.
• Try to make a line of poetry.
•Here is an example:
The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky.
My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!"
My eyes swing under blankets of dreams.
My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers.
Step Five: Put the lines in order
•Order can really change the meaning and help your ideas
seem more connected.
•Compare the original example to the reordered example.
•How has reordering the lines changed the meaning slightly?
•Which one do you think is better?
The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky.
My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!"
My eyes swing under blankets of dreams.
My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers.
The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky.
My eyes swing under blankets of dreams.
My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers.
My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!"
Illustration
• Rewrite your poem on drawing paper.
• Decorate it with the images you visualize
when reading your text.
The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky.
My eyes swing under blankets of dreams.
My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers.
My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!"