Today I’m writing an alliterative poem about a jellyfish! Later I will show you how to make a jellyfish to display your own poem – which doesn’t have to be about a jellyfish, it can be about any undersea creature.
What is alliteration? Alliteration happens when words in the same sentence have the same first letter sound. Sometimes letters within the words have the same sound which doubles up the effect.
I find fine falafels fabulous. Big bangs bring down bombed buildings. I like licking lemon and lime lollies.
Alliteration is often used in poetry, sometimes to suggest an action or sound that helps with the images. It can be used to help with a rhythm, or draw attention to a word or idea.
I have used a little alliteration in the following poem to suggest and establish the rhythm of the sea:
Leafy Sea Dragon
Where meadows of
green sea grass grows,
among the waving
seaweed groves,
the leafy dragon
comes and goes,
attired in leaves
of seaweed green,
among the weeds
he’s barely seen,
entwined and wreathed
with seas between,
and as the dragon
drifts and weaves,
the rhythms
of the sea he breathes,
and none see when
he comes or leaves.
© Liz Brownlee
So – now to write your poem! Every line does not need to have alliteration in it – and you do not need to have every word alliterating. Neither do you need to use rhyme – it is better to use the best words you can, and having to make a rhyme fit can make what you are saying sound awkward or forced if you are not used to doing it.
Read a bit about your animal so you have some ideas of what to write. Look at images of it.
Lines 1 and 2: Start off your poem naming your animal, saying where it lives. I have chosen a jellyfish because that is the craft I will be doing later, but the jellyfish model can have any poem about any undersea creature attached to it. Perhaps you’d prefer an octopus – and you could make an octopus as easily as a jellyfish – or maybe a dolphin, whale, or other type of fish? These are my first two lines:
Jewelled jellyfish jiving
in the deep, dark waves
You do not need to have all the words alliterative – I could have used the same sound in both lines, but I have used a different sound in line 2. If saying something about your animal sounds better with fewer alliterative words, use the most poetic version!
Line 3 and 4: Tell the reader something else about your creature. This could be what it eats, what it enjoys doing, whether it is active at night or day, or how it is feeling. These are my second two lines:
bobbing in the blueness
all its nights and days
Lines 5 and 6: Use a simile to compare the creature’s habitat or movement to say it is like something else or use a metaphor to say it is something else. If you have chosen a dolphin for example, you might want to say it splashes LIKE a stone skipping water, or it IS a stone skipping splashes through the water. Can you hear the difference between those two descriptions? I think the second metaphor description sounds better. That’s because the rhythm in it suggests the sound of the dolphin jumping through the water. These are my third two lines:
waving winding tentacles
beneath its water sky
Lines 7 and 8: Using another simile or metaphor, describe your creature’s movement if you haven’t before, or its appearance – using the dolphin example, you might say its skin is like the sun and sea-smoothed sand or is sea and sun-smoothed sand. In this case, I think the simile description sounds better, as it has the better rhythm and sounds more believable. These are my last two lines:
muscles move its bell top
like a lilting lullaby.
That’s the end of your poem!
Here is my whole poem:
Jellyfish
Jewelled jellyfish jiving
in the deep, dark waves
bobbing in the blueness
all its nights and days
waving winding tentacles
beneath its water sky
muscles move its bell top
like a lilting lullaby
Next- you can make a jellyfish to display your sea poem. Read all the instructions so you can see how it is made all the way though first – then you will know why you are doing each stage and be able to work out how long to make strings etc.
You will need:
Yogurt pots (clean!)
Buttons or cardboard circles
Scissors, thick needle
Thread, wool, ribbon or parcel ribbon
First of all, choose your yogurt pot. I had two types – and chose the rounder version because it would look more like a jellyfish.
Then you will need a button with large holes – I chose the pink one because it had slits – if you do not have any buttons like this, then cut out a disk of thick cardboard, about an inch in diameter. It does not need to be that large, but larger is easier to cut out!
Next you need to cut lengths of something to make the tentacles of your jelly fish. This could be wool, or string, or thin ribbon… I am using thin, shiny curling ribbon which you can curl using your thumbnail pressed against it along it’s length – there are many videos on the internet showing you how to do this.
If you are making an octopus, you can cut wider pieces of thick paper and curl them to make the octopus tentacles.
When you have cut and made 8 tentacles, thread them through the holes in the button and sellotape them together and then to the top of the button. If it is not possible to thread them through, then sellotape each one to the top of the button. If you have made a cardboard disc, then you can either make a slit in it or you can sellotape each tentacle to the top.
If you are making octopus tentacles, the tentacles need to be sellotaped , equally distanced, around the rim of the yogurt pot.
(I do wish I hadn’t been gardening just before this art challenge, then my nails wouldn’t be all broken and ragged!)
Next you need to thread some ribbon, thin string, wool or embroidery cotton through a large needle with a big eye, and knot it at the end.
Put the end of the ribbon through the loop several times so the knot is big enough not to go all the way through the yogurt pot.
This string will hang your jelly fish from wherever you want to put it, so it needs to be fairly long.
Then push your needle up through one of the holes in the button or cardboard disc from underside to top side. If you holes are quite big you can put a piece of tape on the underside of the button or disc to stop the ribbon or string knot going straight through.
Then pull the ribbon through until the knot catches on the underside.
Then thread the needle through the middle of the underside of the yogurt pot. Pull until the button or disc rests against the bottom of the pot.
It should look like this:
I chose to leave my pot undecorated or painted because I think it looks more like a see-through jellyfish. But you can paint it with poster paint at this stage if you like. Or you can stick pieces of paper onto it in a collage of different colours.
Next you need to write out your poem neatly on a piece of stiff A6 paper – a quarter of the size of A4 paper. Do this in pencil first so you can fill the paper and make sure your words are not squashed.
Rub out the pencil before doing the next stage! (I didn’t!) Push the needle with the ribbon through the poem at the bottom middle, front to back. Pull the ribbon through but leave some ribbon space between the top of the jellyfish model and the bottom of the poem.
Then bring the needle it out again at the top, back to front.
That’s it! You are ready to hang your alliterative sea poem!
Hope you enjoyed making this poem! You can write a jellyfish poem using any of the poem prompts from any of the crafts I’ve done over the past weeks.
The next craft poetry challenge will be written by the wonderful Sue Hardy-Dawson!
A Chinese dragon on a wall at the Haikou Yazhou Gu Cheng, Hainan, China, by Anna Frodesiak.
