Friday, April 7, 2017

Day 7 ~ How to Write an “Alliteration Poem” for “30 Poems in 30 Days” #NationalPoetryMonth


This is a fun poem to work on. Many children’s nursery rhymes and tongue twisters use alliteration.

Alliteration is the recurring repetition of the same consonant sound found in a sequence of words close to each other. It’s typically found at the beginning of a word. The SOUND, rather than the actual LETTER is important here. ‘Cake’ and ‘cereal’ both start with the letter “C” but there is no alliteration there whereas ‘fantastic’ and ‘phenomenal’ start with different letters BUT share the same beginning sound. You get the idea, right? 

Alliteration can be useful when you are trying to emphasize something or to bring a bit of musicality to your poem. (And quite often, silliness)!! 

It helps to brainstorm up a list of words that have the same beginning sound. Choose a letter to practice your alliterations.  Open a doc, type the letter and then type as many words as you can that start with the letter you chose. This will help you when you start to create your poem.



Basically, it takes 5 steps to come up with a pretty decent alliteration poem:



1    1 Pick a (consonant) letter.
     2. Brainstorm a bunch of words starting with the same letter or, at least, with the same sound. You will need some NOUNS, VERBS, and ADJECTIVES.
     3. Try making up sentences using those words.
      Ex: I bravely bit into a brown banana!
 4. Add more sentences and see if you can’t pull off a rhyme or two in the process – rhyming works really well in alliteration poems, BUT is not required.  
 5. Now, here’s the trick – try to come up with a REASON for these sentences to fit together into a poem or a tongue twister and then put them together.

   Voilà – you may have just written an alliteration poem. Congratulations.


If you are struggling a bit, here is a link to help you with your brainstorming:



Here are some examples found among tongue twisters, clichés and Mother Goose rhymes:

Alliteration in Tongue Twisters

    Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

    How much wood would a woodchuck chuck If a woodchuck would chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck If a woodchuck would chuck wood.

    Sally sells sea shells down by the seashore.

Typical alliterations found in clichés: sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen

Mother Goose examples:

From Three Grey Geese
by Mother Goose
Three grey geese in a green field grazing, Grey were the geese and green was the grazing.

Betty Botter
by Mother Goose
Betty Botter bought some butter,
but, she said, the butter’s bitter;
if I put it in my batter
it will make my batter bitter,
but a bit of better butter
will make my batter better.
So she bought a bit of butter
better than her bitter butter,
and she put it in her batter
and the batter was not bitter.
So ’twas better Betty Botter

bought a bit of better butter.





Here’s a fun clip of someone reading an alliteration poem by well-known kids’ poet, Jack Prelutsky ~






Here’s a silly one I wrote – for what it’s worth:

“Cute Cook”
Candy cooked a coconut cake
Because Ben bet she didn’t bake
She surprised several siblings
Once they nabbed her nice nibblings
Ben called out, “Candy can cook!”
Let’s linger longer and have a look.

© 2017 Stephanie Abney

And this one, I have NO idea what I would classify it as, but I’m calling it “Random Ramblings” ~ but – it DOES have some alliteration in it.

“Random Ramblings”
I love the lingering lilt of letters,
As they roll off the loquacious tongue of
Those skilled in stringing sights and sounds
Together, forever, to remain remarkably in the air,

Where one can examine, explore and adore such expositions
Exclamations, proclamations of love and allure, and more
Delight by design, entertain and endear, fact or fiction
Mesmerizing memories making habitation in the heart.

© 2017 Stephanie Abney



PLEASE REMEMBER ~ any poetry found on this blog, written by me, is my personal property and may not be used without my permission, other than sharing it as an example in a lesson or to read it to someone. The same goes for any poems that are shared in the comments of this blog or elsewhere online as a result of this challenge. They are the creative property of the person who writes them. These poems are their original work and no one may use them without their permission. It is understood that they own the copyright for to them as soon as they post them. Thanks so much!

Also, if you choose to post your poems on your own blog ~ that’s awesome. But PLEASE don’t just copy and paste my daily instructions, but rather post your poem on your blog or you FB wall or wherever AND LINK BACK TO THIS BLOG POST for others to come here to read the instructions. I’ve spent considerable time researching the poetry forms and writing them up to share with you. Thanks for respecting my work.


4 comments:

Kristen said...

He Sees

As thick snow settles on my soul,
I sigh -
"Oh, Savior, please!"

I plead for strength, for
warmth inside, for
possibilities.

When, in the stillness,
peace steals in, and
sets my soul at ease,

I whisper thanks for
blessings sent.
My Lord, my God - He sees.

Stephanie Abney said...

This poem is beautiful, Kristen ~ thanks for sharing it.

Carroll Morris said...

I agree.
My alliteration poem seems silly after that, but here it is!


The fancy man was a fake, felonious fellow.
He flattered the females and left them
Flailing their fans in fury.

Peggy Barker said...

Mighty missionary, Marie, made a message to the members.
Mused she, "Might they have missed my motive? Were they mesmerized by my memo?

Maybe not...
But why were they momentarily motionless and mute?

Maybe it might have been because they saw a monstrous, monster munching on M&M's meandering his way toward Marie.

Marie turned and saw him and mustard up all of her mettle and motioned to the monster to stop!
She mentioned that many of the members are mortified of monsters.

The monstrous monster made apologies and marched right out of the meeting.

Mighty missionary, Marie, said, "Well at least he should have shared his M&M's!"