Poet Alison Chisholm guides you through the language of poetry
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE gives poetry its poetic ‘feel’. It communicates a literal message through non-literal wording. There are various categories of figurative language. Three of the most common are a metaphor, where something is described as being something else, such as the past is a foreign country; a simile, likening one thing to another – Oh, my love is like a red, red rose; and personification that endows something non-human with human characteristics, as in the wood grain that spoke of agony and triumph.