PERSONIFICATION

Personification

Is when human qualities or abilities are given to an animal, object or idea.

For example, talking about a tree’s “arms” instead of its branches, or referring to the sun “smiling” down on us

There are lots of ways to have fun with personification.  In fact, personification can offer some good inspiration for writing imaginative poems.

Here are a few ideas:

Personify an object…

Think of an object eg, teapot,  spoon, chair.
Now choose a verb involving emotion and life eg, remembers, dreams, hopes, wonders, wished, felt, heard. etc.

1.   Write a very simple statement about an occasion involving that object:

For example:

The spoon remembered the day
that he fed
the young prince

2.   Now use some or all of the five Ws to make this into a fuller idea (Who, what, why, when, where), using them in any order of course:

        Eg.          The spoon remembered          (personified)
that Christmas Day long ago            (when),
when he (NOT it) fed the young prince    (who)
                          baby food                                    (what)
in the palace kitchen                      (where)

3.    This idea can be extended by adding other emotions: memories of the past, dreams of the future; different pieces of furniture; homes and people it has encountered……  A chair can probably share many feelings and thoughts dependant on the size of those who have sat on it!

NB. I would suggest that, rather than trying to make this a rhyming poem you could concentrate on emotion and interest and look at my teaching on “Free Verse” to see how to set out the end result as a poem.

Write a letter poem… from an object, animal, season place etc. to something or someone else.

Eg The Sun to the Night Sky:

Can’t you make a bit more effort to brighten up the place,
I have spent my whole day with a smile upon my face,
You stagger on the earth, with your feeble starlight wink,
And all my effort’s wasted and gone in just one blink

This automatically gets the writer into the mindset of personification as the object has a voice and thoughts and feelings to express.  Remember that the idea is to get some human behaviour and verbs into the conversation, not simply to make the object talk.  Just saying he/she about an object is not the idea!

If you would like to see some examples of personification in my poems, look in the FIGURATIVE POEMS, PERSONIFICATION category above.  Some poems will have lots of personification as I have written them specifically to demonstrate that particular effect of figurative writing, but many poems will include personification to some extent.  Therefore, to help you find what you need, each poem includes a brief description of the figurative writing effects that are included and how much is included.