"For me, poetry is musical"
Our 2026 Poetry Month Ambassadors, including singer-songwriter Missy Higgins and musician-rapper Ziggy Ramo, emphasise the musicality in poetry. By considering the sounds of poetry, students will develop understandings of alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and rhythm
1. Watch
“I hope you made soup the size of the sea”
Class Discussion Questions
- What examples of rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and assonance did you notice in these poems?
- Did the way the poem sounded when read aloud change your experience of the story it was telling?
- Would the poem’s meaning be different if it was printed in a book, but not read aloud?
Writing Exercise
- Begin by writing pairs of words that rhyme. Write as many as you can! If you’re stuck with getting started, here are some words you could try to find rhymes for: tail, hush, star, fire, understand, heard, streetlight, feeling.
- After brainstorming rhyming words, choose your three favourite pairs (six words in total).
- Incorporate all these six words into a short poem, between three and five lines long. Each rhyming pair should be split up, so the rhyming words are not next to each other.
- Read the poem aloud and see what the effect is of your rhyming words. How does the poem sound?
Extension (for secondary students): See what hip hop artist Dobby has to say on the importance of poetry by watching the video below (2-minutes).
