Grade 7 Verse and Prose: Verse Form, Metre and Rhythm

The Life of a Digger AND The Thing About Symmetry

One of my subscribers requested a post about the Knowledge Questions at Grade 7 Verse and Prose using these poems as examples:

• The Life of a Digger by Margarita Engle

• The Thing About Symmetry by Alessandra Davison

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

They are both in the current Verse and Prose Anthology (Volume 19). So here you are! I hope everyone will find it helpful.

Learners will be asked these questions about their verse selections:

1. Give a summary of the poem and sonnet presented

2. Explain the verse form used in the poem and sonnet

3. Explain the metre and rhythm used in the poem and sonnet

I’m going to focus on the the second and third of these today. It is definitely worth looking at this previous post which looks at the same questions focusing on a modern sonnet.

Explain the verse form used in the poem

There are a few different types of verse form that your students are likely to have come accross: haikus, limericks, sonnets, blank verse, prose poetry and acrostics may have been studied at school. Many poems don’t fit into one of these forms, and will be described as ‘free verse’. Both of these poems fit into the free verse category. The poets have used ‘versification’ to divide the poems into stanzas.

In a model answer I would start with that: this poem is an example of free verse, and the poet has used versification to divide the poem into stanzas.

Then you can look at the poem a bit more closely and give some extra information. For example: