Half Agony, Half Hope

Today I have been looking at the different types of imagery used in creative writing: direct descriptive imagery, narrative/directional imagery, metaphor, simile, metonym, personification, surreal imagery and martianism/estrangement. I plan to build these into my poetry.

We started with a place in a city (I chose Dubai), and then a big thing (its skyscrapers), a small thing (the little souvenir lamps you get in the souks) and sensory things (the souks are very cramped and busy so people shouting and the smell of sweat came to mind). We also aimed to include an agent of change and something to show the passing of time.

The poem I came up with in regards to these thoughts was this (bear in mind that this is the first draft, taking me about ten minutes, and I was particularly trying to incorporate different types of imagery):

Large metallic rooms pierce the sky,

Radiating its fire.

I hold a little lamp in my hands, a little genie’s home,

The shouts and smells of vendors everywhere.

A man crashes into me,

My little lamp smashes on the floor.

From here I plan to utilise the reflection of the sun on the buildings (line 2) to present the passing of time (narrative/directional imagery), either by the sun setting or it getting cooler. I may also change the ‘shouts and smells’ to be more specific, and remove the repeated ‘little’ for the genie’s lamp section. I could also intensify the sense of heat, stress, confinement and also wonder, as these are the main things I took away from my trip to the souks.