Shannon Eilis Doherty

Figurative language (or figures of speech) is an umbrella term that encapsulates a variety of literary and poetic techniques where the use of words or phrases differ from their literal definitions. The utilisation of figurative language creates context through asking the reader to understand the meaning of something in relation to other things, images, sounds, etc. Figurative language is embedded into our everyday life and our communication with others is often riddled with sarcasm,...

I’ll be honest with you, when I’m writing a poem, I almost never think about my target audience. In fact, I never think about who my target audience is. Sure, I did think about who I was writing for when I was a student at university, but only because we were tasked with doing so in order to analyse our own writing. I’ve always written poetry with myself as the sole target audience to please. Maybe it’s because I’m a Virgo, but satisfying my own rigid and slightly neurotic ego is at the...

In literary works, the motif refers to a repetitive pattern or recurring element that is used to develop the complexity and depth of the...