It is winter, early morning in the little township, chilled and blackfrosted, the plants and bushes stiffly frozen, the football field icy, the trees carrying crystals of sharp ice up to the wet sodden air-hugging mist.
Listen. It is morning quietly roving the main road, the moist melodic streaming mist rising over the garage and the schoolhouse. It is grass shivering on the hill. Sunrise, dawn, the chorus of birds in the pine trees.
It is Sunday morning. The thin clear slants of sun echo back onto the thick mist. In the silver windowed house, the parents sleep heavy while three blanketed children toss and turn. In the workshop of the garage, Joe is up and in his practical oil-stained overalls is working on that ute that the farmer needs today. Back in the house, the children now sit heavy-eyed around the wooden rectangular table.
And the toast burns as the jug boils.
“Hurry up kids, we’ll be late,” Mum shouts, sharp tongued. Washed and combed and brushed, families drive the short way to the little church on the hill. Past the swamp where the dragonflies shimmer and hover in the morning sunlight. Where the captured tadpoles would have grown into glazed green slippery little frogs.
Look. On the hill behind the house the pinetrees lift their heavy branches of sharp dense needles into the dwindling disappearing time-now-over mist. Down below in the township, the little general store opens its ready-for-anything doors to sell soap to biscuits, flour, tea towels, light bulbs and milk that will arrive later in the day carried for hours on the bus.
And soon you will be sitting on hard straight-backed wooden pews with no cushions. The tiny white wooden church echoing with the sound of morning hymns, streaming out into the frosty but now sunstreaked morning.
This piece of writing is an evocative description of one moment in time. Your task today is to create a piece of writing that describes an instant in a place you know, borrowing the following features from Dylan Thomas’ writing:
- It must be in the Second Person Viewpoint
- It must appeal to a range of the senses (Pay particular attention to the sections that start with the imperatives: “Listen”, or “Look”)
- It must use some from the following list of figurative language:
- Alliteration
- Metaphor
- Simile
- Personification
- Repetition
- Listing
- Simple sentences
Describing the Class atmosphere – avoiding using cliche descriptions
Draft:
12.11pm, Period 3, Monday. It is English with Mr Waugh in Rm 23.
The lull (pollution) of teenagers chatting fills the empty (stark) bland (monotonous) room. 25 separate conversations clash and clang in your ears. You wish they would shut up.
They don’t.
Instead, you put your headphones in, and continue on your own work, waiting for the clock to hit 12.20pm.
It is warm. Too warm. The air is thick opaque , and hard to swallow. It invites you into a drowsy state.
The pitter-patter of fingers on keyboards echoes in your head.
Rewritten: Nouns in bold
12.11pm, Period 3, Monday. It is English with Mr Waugh in Rm 23.
The pollution of teenagers chatting fills the stark monotonous room. 25 separate conversations clash and clang in your ears. You wish they would shut up.
They don’t.
Instead, you put your headphones in, and continue on your own work, waiting for the clock to hit 12.20pm.
It is warm. Too warm. The air is opaque, and hard to swallow. It invites you into a drowsy state.
The pitter-patter of fingers on keyboards echoes in your head.
Arrival at School -personification
The cell walls of school grasp for my defeated mind. Keeping me imprisoned for another day.
Shackled for another day.
Locking me in for another day.
Keeping me captive for another day.
Keeping me in shackles for another day
Confined for another day.