• Straightforward description – include careful word choices like adjective (describing words) like huge, or glittering, and some poetic devices like alliteration (a sparkly, starlit summer night); simile (as bright as new pennies) or metaphor (the moon is a lake of white light).                                                                                                                       
• A list poem— use your senses and make a list of all of the things you’d like to take from the picture. Think of a place to store these things:                                                                                                                              In my basket I will place the smell of freshly baked bread in the baker’s, the sound of a steam train rattling over the bridge etc.                                                                                                                                     Alternatively, make a list of the things you would add to the picture that you think it is missing.                           
• Write in the voice of one of the characters in the painting … or write in the voice of each of several characters … or a conversation between two.                                                                                                       
• Imagine you are a person or animal being painted as you pose for the portrait. Write your thoughts about your life, about the job of being an artist’s model, about what you think of the artist.                                   
• Write about what you imagine is just outside the painting – what no one can actually see. To stimulate ideas, you could paste the image onto the middle of a large piece of paper and draw what you imagine outside the frame. You could include yourself in the background somewhere – this will add something personal and authentic to the poem, e.g. ‘In this painting everyone can see…… /But what nobody sees is…… /And look at that young girl sitting alone/ writing a poem under the tree/ That’s me.                                               
• Put yourself in the painting. Begin ‘If I were in this painting I would...’, or ‘If I walked into this painting...’                                                                                                                                                                 
• Write an ‘I wonder’ poem, i.e. a list of speculations e.g I wonder if…. Maybe….Perhaps…. It could be…..        
• Write a poem where each line begins with ‘If…’ or with a preposition. e.g: On top of…or Under... or Inside…or Beside…or But right in the middle …..                                                                                                    
• Write a poem about what strikes you most strongly. Maybe list other things before revealing what seems to you most significant – this could be something hidden away, barely noticeable.                                                 
• Write about different feelings a picture makes you fell e.g. I love… I am surprised by…  I am worried by….  I am scared by…  I am puzzled by… Your final poem could focus on one or several of these.                  
• Write about a memory from your own life that the picture reminds you of.

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