Meter (non-American spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of verse. Scansion is the analysis of poetry's metrical and rhythmic patterns. Prosody is sometimes used to describe poetic meter, and indicates the analysis of similar aspects of language in linguistics. Meter is part of many formal verse forms.
Anglo-Welsh poetry is a subset of Anglo-Welsh literature. The poetry written in English by those familiar with the Welsh language tends to be distinctive in its style and rhythms. Dylan Thomas is the most famous exponent of the genre, and it is the secret of his apparent uniqueness for non-Welsh readers.
British poetry is poetry written by British poets. It may refer to British literature written in the British Isles, the United Kingdom, or Great Britain. It may include poetry written in any of the languages in the United Kingdom or in other languages of the British Isles, or written elsewhere by British poets.
Most verse writing uses meter as its primary organizational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. Verse may also use rhyme and other technical devices that are often associated with poetry.
Not all verse is poetry. Generally speaking, what separates the two is that in poetry language achieves the highest possible level of condensation.
Accent in poetry refers to the stressed portion of a word. For example:
"Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness;
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
over all the earth and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth"
Genesis 26-27
Now depending on where you place the stress in this poem you will get a different meaning. For example, place the stress or accent on 'Our' and suddenly we have more than one God. Place it on 'them' then, there would appear to be a lot of men already there ready to receive planetary rights. Place it strategically on 'fish', 'birds', 'cattle' then you've got a really nice wrap up with accenting the last 'earth' for emphasis. Of course, where to accent in poetry can be of hot debate.
The Bard, 1774, by Thomas Jones (1742–1803)
