If I had to name a few technical terms that typify most of my poetry, they would be rhyme, alliteration and assonance, and rhythmic patterns. As I've matured, or at least got older ;>) alliteration seems to flow without thought or effort and can be the most obvious feature of a poem. Rhyme may become less and less structured, more hidden.

Life is the prayer is full of alliteration. Some of it attacks you on the page - in the middle of the first verse you get "-cold chill, coruscating cross the ripple corrugations" - all hard 'c' sounds (except not quite with the 'ch', which follow closely after the hard 't', 'c' and 'p in "tick-tock, tap-tap-tapping".

Hidden away in that same line are the less obvious sibilants in "coruscating cross" which are followed a few lines later as that hard 'c' morphs into a soft 'c' in "circles centring" (and in the middle of "re-c-entring") and an equally sibilant silver.

Verse 2 goes crazy with this sound - at the end of words like "ferns" and "grass" and a sneaky one in "majesty", and ALL those words starting with "s". All up, there are 26 "s" sibilant sounds in 52 words. I've tried to get the sound of water onto the page - so technically is also onomatopoeia. Writing about it now (October 2022) I feel like I should re-edit just to fit in the word "susurration" which with the "ti" making an "sh sound" is almost self referential. Sadly, it would probably need to replace another to keep the rhythm the same.

Something only slightly less obvious is the recurrent rhyming chime of "-ing" in no less than 20 words. There are a number at the end of lines, but they are seeded everywhere.

I have no edits from the original - whatever I put down as first thoughts that became the poem have been long thrown away. My guess is that a fair amount came out originally, and then I worked through it, adding or changing words to give more and more of the sound I wanted. If you want to look at the Notes for "Midwinter", written in the first half of 2022, I kept all the drafts because they were on computer and you can watch the poem grow as alliteration piled up, like wind driven leaves do ... in Midwinter.