How to Analyse a Poem (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

What does it mean to analyse a poem?

Analysing a poem means explaining what the poem means and how the poet creates that meaning. The poet’s methods are the choices the poet makes about language, form and structure.

Good poem analysis connects the two. Every time you point out a method, explain what that method adds to the poem’s meaning.

Why does poetry analysis matter in GCSE English Literature?

Poetry analysis is a core skill in your AQA GCSE English Literature exam, for three reasons:

• Poetry appears as both anthology poems and unseen poems, so you’ll use this skill more than once

• The same method works for any poem, so you don’t need a different approach for each one

• It builds the close reading that you also need for your plays and novels

This is the kind of poem analysis GCSE examiners look for: a clear idea about the poem, supported by close comments on the poet’s methods.

How to analyse a poem step by step

Here is how to analyse a poem in six steps. The steps work in this order because it’s much easier to explain a method once you know what the poem is about.

• Read the poem once for meaning, and sum up in one sentence what happens in the poem

• Work out who the speaker is, who they’re talking to and what situation they’re in

• Pick out the key images and word choices, and note what each one suggests. You can annotate directly on the poem for this step

• Look at the form, including the type of poem, the length of the lines and stanzas, and any rhyme

• Look at the structure, including where the poem changes in tone or focus, what is repeated and how the poem ends

• Decide on the poet’s big idea, and link that idea to the question you’ve been asked

If you’re unsure what to look for when analysing a poem, steps 2 to 5 give you a checklist of the speaker, the language, the form and the structure.

How to work out the speaker and voice

The speaker isn’t always the poet, so call the voice of the poem “the speaker” in your essays. For example, in ‘Remains’, Armitage’s speaker is a soldier who describes how a looter “legs it up the road”. The casual slang makes the poem sound like a story told to friends. When the speaker says “End of story, except not really”, the casual voice starts to break down, which shows that he can’t move on from the killing.

How do you work out what a poem means?

Start with the title, the ending and any shift, because poets often put the most important idea in one of these places. For example, the title ‘Storm on the Island’ sounds like a poem about the weather. However, Heaney ends with the line “Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.” The ending suggests the poem is about fear itself, rather than an actual storm, and how frightening it is to face something you can’t see.

How to analyse form and structure in poetry

You don’t need to name a metre to write well about form and structure. Notice the shape of the poem, such as a line that is much shorter than the others, rhyme that breaks its pattern, or a volta.

For example, ‘Sonnet 29 – “I think of thee!”’ is a sonnet. Barrett Browning’s speaker first describes her thoughts growing around her lover “as wild vines, about a tree”. The poem then turns with the word “Yet”, when the speaker calls for her lover to be with her in person.

Enjambment can create a sudden change. In ‘Storm on the Island’, Heaney writes that the sea spray “spits like a tame cat / Turned savage”. The line break makes you pause on “tame cat” before “savage” arrives, so the reader feels the shock of the change.

What is the SMILE method for poetry analysis?

SMILE poem analysis uses an acronym to remind you what to look for. One common version is Structure, Meaning, Imagery, Language and Effect.

SMILE is useful for annotating, because it helps you check that you’ve noticed each type of method. However, writing one paragraph for each letter separates the poem’s meaning from its methods, so plan your paragraphs around your ideas about the poem, not around any fixed writing frame.

Analysing a poem you’ve studied and an unseen poem

The six steps work for both. With an anthology poem, you already know what the poem means, so spend more time on its methods. With an unseen poem, follow the steps in order, and expect your first reading to change as you read more closely.

What does a poem analysis look like?

Here is the six-step method applied to ‘Neutral Tones’ by Thomas Hardy.

First-read notes

• Meaning: the speaker remembers standing by a pond with a lover on a winter day, as their love was ending

• Speaker: the speaker talks to the lover as “you”, in a bitter, flat tone

• Language: the colours are drained, with a “white” sun and “grey” leaves

• Structure: the final stanza jumps forward to “Since then”, then returns to the pond, the sun and the tree from the opening

• Big idea: the end of this relationship taught the speaker that “love deceives”

A strong analytical paragraph

Hardy presents the end of the relationship as something that drains all feeling from the speaker’s world. In the first stanza, the sun is “white, as though chidden of God”, as if even the sun has been scolded and has lost its warmth. The lover’s smile is “the deadest thing / Alive enough to have strength to die”, which is a paradox. The paradox suggests the love was barely alive, and its only remaining strength was the strength to end. Structurally, the final stanza returns to the “pond”, the “sun” and “a tree” from the opening. This circular structure suggests the speaker is trapped in the memory, because every later lesson that “love deceives” takes the speaker back to that winter day.

How to write about the effect of a poetic technique

The effect of a technique is what the technique makes the reader think or feel. A strong comment on effect also links that effect to the poem’s meaning, so the examiner can see why the technique is significant.

What are the common mistakes when analysing a poem?

• Retelling the poem line by line: a summary leaves no room to analyse the poet’s methods, so it earns few marks

• Technique spotting: naming a technique without explaining its effect earns very little credit, because the AQA mark scheme rewards “effects”

• Ignoring form and structure: writing only about language means you miss two of the three types of method you’re able to analyse

• Guessing about the poet’s life: inventing a link to the poet’s biography wastes time and can lead you to misread the poem

• Missing the shift: describing only the mood of the opening leaves your interpretation incomplete, and it may contradict the ending

Analysing poems in your AQA English Literature exam

AQA assesses your poem analysis mainly through AO1 and AO2. AO1 asks you to “use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations”. AO2 asks you to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate”.

Both poetry sections are on Paper 2 (Modern texts and poetry):

The anthology question also assesses AO3 (context). Question 27.1 doesn’t, so spend your time there on the poem’s meaning and methods. Question 27.2 (8 marks) then asks you to compare the methods in that poem with a second unseen poem.