Worlds & Lives (AQA GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

I can’t hear the barista

over the coffee machine.

Spoons slam, steam rises.

I catch the eye of a man

sitting in the corner

of the cafe reading alone

about trees which is, incidentally,

all I can think about

since returning.

Last week I sat alone

on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest

with sun-syrupped Kauria trees

and brazen Tui birds with white tufts

and yellow and black beaks.

They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly

I had to turn off my hearing aids.

When all sound disappeared, I was tuned

into a silence that was not an absence.

As I switched sound on again,

silence collapsed.

The forest spat all the birds back,

and I was jealous—

the earthy Kauri trees, their endless

brown and green trunks of sturdiness.

I wondered what the trees

would say about us?

What books would they write

if they had to cut us down?

Later, stumbling from the forest I listened

to a young Maori woman.

She could tell which bird chirped,

a skill she learned from her grandfather

who said with birds you’re never lonely.

In that moment I felt sorry

for any grey tree in London,

for the family they don’t have,

the Gods they can’t hold.

Raymond Antrobus

so big — they said you shouldn’t really be moved

so fragile you might break

you could be from anywhere pot

styles have travelled just like terracotta

you could almost be an english pot

but I know you’re not.

I know half of the story pot

of where you come from

of how you got here

but I need you to tell me the rest pot

tell me

did they say you were bought pot

a looter’s deal done

the whole lot

sold to the gentleman in the grey hat

or 

did they say you were lost pot

finders are keepers you know pot

or 

did they say they didn’t notice you pot

must have slipped onto the white sailing yacht

bound for england.

someone 

somewhere 

will have missed you pot

gone out looking for you pot

because 

someone 

somewhere 

made you

fingernails 

pressed 

snake patterned you pot

washed you pot

used you pot

loved you pot

if I could shatter this glass

I would take you back myself pot.

you think they wouldn’t recognise you pot

say diaspora

you left now

you’re not really one of us.

pot I’ve been back to where my family’s from

they were happy

to see me

laughed a lot

said I was more asian than the asians pot

I was pot

Imagine.

the hot sun on your back

feel flies settle on your skin

warm grain poured inside

empty pot

growl if you can hear me

pot? 

pot? 

Shamshad Khan

For years you kept your accent

in a box beneath the bed,

the lock rusted shut by hours of elocution

how now brown cow

the teacher’s ruler across your legs.

We heard it escape sometimes,

a guttural uh on the phone to your sister,

saft or blart  to a taxi driver

unpacking your bags from his boot.

I loved its thick drawl, g’s that rang.

Clearing your house, the only thing

I wanted was that box, jemmied open

to let years of lost words spill out –

bibble, fittle, tay, wum,

vowels ferrous as nails, consonants

you could lick the coal from.

I wanted to swallow them all: the pits,

railways, factories thunking and clanging

the night shift, the red brick

back-to-back you were born in.

I wanted to forge your voice

in my mouth, a blacksmith’s furnace;

shout it from the roofs,

send your words, like pigeons,

fluttering for home.

Liz Berry

And if I speak of Paradise,

then I'm speaking of my grandmother

who told me to carry it always

on my person, concealed, so

no one else would know but me.

That way they can't steal it, she'd say.

And if life puts you under pressure,

trace its ridges in your pocket,

smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,

hum its anthem under your breath.

And if your stresses are sustained and daily,

get yourself to an empty room - be it hotel,

hostel or hovel - find a lamp

and empty your paradise onto a desk:

your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.

Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope

of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.

Roger Robinson

You will be four minutes from home
when you are cornered by an officer
who will tell you of a robbery, forty
minutes ago in the area. You fit
the description of a man? — You’ll laugh.
Thirteen, you’ll tell him: you’re thirteen.

You’ll be patted on the shoulder, then, by another fed
whose face takes you back to Gloucester Primary School,
a Wednesday assembly about being little stars.
This same officer had an horizon in the east
of his smile when he told your class that
you were all supernovas,
the biggest and brightest stars.

You will show the warmth of your teeth
praying he remembers the heat of your supernova;
he will see you powerless — plump.
You will watch the two men cast lots for your organs.

Don’t you remember me? you will ask.
You gave a talk at my primary school.
While fear condenses on your lips,
you will remember that Wednesday, after the assembly,
your teacher speaking more about supernovas:
how they are, in fact, dying stars
on the verge of becoming black holes.

Caleb Femi

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And ’tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:—

But the least motion which they made

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature’s holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

William Wordsworth

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed;

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed —

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shall earth no more inspire thee,

Thou lonely dreamer now?

Since passion may not fire thee

Shall Nature cease to bow?

Thy mind is ever moving

In regions dark to thee;

Recall its useless roving —

Come back and dwell with me.

I know my mountain breezes

Enchant and soothe thee still —

I know my sunshine pleases

Despite thy wayward will.

When day with evening blending

Sinks from the summer sky,

I’ve seen thy spirit bending

In fond idolatry.

I’ve watched thee every hour;

I know my mighty sway,

I know my magic power

To drive thy griefs away.

Few hearts to mortals given

On earth so wildly pine;

Yet none would ask a heaven

More like this earth than thine.

Then let my winds caress thee;

Thy comrade let me be —

Since nought beside can bless thee,

Return and dwell with me.

Emily Brontë

The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.

For view there are the houses opposite

Cutting the sky with one long line of wall

Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch

Monotony of surface & of form

Without a break to hang a guess upon.

No bird can make a shadow as it flies,

For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung

By thickest canvass, where the golden rays

Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering

Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye

Or rest a little on the lap of life.

All hurry on & look upon the ground,

Or glance unmarking at the passers by

The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages

All closed, in multiplied identity.

The world seems one huge prison-house & court

Where men are punished at the slightest cost,

With lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy.

George Eliot

Hello, she said, and startled me.

Nice day. Nice day I agreed.

I am a Quaker she said and Sunday

I was moved in silence

to speak a poem loudly

for racial brotherhood.

I was thoughtful, then said

what poem came on like that?

One the moment inspired she said.

I was again thoughtful.

Inexplicably I saw

empty city streets lit dimly

in a day’s first hours.

Alongside in darkness

was my father’s big banana field.

Where are you from? she said.

Jamaica I said.

What part of Africa is Jamaica? she said.

Where Ireland is near Lapland I said.

Hard to see why you leave

such sunny country she said.

Snow falls elsewhere I said.
So sincere she was beautiful

as people sat down around us.

James Berry

From the backyard of his back-to-back,
my great-great-grandad searched for spaces
in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams,
high enough above the cholera to keep them
and his newborn safe from harm.

In eighteen sixty-nine, eyes dry with dust
from twelve hours combing flax beneath
the conicals of light in Marshall’s Temple Mill,
he took the long way home because
he craved the comfort of a wider view.

As he passed the panelled gates of Tower Works,
the tall octagonal crown of Harding’s chimney
drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life
drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles
with imagined peals of ringing bells.

Today, my footsteps echo in the sodium gloom
of Neville Street’s Dark Arches and the red-brick vaults
begin to moan as time, collapsing in the River Aire,
sweeps me out to meet him on the Wharf.

We stand now, timeless in the flux of time, anchored
only by the axis of our gaze — a ventilation shaft
with gilded tiles, and Giotto’s geometric lines —
while the curve of past and future generations
arcs between us.

Seni Seneviratne

The school-bell is a call to battle,

every step to class, a step into the firing-line.

Here is the target, fine skin at the temple,

cheek still rounded from being fifteen.

Surrendered, surrounded, she

takes the bullet in the head

and walks on. The missile cuts

a pathway in her mind, to an orchard

in full bloom, a field humming under the sun,

its lap open and full of poppies.

This girl has won

the right to be ordinary,

wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails,

go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid.

You have failed. You cannot kill a book

or the buzzing in it.

A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one,

the schoolgirls are standing up

to take their places on the front line.

Imtiaz Dharker

Like an heiress, drawn to the light of her

eye-catching jewels, Atlantic draws me

to the mirror of my oceanic small-days.

But the beach is deserted except for a lone

wave of rubbish against the seawall —

used car tyres, plastic bottles, styrofoam cups —

rightly tossed back by an ocean's moodswings.

Undisturbed, not even by a seabird,

I stand under the sun's burning treasury

gazing out at the far-out gleam of Atlantic,

before heading back like a tourist

to the sanctuary of my hotеl room

to dwell in the air-conditioned coolnеss

on the quickening years and fate of our planet.

Grace Nichols

Each day after sunrise he walks to the workshop

— like his father before him, and his father too —

the slap of sandalled feet on heat-baked stone,

the smell of blossom, a plate-blue sky. He greets

his neighbours with a smile. In the distance

a wild dog barks.

He sits straight-backed, lays out pointed tools

the way a surgeon might — neat as soldiers.

He likes hot metal, the smell, the way it yields

to his touch. Under deft fingers gold butterflies dance;

flowers bloom; silvery moons wax and wane,

then wax again; bright dragonflies flap two pairs of wings.

He likes the tiny loops and curls — he’d decorate

his house in this, drape his wife in fine-spun gold;

her skin wrinkled by sun, in simple cotton dress,

her only jewellery a plain gold band, worn thin.

He imagines the women who will wear

what he has made, clear-eyed, bird-boned, unlined skin

warming the metal his hands caress.

Louisa Adjoa Parker