Unseen Poetry Overview (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

Write about the poem Nettles by Vernon Scannell, and its effect on you.

You may wish to:

• consider what the poem is about and how it is organised

• consider the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about

• consider the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• consider how you respond to the poem.

Nettles
My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
‘Bed’ seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.

Vernon Scannell

Now compare Swimming with Aidan, aged 4 by Luke Wright and Nettles by Vernon Scannell.

You should:

• compare what the poems are about and how they are organised

• compare the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about

• compare the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• compare how you respond to the poems.

Swimming with Aidan, aged 4

You struggle more than other kids your age,
can’t help yourself: picked scabs, pulled threads, left feet.
The effort overwhelms. Half-drowned in rage,
life throws you angry tears and sodden sheets.
But here you’re magic, boy. While others tip-toe,
too scared to dunk their heads or leave their depth,
you swagger: grace, grit, guts and get-me gusto.
You gulp existence down with each gasped breath.
But when our time is up, the shiver-showers
smash your short-lived victory to shards.
That sock just won’t go on. You’ve lost your powers.
I try to offer word but, boy, it’s hard.
Aloud, my wise old lines are arid spin;
and so, a hug to keep the victory in.

Luke Wright

Write about the poem Home by Fran Landesman and its effect on you.

You may wish to:

• consider what the poem is about and how it is organised

• consider the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about

• consider the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• consider how you respond to the poem

Home

Home is where you hang your hat
And can’t get a break
Home is what you ought to want
But can’t really make

Home is where you’re always wrong
Too fat or too thin
Home’s an endless argument
You never can win

Home is a test you always fail
Emotions you have to fake
Where everybody does his thing
For somebody else’s sake

Home is where love’s old sweet song
Just won’t set you free
Home is where you’re not the way
They want you to be

Home sweet home will haunt your dreams
Wherever you go
Home is what there’s no place like
But didn’t you know
Home is where the heartache
Really started

Fran Landesman

Now compare Coming Home by William Cooke with Home by Fran Landesman.

You should:

• compare what the poems are about and how they are organised

• compare the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about

• compare the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• compare how you respond to the poems

Coming Home

After a summer’s absence I return
in early darkness. The house, unlit,

looks drear, extinct. My key scratches
in the lock and I enter half-surprised

by shrouded fustiness. Each room’s familiar
yet strange with a stored silence.

No room is living. Plants look queasy,
On the window sill lie flies and one big moth.

Yet at my coming life revives. I resurrect
the clock and listen to its gentle pulse,

sweep back the curtains and open windows wide
to sweeter air. The room breathes, relaxes.

But outside the garden crouches in the dark,
a wild thing, thirsting. Roses have bled.

I go out, a rain-god, sprinkling my largesse
to tame, reclaim. Soil hisses, yields.

I hear its dank slow satisfying draught.
Going indoors, I feel the house becoming home.

William Cooke

Write about the poem Watching a Dancer by James Berry, and its effect on you.

You may wish to consider:

• what the poem is about and how it is organised

• the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about

• the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poem

Watching a Dancer
She wears a red costume for her dance.
Her body is trim
and shapely and strong.

Before she begins
she waits composed,
waiting to hear the music start.

The music moves her.
She hears it keenly. The music
pulses her body with its rhythms.

It delights her. It haunts her body
into patterns of curves and angles.
She rocks. She spins.

She stretches entranced. She looks
she could swim and could fly.
She would stay airborne from a leap.

Her busy head, arms, legs, all know
she shows how the music looks.
Posture changes and movements are

the language of the sounds, that
she and the music use together
and reveal their unfolding story.

James Berry

Now compare The Busker by Gerard Benson and Watching a Dancer by James Berry.

You should compare:

• what the poems are about and how they are organised

• the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about

• the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poems

The Busker

His elbow jerks, an old mechanical toy.
Feet planted astride, knees flexed, one instep
Arched over the cobbles, he scratches a tune
From a bony violin, grating the spine.

His left hand, a dancing spider, performs
Its polka on the taut web strings, his right,
Daintier than a lady taking tea,
Guides the thin bow in dangerous little stabs,

Littering the yard with snips and snaps of sound,
Sharper than pins. Coins drop into his hat,
But sparingly, and pigeons on pink unhurried feet
Waddle, chatting by; refuse, point-blank, to dance.

Gerard Benson

Write about the poem Yesterday by Patricia Pogson, and its effect on you.

You may wish to consider:

• what the poem is about and how it is organised

• the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about

• the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poem

  Yesterday

  It seems only yesterday
  I balanced a tiny foot
  on my palm
  and marvelled
  that anything
  so perfect
  could be so small.
  Now I can fit my hand in
  when I clean your shoes.

  I can remember
  when I was centred
  round you
  feeling your feet
  strong and determined
  testing the strength
  of my ribcage
  your hard heels
  distorting my belly.

  Now I wave you off
  in the morning
  and turn away
  to continue
  with my work
  unhindered by your
  eager face
  grateful to be able
  to make my own pace.
  Yet tuned
  to your return.

  
  In time the distance
  we put between us
  will deprive me
  of your grace.
  

  Until then
  each simple homely act
  like rubbing this polish
  into your shoes
  will focus
  my imperfect love.
  Patricia Pogson

Now compare Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, and Yesterday by Patricia Pogson.

You should compare:

• what the poems are about and how they are organised

• the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about

• the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poem

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

Write about the poem Teacher by Carol Ann Duffy, and its effect on you.

You may wish to consider:

• what the poem is about and how it is organised

• the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about

• the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poem

Teacher

When you teach me,
your hands bless the air
where chalk dust sparkles.

And when you talk,
the six wives of Henry VIII
stand in the room like bridesmaids,

or the Nile drifts past the classroom window,
the Pyramids baking like giant cakes
on the playing fields.

You teach with your voice,
so a tiger prowls from a poem
and pads between desks, black and gold

in the shadow and sunlight,
or the golden apples of the sun drop
from a branch in my mind’s eye.

I bow my head again
to this tattered, doodled book
and learn what love is.

Carol Ann Duffy

Now compare Change by Dave Calder and Teacher by Carol Ann Duffy.

You should compare:

• what the poems are about and how they are organised

• the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about

• the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create

• how you respond to the poems

Change

For months he taught us, stiff-faced.
His old tweed jacket closely buttoned up,
his gestures careful and deliberate.

We didn’t understand what he was teaching us.
It was as if a veil, a gauzy bandage, got between
what he was showing us and what we thought we saw.

He had the air of a gardener, fussily protective
of young seedlings, but we couldn’t tell
if he was hiding something or we simply couldn’t see it.

At first we noticed there were often scraps of leaves
on the floor where he had stood. Later, thin wisps
of thread like spider’s web fell from his jacket.

Finally we grew to understand the work. And on that day
he opened his jacket, which to our surprise
seemed lined with patterned fabric of many shimmering hues.

Then he smiled and sighed. And with this movement
the lining rippled and instantly the room was filled
with a flickering storm of swirling butterflies.

Dave Calder