How to Answer the Unseen Poetry Question (Edexcel IGCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

The trees couldn’t care less
about your existential crisis.

They’re busy
manufacturing oxygen
like intertwining green sweatshops,
waving their leaves in slow-motion applause
for the sun.

Meanwhile,
you’re crying in a Lidl car park
because you sent a risky text
and got left on read.

The birds are singing,
not for you,
but because they have biological imperatives
and very little self-awareness.

Nature doesn’t need your
poetic metaphors.

The daffodils don’t dream
of being symbols
of renewal or rebirth.
They just want water.

And maybe,
that’s what makes them perfect.

By Ruby O’Neill

This city is not polite.
It coughs its diesel breath
into the cold morning.
Sirens shriek and the city snarls beneath my feet,
like the rumbling of a threatening subterranean soundtrack.

Pavements sweat
with last night’s rain,
oily puddles reflecting
the distorted fried chicken glow
of late shops.
Graffiti scars
blur into the brickwork,
old wounds, reopened.

But the city is ours.
Every cracked pavement
knows my name,
every billboard nods
when I pass.

A corner shop window
becomes a mirror,
offering back
my face,
blurred but shining.

The city moves
like inspiration in my chest,
like a poem
half-sung,
half-built.

By Tayo Anichebe

My mother is a low-pressure front
that rolls in around teatime,
bringing with her the smell of wet laundry and disappointment.

She has two settings:
encouraging me to pursue my dreams
and reminding me to take the chicken out of the freezer.
Neither of which I ever do.

When I was seven,
she told me my teeth were charmingly crooked.
At seventeen,
she offered me braces for Christmas.

We communicate best
in passive-aggressive WhatsApp messages
about which one of us forgot to buy bread.

And yet,
on stormy nights,
when the walls feel thin as paper,
her voice is the sound of a kettle boiling
in a house that has never run out of tea.

By Paloma Guzman

On the estate,
the world shrinks to
the square of concrete
between lamppost and underground car park.

This is the pitch,
the parliament,
the supreme court
where trainers scuff stories
into the ground.

A stick becomes a sword,
a lid a shield,
and somewhere a mum
calls from a second-floor balcony,
breaking the illusion.

Our kingdom
held by shoelace knots
and forever alliances,
untouched by worries of the adult world.

The sky knows
we are kings here.

And the wind carries
our laughter
like flags.

By Amir Muhammed