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

The Trees are Not Impressed

Explore how the writer presents the difference between the concerns of nature and human beings in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer’s:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

The city knows my name

Explore how the writer presents contrasting ideas about city life in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer’s:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

My Fair Weather System

Explore how the writer presents ideas about communication with a parent in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer’s:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

Block Games

Explore how the writer presents ideas about childhood and imagination in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer’s:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

The Yard

Back home the yard

remember me —

the mango tree

still leaning

where I leave it,

heavy with its own gold.

I close my eyes

on this grey street

and the corrugate roof

sing again with rain,

the standpipe drip

its small cool music.

Grandmother chair

still rocking

in the shade of noon,

her voice a low river

running under everything,

calling, calling

till the chickens come.

City can build

its walls around me —

but it cannot fence

the green that grow inside.

That yard is mine.

I carry it like seed.

— Marcia Edmund

Explore how the writer presents a place that is special to the speaker in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer's:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure.

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

Slack

He'd let the line out finger by finger,

the kite a scrap of red above the rec,

and tell me, Keep it tight, lad, keep it tight,

his hand a brake behind my smaller hand.

I felt the wind take hold and pull —

that live weight tugging like a fish,

the string a nerve run all the way

from my cold knuckles to the sky.

He's slower now. The garden's mostly his chair.

But Sunday last he passed the reel across,

nodded at the gusting field, and said,

your turn. Don't lose it. So I won't.

I keep it tight. I keep him tight.

The slack we never let between us, held.

— Sean Holroyd

Explore how the writer presents the bond between a grandparent and grandchild in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer's:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure.

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

Marks

Every birthday, back against the door,

my dad would press a pencil to my head

(mind you stand up straight, no cheating now)

and draw a line, and write the year beside.

I watched the ladder of myself go up,

rung by rung,

year by year,

past the light switch,

past the coat hooks,

nearly to the handle of the loft.

And then I stopped.

Not growing — leaving.

The marks stayed where they were,

a little museum on the paintwork.

Last week I went back home.

The door's been painted over,

twice.

But run your thumb along the gloss

and you can still feel them, just —

small ridges,

the years,

holding on under the white.

— Gerry Flynn

Explore how the writer presents the passing of time in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer's:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure.

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

The Sea Uncaged

All afternoon the sea lay flat,

a sheet of beaten silver

dozing in its bay.

Then the wind came with its key

and turned the lock,

and the water rose up on its haunches —

an animal at last,

grey-flanked, white-clawed,

shaking the spray from its back like a wet dog,

bigger than the harbour wall,

bigger than the church,

opening a green throat in the cliffs.

We stood at the window, small,

and watched it take the beach

in three long strides,

watched it lift a fishing boat

the way a cat lifts a mouse —

almost gently, almost kind —

and we understood, then,

whose house this really was,

who only let us stay.

— Yvette Caron

Explore how the writer presents the power of nature in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer's:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure.

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]

What I Keep

They told me loss would empty me,

that grief would hollow out a room

and leave it bare.

But loss is not an empty house.

Loss is a river that I carry —

it does not stop because you're gone,

it only changes course.

I carry your laugh in the morning.

I carry your voice in the rain.

I carry the way you said my name

like it was worth the saying.

This is not a wound.

This is a window.

Not a closing —

an opening.

And when the grief comes, as it comes,

grey and wide and cold,

I stand inside it like a stone inside a stream

and let it move around me,

and stay.

I am still here.

I am still yours.

I am still becoming what you loved.

— Selam Tesfaye

Explore how the writer presents feelings of loss in this poem.

In your answer, you should consider the writer's:

• descriptive skills

• choice of language

• use of form and structure.

Support your answer with examples from the poem.

[20 marks]