Revision in minutes - GCSE English Revision - Result! magazine

Common ground
Selecting and comparing poems on a key theme.
Fact: there are groups on Facebook dedicated entirely to
burning one of the main anthologies set for GCSE. Bookburning
has bad form, generally being associated with
regimes that deny freedom of expression, so that’s one
group you should think twice about before clicking “Like”
– but it’s still the case that GCSE poetry anthologies tend to
inspire fear and loathing. Why What’s to loathe It’s just a
bunch of poems… Okay, so the more diverse the anthology,
the more there is to get your head around, but on the plus
side the exam questions can be fairly predictable.
A very common question, whatever anthology you’re
studying, gives you a theme and asks you to explore it
in a number of poems. What number Sometimes two,
sometimes four. Which poems Sometimes you get a free
choice, sometimes you’re given specific poems, sometimes
you’re given selection criteria, and sometimes it’s a mixture
of all those. We’ve chosen nature as a sample theme, though
this could be any of the “big ideas” in literature. Check out
some sample question types:
1. Some poems in the anthology are about nature. Compare
and contrast one given poem and one of your choosing.
2. What new ways of looking at nature do these two given
poems convey to you
3. What do you find memorable about the poets’ presentation
of nature in these two given poems
4. Compare how the writers present nature in four poems
from the anthology – choose two from list A and two from
list B.
5. Compare how the writers convey their feelings about nature
in one poem by poet X and one poem from the pre-1914 bank.
The theme given will be very broad – like “nature”. The smart
game is to have thought about possible themes before the
exam, and to have worked out what angle different poems in
the anthology have on it. This will help you to make sharper
and smarter comparisons. Here are some angles on nature:
■ nature and death
■ nature and life
■ nature and beauty
■ nature and violence
■ nature and people
■ nature and hope
■ nature and love
■ nature and place
■ nature and youth
■ nature and renewal
Then you’ve got to work out your comparisons and select
your poems. In the examples below, you could compare how
both Clarke and Tichborne use nature to explore ideas about
the destruction of life, or how both Heaney and Whitman
use nature to create a sense of threat. You could contrast
Heaney’s general sense of the natural inevitability of decay
and death with Clarke’s specific sense that the destruction
in Bosnia is man-made. This might link with the brooding
sense of malice in Whitman’s poem. You could compare how
Clarke, Heaney and Tichborne all start with idyllic images of
summer fields. It’s wide open for you to choose something
that interests you.
●
next
week
Touchstones across time: tackling
pre-1914 poems.
Revision in minutes
5
10
18
Visit Andrew Moore’s GCSE English website and make sure you bookmark his
discussions of the AQA anthology poems our notes are taken from – you’ll find a link
on www.gcseresult.co.uk
Develop thorough notes on a poem using notes, books and websites, making sure
you think about the big ideas – the “themes” – that the poet is exploring.
Make your own collection of four poems on a theme relevant to your anthology. Then
pick a question and brainstorm some ideas for an answer.
WEEK 5 www.gcseresult.co.uk

COMPARING POEMS
Poetry
Blackberry Picking
By Seamus Heaney, 1966
This poem gives a vivid
account of picking
blackberries, but it is
really about hope and
disappointment (and how
things never quite live up to
our expectations). Heaney
suggests that what is true of
blackberries may be true of
good things generally.
I always felt like crying. It
wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls
smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d
keep, knew they would not.
The Field Mouse
By Gillian Clarke, 1998
This piece recalls Robert
Burns’s famous poem To a
Mouse, on turning up her
nest with the plough. In
both poems the mouse is
powerless against man’s
interference. In each poem
the mouse is a symbol of
weak or vulnerable people,
threatened by forces beyond
their control.
All night I dream the children
dance in grass
their bones brittle as mouseribs,
the air
stammering with gunfire, my
neighbour turned
stranger, wounding my land
with stones.
Patrolling Barnegat
By Walt Whitman, 1880
The poem is almost a list of
details, each line ending with
a verb. Mostly these suggest
strong physical action or
vivid details. It is not clear
whether the “dim, weird
forms” are natural features,
ships or people – but there
is a clear sense of nature
as massively powerful,
threatening man’s precarious
existence.
Wild, wild the storm, and the
sea high running
Steady the roar of the gale,
with incessant undertone
muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter
fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their
savagest trinity lashing,
Tichborne’s Elegy
By Chidiock Tichborne,
1586
The is a reflection on the
writer’s life and a lament for
his misfortune. It proceeds
by a series of statements in
which the first half somehow
contradicts or contrasts with
the second half. In each case
something that began as, or
should be, good becomes
bad – leading to the paradox
of the final line, “And now I
live, and now my life is done”
in which Tichborne notes
that he is still alive but his
life is really over.
My prime of youth is but a
frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish
of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field
of tares,
And all my good is but vain
hope of gain;
www.gcseresult.co.uk
WEEK 5