Paper 1 Section B · Anthology Poetry
Exam skills
One question from a choice of two, forty minutes, thirty marks, and the poems printed with the paper. Nothing rests on memory; everything rests on what you notice and how you connect it.
The task
Each Section B question asks you to compare two poems, usually one named and one of your choice, sometimes two named. The 30 marks split equally between two objectives:
- AO2 (15 marks): analyse the language, form and structure used by the writer to create meanings and effects. Form and structure are the most forgotten and the most rewarded: stanza shape, rhyme, rhythm, the poem’s journey.
- AO3 (15 marks): explore links and connections between texts, comparison sustained through the whole answer, not visited once at the end.
The examiners’ standing warnings: summarising or paraphrasing earns nothing, and simply listing literary devices is not sufficient. Naming a device is labelling, not analysis: the marks live in effect, what this choice makes the reader see, feel or understand, in this poem, at this moment.
The forty-minute method
- Choose and pair (3 minutes). Read both questions. For the named poem, pick the partner that lets you compare subject, mood and method (the pairings map is your preparation for this moment).
- Mark up both poems (5 minutes). They are printed on the paper: circle the three or four moments in each that answer the question, and note one form/structure point per poem.
- Plan three comparison points (2 minutes). Each point should hold both poems: an image point, a sound or language point, a form/structure point is a reliable spread.
- Write integrated paragraphs (27 minutes). Both poems in every paragraph, stitched with connectives: whereas, similarly, while, both, yet. Short quotations, worked hard.
- Conclude by weighing (3 minutes). Not a summary: a judgement. Which poem does the thing more powerfully, or differently, and what does the contrast reveal?
A comparison sentence, modelled
Where Dharker lets her stanzas swell from two parched lines to a tumbling flood, enacting the burst pipe in the poem’s own shape, Duffy confines her chaos to four tidy sestets, so that the war photographer’s discipline, ‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’, becomes the poem’s form itself. One sentence, both poets, method and effect for each: that is the register of the top level.
Practice questions
In the style of the paper; every question carries ‘Support your answer with examples from the poems’ (30 marks).
| Compare… |
|---|
| …the ways the writers present powerful images in Blessing and War Photographer. |
| …how the writers present memories of childhood in Piano and one other poem of your choice. |
| …the ways the writers present identity in Search for My Tongue and Half-caste. |
| …how the writers present love in Sonnet 116 and one other poem of your choice. |
| …the ways the writers present parents and children in Poem at Thirty-Nine and If–. |
| …how the writers present death in Remember and Do not go gentle into that good night. |
| …the ways the writers present fear in Prayer Before Birth and one other poem of your choice. |
| …how the writers present power in My Last Duchess and The Tyger. |
| …the ways the writers use a distinctive voice in Half-caste and one other poem of your choice. |
| …how the writers present time in Half-past Two and one other poem of your choice. |
Now write one
Forty minutes, both poems open in front of you, then take your answer to the marking desk for teacher-style annotations, including whether your comparison is woven through or stapled on. Redraft before you attempt another question.