How do I answer the unseen poem question?

Seeing an unseen poem and having to analyse it in an exam can be very scary, and it was always my least favourite part of the exam. I am going to teach you a way to approach the question that will hopefully calm your nerves.

So let's imagine you're sitting in the exam...when you reach the unseen poem question I would advise you to read the poem through at least 3 times as calmly as you can, and it this point try not to even think about it in relation to the question. At this point just try and figure out what the poem is about and what the tone is, or the 'mood'.

So I'm going to put a poem up on the screen now that comes from the exam paper, you have a read through it a few times and let me know when you are finished.

What came to mind when you read this poem? Did anything stand out to you? These are all things you can use when answering the question.

So after I had read the poem a few times I would then read the question. I'm going to put this on the screen now: In ‘To a Daughter Leaving Home’, how does the poet present the speaker’s feelings about her daughter?

So what comes to mind here? What kind of feelings are we seeing expressed in the poem about the daughter? Is it an angry poem? Is it sad? Trust your gut instinct.

Secondly, I would ask myself how is the poem creating this sense of sadness and nostalgia? What poetic effects are being used? In order to get the top marks, it is really important that you explain not just what the poem is about but also how the poem is expressing these things. Some things you could mention are the use of the long structure to create a sense of a journey and the daughter growing up, or the use of vulnerable imagery such as ‘wobbled’, ‘smaller’, ‘breakable’ to suggest the mother's sadness. Can you think of anything else? You might want to write MITSL on your paper - this stands for meaning, imagery, tone, structure, language - these are things that could trigger some ideas.

The key way to practice for this question is just to read and analyse as many poems as possible. Although no two poems are the same the more poems you read the better you will get at spotting poetic techniques.