How should I approach the unseen poem question in the exam?

Start by reading the poem carefully to yourself at least three times. It can be helpful to try to sum up what the poem is about in a simple sentence for yourself, to make sure you’re clear on this – e.g. ‘this is a poem about a man remembering his childhood in the countryside’. Next, start to pick out some language devices (e.g. alliteration, similes, metaphors, pathetic fallacy, imagery, onomatopoeia, etc). You can underline and label these on the poem. You should also look at the structure of the poem, if it is split up into stanzas, if it has a rhyme scheme or any repeated lines, if it is in a form you recognise, such as a sonnet, etc. Remember that this is the same process you have been working on in class throughout the year with your poetry anthology – at some point these were all unseen poems too, and you went through this same process to analyse them!Once you’ve identified some language/structure devices, you then need think about why the poet might have chosen to use them, and what effect they have within the poem. For example, in Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 116, he uses a metaphor to describe love as ‘a star to every wandering bark (ship)’. It’s good to identify this as a metaphor, but you then need to go on to ask yourself why you think he has chosen this particular metaphor, and what effect it has (e.g. Shakespeare uses the metaphor of a star to describe how he sees love as being fixed and constant, a point of guidance if you are lost or uncertain, like a ship finding its way at sea). Try to come up with at least three points in this way – i.e. start with a point about what the poem is saying, then find some evidence, a quote from the text, to show how it is being said, and finally explain why these words or language devices have been chosen, and their effect. Spend at least a third of your time finding these points and planning what to say first – then start writing!