How do I effectively analyse an unseen poem?

First, read the poem thoroughly and underline any literary techniques that you find interesting. Make sure you pick out both the concrete examples of individual words and phrases and notice the wider structure of the text, observing any obvious shifts in style and technique (e.g. narrator point of view, syntactical structures, tone). Most importantly, always remember to state WHAT the effect on the audience is and HOW the effect is achieved. Moreover, language analysis should always be integrated into your wider argument about the wider themes of the texts you are studying. Therefore, it is better to structure your essay around the effects the poet tries to achieve instead of devoting a paragraph to every literary technique you can identify. It is also helpful to have an extensive knowledge of poetic techniques, including more obscure ones (e.g. synecdoche or anastrophe). That way you will be more attuned to the mechanics of the poem, and it is a great way to show your knowledge of subject terminology (AO1).Since it is important that you hit all AOs and use them to complement one another, it can be effective to comment on linguistic conventions of a text in its literary context. For instance, after analyzing the effect of unconventional use of punctuation (e.g. in poems such as ‘I Carry Your Heart With Me’ by E.E. Cummings) you can comment on the fact that experimentation with poetic structure was one of the defining characteristics of the Modernist era. Commenting on the literary period is especially convenient when analyzing unseen poetry since you may not know the biographical details of the writer.