www.bbc.co.uk/revision Poems from different cultures Writing about poetry The work in this document will help you to practise the essential skills you need to use when writing about poetry in your exam, and hopefully give you some ideas about how to tackle exam questions on poetry. Key words and phrases Not all exam questions will be phrased in the same way, so look carefully at the key words to help you work out what you need to write about in your answer. For example: • Comment on the ideas and attitudes in... • How do particular words and phrases bring out the poets' ideas? • What are the effects of the poems on you and why? • What are the poets' intentions in writing these poems and how do you know? • How do the poets use words to capture sensations such as sound, smell, sight and touch? You may be asked to comment on specific features of the poems such as: • Imagery and symbolism • Form and structure (including rhythm and rhyme) Imagery: vivid ‘word pictures’ used by a writer to conjure up a mental picture of something. Symbolism: The use of symbols – i.e. of images or things that represent something else, usually something abstract. Form: a style of poem, with a particular pattern of rhythm, rhyme pattern or regular line length (e.g. sonnet, couplets or ballad). Structure: The way a text is built and shaped. Chapters, plot, acts and scenes, stanzas, narrative, verse-form, rhyme and rhythm – all these (and many more) are aspects of structure. Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. Rhyme: In poetry, the use of words which have the same or a similar sound – e.g. ‘flow’ and ‘bow’ – to form a pattern of sound.
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Poems from different cultures Writing about poetry
The work in this document will help you to practise the essential skills you
need to use when writing about poetry in your exam, and hopefully give
you some ideas about how to tackle exam questions on poetry.
Key words and phrases
Not all exam questions will be phrased in the same way, so look carefully at the
key words to help you work out what you need to write about in your answer.
For example:
• Comment on the ideas and attitudes in...
• How do particular words and phrases bring out the poets' ideas?
• What are the effects of the poems on you and why?
• What are the poets' intentions in writing these poems and how do you
know?
• How do the poets use words to capture sensations such as sound, smell,
sight and touch?
You may be asked to comment on specific features of the poems such as:
• Imagery and symbolism
• Form and structure (including rhythm and rhyme)
Imagery: vivid ‘word pictures’ used by a writer to conjure up a mental picture of something.
Symbolism: The use of symbols – i.e. of images or things that represent something else, usually something abstract.
Form: a style of poem, with a particular pattern of rhythm, rhyme pattern or
regular line length (e.g. sonnet, couplets or ballad). Structure: The way a text is built and shaped. Chapters, plot, acts and scenes,
stanzas, narrative, verse-form, rhyme and rhythm – all these (and many more) are aspects of structure.
Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. Rhyme: In poetry, the use of words which have the same or a similar sound – e.g.
‘flow’ and ‘bow’ – to form a pattern of sound.
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Subject matter and form
Getting to know the poems
What? Where? When? What are the stories of the poems? Answering these
questions is a good starting point to help you make sense of the poems, and it can
usually be done fairly easily.
Form
You should try to understand the forms of the poems (the way they are
constructed). Look at the number and the length of the lines and stanzas - are they
regular? Irregular? Do the lines have a similar length, or do they look random? Are
there any very short, direct, lines?
Form: a style of poem, with a particular pattern of rhythm, rhyme pattern or regular line length (e.g. sonnet, couplets or ballad).
Stanzas: Lines of poetry that make up a verse; verses.
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Language and sound
There are certain features of language that you should look out for in poetry and
write about in your exam. Try to find examples of them in the text and think about
what effect they have. Why do the poets use that particular feature? What are they
trying to convey?
• The choice of adjectives (describing words). They might be simple or
complex.
• Any images or symbols that convey particular ideas.
• The use of any techniques such as simile, metaphor or onomatopoeia.
Sound
Some people find writing about sound difficult because you need to read the poem
aloud to hear what it sounds like. Try to answer the following questions when you
are considering the sounds in poetry:
• Does the poet use rhyme or echoing sounds to bring certain words together
and reinforce the meaning?
• Does the poet use repetition to emphasise certain words?
• Does the poet use a definite rhythm throughout the poem, or in part of the
poem, which reinforces the meaning?
Images: visual representations of something; mental pictures; personas that are
presented to the world.
Symbols: images or things (usually physical, like a flag) that stand for or represent
something else – usually abstractions, like a nation. A crucifix is a symbol of
Christianity.
Simile: An explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the words ‘like’ or
‘as’. ‘Sleeping like a log’ and ‘bright as a button’ are similes.
Metaphor: a description of one thing in terms of another – implicity comparing the
two, but without using ‘as’ or ‘like’. ‘Sea of troubles’ and ‘drowning in debt’ are
metaphors. Something that represents another thing.
Onomatopoeia: words that express the sound they stand for e.g. ‘crunch’, ‘pop’.
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Personal response: developing a viewpoint
Ideas and attitude
When you've got to know the poem, you can begin to see what ideas and attitudes
are in it. What else is happening in the poem? What are the feelings of the poet
and/or the speaker(s)? You have to make up your mind what the poet's intentions
are in writing the poem and what they wanted to say.
Tone
Make the idea of tone simpler by thinking about it like this: if you were reading the
poem aloud, how would you do it? What kind of voice would you use? How would
you want an audience to react when they hear it? Practise thinking about tone by
reading a number of different poems. How do the poets want the audience to react
to each one?
Using quotations
To get high marks in your exam you need to be able to pick out quotations from
the poems that illustrate the points you make. The selection of a quotation is one
way the examiner will know if you really understand the poem and if you are able
to construct an argument and if you have thought about your ideas.
Make sure you develop your point by commenting about the quotation you've
selected - how it shows what you're saying.
Remember this process:
Point → Quotation → Comment
Make a point, support it with a quotation and then explain how the language used
helps to add to the line's effectiveness.
Checklist
How to read a poem
• What is it about? Get to know the subject matter of the poem.
• What form is the poem written in - and why?
• How does the poem work? Look at the language (words) the poet has used.
Think about the sound the poem makes when you read it.
• Develop your ideas about the poem. What ideas does the poem give you?
What attitude does the poet have to the subject matter? What tone does the
poem have - how would you read it aloud?
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Comparing poems
In this section of the exam, you will be asked to write a short essay in
which two or more poems are compared. Generally, the questions are quite
open, so you will need to decide which poems to write about.
The areas you could be asked to write about are: description of place or
person, importance of culture, importance of language and the feelings of
the poet.
Writing a good comparative essay
All essay questions expect you to comment on the areas covered in Writing about
poetry. This means you must write about the use of language, the effect of
language and form and how it makes you feel.
Essays are like sandwiches
A good comparative essay is like a multi-layered sandwich:
• BREAD - A new point.
• FILLING A - How one of your chosen poems illustrates this point.
• FILLING B - How your other chosen poem illustrates this point.
• BREAD - Your conclusion about this point.
This is what the examiners call cross-referencing - you talk about both poems all
the way through your answer.
cross-referencing: a technique in essay writing that compares points from two or more texts to formulate part of an argument. These texts might hold similar views
or opposing ones.
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Sample Questions
Here are some sample questions and the poems that best fit them.
Question 1:
Choose two poems that deal with the experience of living between two
cultures, and show how this experience is reflected in the language of the
poems.
Question 2:
Choose two poems where the title seems to you to pinpoint what the poem
is about, and show how each poet develops this idea through the poem.
Question 3:
Choose two poems where the style and language of the poem seem
particularly suited to what the poet has to say, and explain in each case
why you think this.
Question 4:
Show how the poet's sense of cultural identity is explored in two of the
poems you have studied.
Question 5:
Choose two poems that deal in some way with the experience of migration,
and show how this is explored in the imagery of the poems.
Question 6:
Choose two poems that deal with the experience of living between two
cultures, and show how this experience is reflected in the language of the
poems.
Question 7:
Choose two poems that made you think about your own sense of cultural
identity, and explain what you found interesting in the poems.
Answers are on the next pages
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Sample Answers
The following are answers to the Sample Questions on the previous page.
Answer 1:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan - (Moniza Alvi)
• Unrelated Incidents - (Tom Leonard)
• Half-Caste - (John Agard)
• Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols)
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
• Nothing's Changed - (Tatamkhulu Afrika)
Answer 2:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• Half-Caste - (John Agard)
• Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols)
• Nothing's Changed - (Tatamkhulu Afrika)
• Blessing - (Imtiaz Dharker)
Answer 3:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
• from Unrelated Incidents - (Tom Leonard)
• Half-Caste - (John Agard)
Answer 4:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
• Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan - (Moniza Alvi)
• from Unrelated Incidents - (Tom Leonard)
• Half-Caste - (John Agard)
• Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols)
• Nothing's Changed - (Tatamkhulu Afrika)
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Answer 5:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
• Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan - (Moniza Alvi)
• Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols)
Answer 6:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• Vultures - (Chinua Achebe)
• Nothing's Changed - (Tatamkhulu Afrika)
• Blessing - (Imtiaz Darker)
• Night of the Scorpion - (Nissim Ezekiel)
• Two Scavengers in a Truck... - (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
Answer 7:
The poems that would suit this question are:
• from Search For My Tongue - (Sujata Bhatt)
• Half-Caste - (John Agard)
• Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan - (Moniza Alvi)
• Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols)
• Nothing's Changed - (Tatamkhulu Afrika)
• from Unrelated Incidents - (Tom Leonard)
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What the examiner will look for
When marking your essay, the examiner will look to see whether you have
appreciated and explored the:
• descriptions
• ideas
• attitudes and tones
They will also look to see if you have explored the techniques used by the poets.
When answering an exam question, keep these four criteria in mind.
techniques: in English, we refer to literary techniques. Authors deliberately use
literary techniques to emphasise or make particular point. Examples are: