Lit Poetry Exam Question on Relationships

For those of you that weren’t here for Tuesday’s lesson, below is the question we did (under exam conditions) on the poems we’ve studied over the past few weeks. We spent 10 minutes planning and then an hour writing.

 

Compare how relationships are presented in ‘Mother any distance greater than a single span’ by Simon Armitage with one poem by Carol Ann Duffy and two poems from the Pre-1914 poetry bank.

You should compare:

• what the relationships are
• how the poets use form, structure and language to present the relationship

Past Paper 2 Section A Exam Questions – Different Cultures and Traditions

Below are some past Paper 2 Section A questions. You will have a choice of two questions but because we have only studied Cluster 2 (other than ‘Island Man’ and ‘Blessing’) you will need to select the question that has a named poem from Cluster 2.

If you’d like to attempt some of these questions I’d be happy to mark your efforts. You might want to plan responses and/or write individual paragraphs rather than a whole essay. Your essay writing will improve with practice and feedback/guidance from me.

1. Compare how a person’s culture is shown to be important in ‘Hurricane Hits England’ (page 18) and in one other poem.
2. How does Sujata Bhatt show that identity is important in ‘from Search For My Tongue’ (page 12)? Compare the methods she uses with the methods another poet uses to show that identity is important in one other poem.
3. Compare the methods the poets use to get across their points of view in ‘Half-Caste’ (page 13) and in one other poem.
4. Compare how imagery is used to present ideas and feelings in ’This Room’ (page 14) and one other poem.
5. Compare the ways the poet presents a particular culture in Not my Business (page 15) with the ways a poet presents a culture or cultures in one other poem.
6. Compare the methods the poets use to explore the connection between people and the places in which they live in Hurricane Hits England (page 18) and one other poem.

Past Duffy/Armitage/Pre-1914 Literature Exam Questions

Your essay writing skills will improve the more you practice. You can use the past questions below to plan answers, write parts of essays (e.g. introductions) and even write whole essays. I will be happy to mark and give you feedback on any extra essays you do independently. It will sometimes be worthwhile writing full essays but planning an answer and writing parts of essays is a really useful exercise.

There are 3 different ways the questions will be structured:

1. You will be given one named poem and you have to pick 3 others (usually one from the other key poet – Duffy or Armitage – and two pre-1914 poems)
2. You will be given two lists from which you pick two poems from each list. This is usually a little bit easier than the above as they’ve done a bit of the work of selecting poems for you.
3. You will be given a question broken up into two halves. These are effective two different questions for which you only have to compare two in each section which is obviously easier to manage. Do not fall into the trap of only answering one question – give half an hour to each section and treat them like two mini-essays.

1) Compare how death or the threat of death is presented in the poems you have studied. Choose two poems from List A and two from List B.

List A                                                                           List B

Havisham (Duffy)                                                   On my first Sonne. (Jonson)

Education for Leisure (Duffy)                          The Laboratory (Browning)

Hitcher (Armitage)                                              The Man He Killed. (Hardy)

November (Armitage) .                                      My Last Duchess. (Browning)

2) Compare how women are presented in four of the poems you have studied. To do this, compare Mother, any distance by Simon Armitage and three other poems, one by Carol Ann Duffy and two from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank. Compare:

              –  the women in the poems

              –  how they are presented

3) Answer both parts (a) and (b).

 (a) Compare how the poets make the reader feel sympathy for the speaker in On my first Sonne by Ben Jonson and the speaker in one poem by Carol Ann Duffy

and then

(b) Compare how the reader is made to feel disturbed by the speaker’s words and actions in one poem by Simon Armitage and one poem from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank.

4) Compare how the poets present attitudes to people in Hitcher by Simon Armitage with one poem by Carol Ann Duffy and two poems from the Pre-1914 Poetry Bank. Compare:

              –  what the attitudes to people are

              –  how the poets present these attitudes by the ways they write