Step by Step Planning: Lit Poetry

You should aim to spend a good 10-15 minutes planning. If you plan carefully it should make the writing much easier.

Step One: Read the question and underline key words

This may seem obvious but it’s important you get into good habits and reduce the risk of misreading the question.

Compare how women are presented in four of the poems you have studied.

To do this compare, compare ‘Mother, any distance greater than a single span’ 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

Step Two: Jot down initial ideas

In this question you are being asked to compare the presentation of women. Begin by jotting down how the woman is presented in ‘Mother, any distance’. You could do this by listing words that spring to mind about her or you could create a spider diagram with one branch for the named poem. Individual words will do for this stage e.g. (she is presented as) ‘an achor’, clingy, supportive… etc.

Step Three: Select your other 3 poems

This is where you really need to think carefully. Don’t just pick the poems you know/like best – they may not be appropriate for the question and you’ll struggle to write your essay if you go down this route.

Use the words that you’ve put down for the named poem. Is there a Duffy poem where you have a strong similarity e.g. a woman who is clingy/supportive/an anchor. Do the same before and jot down words to describe how the woman is presented in that poem and your two pre-1914 poems.

By the end of this step you’ll have words to describe how women are presented in each of the four poems and you should start to see similarities and differences emerging. You can start adding ideas about devices used in the presentation of the women as, for example, ‘clingy’.

You may see things like 2-3 poems presenting women as clingy but using different devices to do so. That’s ok – remember that you are looking for similarities and differences.

Step Four: Plan your structure

Plan out the structure of your essay. You can do this in two different ways:

1. The structure we tend to follow: I L L S P. An introductory paragraph covering what the poems are about in relation to the question (Interpretation). Two main paragraphs focused on a linguistic device used in the poems (Language). One paragraph on the use of structural devices in the presentation of women (Structure). A concluding paragraph in which you explicitly expressing an opinion e.g. one of the most striking ways in which women are presented in the fours poems is…. I think the most effective way women are presented is…. (Personal Response).

2. Using your words in planning as a focus for each of the paragraphs. For example, you have one paragraph in which you look at the ways in which women are presented as clingy in the four poems. Perhaps they’ll all be presented as clingy but the poets will use different devices.

REVISION TIPS:

You don’t just have to write full essays as part of your revision and preparation for the exam. You could take past questions and plan. This will help you to make links between poems and will increase your planning speed. You might then like to write an individual paragraph for me to have a look at.