How to answer ANY Unseen Poem and EASILY get full marks

Hi there,

If you struggle with Unseen Poetry – I’ll let you in on a little secret. Poetry is about the human experience. It’s about relationships, nature and society. Regardless of the poem you read, poets will usually talk about one of TEN big ideas.

Get familiar with these ideas then look for them in the unseen poems you get in your GCSE exam papers and ultimately your final GCSE exams.

The Unseen Poems you get will always be about ONE of these TEN ideas.. mention it and immediately you’ll get easy marks for “analysis” and being “perceptive”. Also your life figuring out what the poem means will be ten times easier!

All GCSE Unseen Poetry is about one of these 10 ideas:

1) Love (not only romantic but friendship “love)
2) Loss and grief
3) Nature (very popular!)

4) Family and childhood

5) Time and change

6) Memory (the past)

7) Loneliness

8) Identity

9) Society (how we treat others, traditions)

10) Conflict and power

Memorise these ideas and look for them in the unseen poems you practice and study!

Now, it’s one thing spotting these ideas – it’s quite another knowing what to say about them and expand.

If you struggle with writing good analysis for unseen poetry – join my Unseen Poetry class over EASTER half term as that’s exactly what we’ll focus on: https://www.firstratetutors.com/easter-unseen

As it’s a live lesson, you can ask me as many questions as you want as we go over Grade 9 GCSE Model Answers for Unseen Poetry!

Hope to see you there!

LITERATURE CLASS: SIGN UP HERE

PS: Here's what one of my students' parents had to say about my previous Literature Week:

 

Happy Revision,

Barbara ☺️