On Paper 1 the poetry question asks you to build an argument about how a poet shapes meaning and feeling. Sometimes you compare two poems from your selection. Our teachers wrote these practice tasks to rehearse that move on poems you are already studying.
Read each prompt, plan a thesis, then write. Check the current 0475 syllabus for the poems set in your exam year and the marks and timing that apply.
1Choose one poem from your set selection in which the shape on the page (stanza length, line breaks, or a shift partway through) changes how you feel about its subject. Write a critical essay arguing how the poet uses that structure, together with sound and word choice, to guide the reader's response. Root every claim in short quotations and stay within the word limit and timing the 0475 paper sets for this question.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Open with a thesis naming the feeling and the structural feature that creates it. Work through two or three precise moments in order.
Quote a few words each time and analyse sound and diction, not just meaning. Track how the feeling shifts across the poem, and close by developing your thesis rather than summarising the plot.
Model opening: A poem that seems calm can be built to unsettle us: when a poet lets a steady stanza pattern break at the exact moment of doubt, the reader feels the certainty give way before the words even explain it.
Checklist:
- My first sentence states an argument, not the poem's subject.
- Every point quotes only a few words and analyses their effect.
- I discuss form or structure, not only what the poem says.
- I trace how the feeling changes across the poem.
- My conclusion develops the thesis rather than repeating it.
2Select two poems from your set selection that deal with the same emotion (for example longing, anger, or grief) but handle it very differently. Write a comparative essay arguing how each poet's choices of imagery, voice, and rhythm create a different version of that emotion. Give the poems roughly equal weight and keep to the paper's word limit and timing.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Decide on a line of argument that both poems can serve. Then organise by idea, not by doing one poem and then the other.
For each point, set the two poems side by side, quote briefly from each, and name the difference in method. Use linking words (whereas, by contrast) so the comparison is explicit, and end on the more interesting of the two readings.
Model opening: Two poets can reach for the same feeling and arrive somewhere completely different: where one lets grief spill through long, unbroken lines, the other locks it inside a tight rhyme, as if refusing to let it move.
Checklist:
- Both poems get roughly equal attention.
- I compare point by point, not poem after poem.
- Each comparison names a difference in method, not only in subject.
- I use comparative connectives to signal the link.
- Quotations are short and precise from both poems.
3In one poem from your selection, the poet returns again and again to a single kind of image: light, water, the body, machinery, or the natural world. Write about how that recurring image carries the poem's meaning, then show briefly how a second poem you are studying uses imagery for a different purpose. Support every point with brief quotation and keep to the paper's limits.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Trace the recurring image through the first poem in the order it appears. Show how its meaning deepens or changes each time.
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Then turn to the second poem for a shorter contrast, making the point of comparison clear. Avoid listing images; explain what each one does to the reader.
Model opening: When an image keeps returning in a poem, it stops being decoration and starts to argue: each time water appears it can mean something a little more dangerous, so that by the end the reader distrusts the very thing that first seemed gentle.
Checklist:
- I track the image's development rather than just spotting it.
- I explain the effect of each image on the reader.
- The second poem is used as a genuine contrast.
- Quotations are embedded smoothly in my sentences.
- My argument builds rather than repeating one idea.
4Choose a poem from your selection with a strong speaking voice. Write a critical response arguing how the poet creates that voice (through tone, address to the reader or listener, and control of pace).
Also show how the voice shapes your sympathy for, or judgement of, the speaker. Support your points with short quotation and keep within the word limit and timing the paper sets.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Define the voice in your opening, who seems to be speaking, and how they want to be heard. Analyse specific choices (a rhetorical question, an abrupt line, a repeated phrase) that build tone and pace.
Keep asking how each choice steers the reader's feeling toward the speaker. End by judging how reliable or sympathetic that voice finally seems.
Model opening: A poem's speaker can win us over or give themselves away without ever meaning to: a voice that insists too often on its own innocence can make a careful reader suspicious long before any confession arrives.
Checklist:
- I describe the voice precisely in my opening.
- I link technique to tone and pace.
- I keep the reader's response to the speaker in view.
- Short quotations anchor each claim.
- I reach a judgement about the speaker by the end.
5Focus on the ending of one poem from your set selection. Write about how the poet's final lines (their imagery, rhythm, or a change of direction) make you re-read everything before them, and argue what the ending reveals about the poem's central concern. Support your argument with brief quotation and work within the paper's limits.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Open by naming what the ending does: resolves, unsettles, or refuses to resolve. Work backwards and forwards: show what earlier moment the ending answers or overturns, quoting both.
Analyse the final lines' sound and structure closely. Finish by stating what the whole poem is really about in the light of its close.
Model opening: The last line of a poem often rewrites the first: a closing image that turns unexpectedly cold can make a reader look back and realise the warmth earlier was never quite trustworthy.
Checklist:
- My opening names the effect of the ending.
- I connect the close to at least one earlier moment.
- I analyse the final lines' sound and structure, not just their sense.
- I say what the ending reveals about the whole poem.
- Quotations are brief and exact.
See the method and an annotated model on the set-text poetry essay page for Cambridge International 0475, or the technique in our set-text poetry essay skills guide.