The unseen question gives you a poem you have never seen and asks for a close, well-organised response under time pressure. Our teachers wrote the poems below for practice. They are our own, not exam texts, so treat each as genuinely unseen.
Read twice, annotate, plan a line of argument, then write. Check the current 0475 syllabus for this component's marks and timing.
1Read the following poem, written by our teachers for this exercise, then write a critical commentary exploring how the poet conveys the keeper's loneliness and sense of duty. Every night he winds the great lamp tight, a coin of fire he pays out to the dark; the sea takes it and gives back nothing, only the long unanswered shine. He counts the ships he cannot see, names them after the living and the drowned, and climbs down at dawn to a kettle's small applause, the one warm sound the island keeps for him.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Find a controlling idea (here, that duty and loneliness are the same act) and build your commentary around it. Move through the poem roughly in order, quoting a few words at a time.
Analyse imagery, sound, and the contrast between the vast sea and the small domestic ending. Leave a sentence to say what the poem finally makes you feel.
Model opening: This poem quietly suggests that the keeper's devotion and his isolation are one and the same: the very light he 'pays out to the dark' buys him nothing back, and the poet lets that unrewarded effort define the loneliness of his nights.
Checklist:
- I identify a central idea in my first sentence.
- I quote briefly and analyse effect, not just meaning.
- I comment on form and sound, not only images.
- I notice a contrast or shift within the poem.
- I plan a structure before writing under time.
2Read this poem, written by our teachers as practice material. Then write a close critical response exploring how the poet presents memory and the bond between the speaker and the grandmother. My grandmother's hands were maps of somewhere gone, each crease a road she walked and I did not.
She peeled the oranges in a single ribbon, a small perfection saved for ordinary days, and pressed the halves into my palm like coins, paying me forward into a life she guessed at. Now I peel mine badly, in broken pieces, and taste the debt I never learned to keep.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Notice that the poem turns memory into something owed ('coins', 'paying', 'debt') and let that thread guide your reading. Analyse the comparison of hands to maps, the image of the unbroken peel, and the shift to the present tense at the end. Track how admiration turns into gentle guilt, and close on the effect of the final line.
Model opening: The poet builds this tribute out of the language of money and debt, so that love becomes something the speaker feels they still owe: the grandmother 'pays' forward a care the speaker admits, in the last line, they 'never learned to keep.'
Checklist:
- My opening names the poem's controlling idea.
- I follow the money-and-debt imagery as a thread.
- I comment on the tense change and its effect.
- Quotations are short and woven into my sentences.
- I end by explaining the feeling the ending leaves.
3Read the following original poem, written by our teachers for practice, then write a critical commentary on how the poet uses the storm to explore the speaker's inner state. Let it come, the wind that strips the almond tree, that tears the washing from its careful line and throws the afternoon into the hedge.
I have been too tidy with my grief, folding it into drawers that will not shut. Let the storm do what I have not dared: unmake the house, and leave the door banging its one blunt question at the night.
Tried these practice tasks? A teacher can mark your child's attempt and explain the next step in a paid one-hour trial.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: See that the storm is wanted, not feared, and make that surprising reading your argument. Analyse the domestic imagery (washing, drawers, the door), the imperative 'Let it come', and the unfinished 'question' at the end. Show how outer weather stands for feelings the speaker cannot express, and finish on what the ending leaves unresolved.
Model opening: Unusually, this speaker welcomes the storm rather than fearing it: the wind is invited to 'unmake the house' precisely because the speaker has been 'too tidy' with grief, and the poet turns a wild afternoon into a longing for release.
Checklist:
- I argue a clear, perhaps surprising, central reading.
- I connect the weather to the speaker's feelings throughout.
- I analyse the imperative mood and the final image.
- I quote briefly and precisely.
- I plan a structure before writing under time.
4Read this poem, our own work written for this exercise. Then write a critical response exploring how the poet creates a mood of isolation and routine in a modern setting.
The last bus hums like a fridge through empty streets, its lit interior a room that no one owns. A man asleep against the misted glass rides past his own reflection, mile on mile, while the driver keeps a promise to nobody, stopping at every stop the timetable insists, opening the doors on darkness and cold air, then closing them again on all that nothing.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Argue that the poem finds emptiness inside a familiar routine. Analyse the simile of the fridge, the 'room that no one owns', and the driver's pointless faithfulness to the timetable.
Comment on the flat, repeated rhythm that mirrors the journey. End by weighing whether the poem feels bleak, tender, or both.
Model opening: The poet turns an ordinary night bus into an image of modern loneliness: the driver keeps 'a promise to nobody', dutifully opening doors 'on darkness', so that the routine which should connect people instead carries them past one another in the dark.
Checklist:
- My argument captures the mood precisely.
- I analyse at least one simile and one repetition.
- I link the rhythm to the poem's subject.
- Quotations are short and exact.
- I reach a balanced final judgement of tone.
5Read the following poem, written by our teachers for practice. Then write a close critical response exploring how the poet presents the coming of morning after a difficult night, and the feelings it brings. After the long dark of not sleeping, the window greys, then silvers, then admits the ordinary miracle of morning: a blackbird tuning up its rusty hinge, the neighbour's kettle, someone's early car.
Nothing is solved. The same day waits downstairs. And yet the light comes in without being asked, and lays its patient hand across the bed.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Base your reading on the tension between 'Nothing is solved' and the comfort the light still brings. Analyse the three-stage verb sequence 'greys, then silvers, then admits', the homely sounds, and the gentle personification of the light at the end. Show how the poem offers consolation without pretending problems are gone.
Model opening: This poem refuses easy comfort yet still finds it: even though 'Nothing is solved' and 'the same day waits downstairs', the poet lets the morning light arrive 'without being asked'; a quiet, unearned kindness laid 'across the bed'.
Checklist:
- I identify the poem's central tension in my opening.
- I analyse the sequence of verbs describing the dawn.
- I comment on personification and homely detail.
- Quotations are brief and embedded.
- I explain the balance of sadness and consolation.
See the method and an annotated model on the unseen poetry commentary page for Cambridge International 0475, or the technique in our unseen poetry commentary skills guide.