An Introduction to the Relationships Cluster

The Edexcel GCSE English Literature (1ET0) Poetry Anthology contains three thematic clusters — Relationships, Conflict and Time and Place. This course covers the Relationships cluster: fifteen poems that, between them, trace almost every shape love can take, from medieval courtly seduction to a punk-era declaration of domestic devotion. Keats writes about a man destroyed by a mysterious woman; Armitage writes about a wife reassembling her husband piece by piece after war. Shakespeare defines marriage as "the marriage of true minds"; Duffy replies, four centuries later, by handing her lover an onion.

This opening lesson does three things. First, it maps the cluster — the fifteen poems, their poets, their approximate dates and the sub-themes that tie them together. Second, it explains exactly how the exam works: the question type, the mark allocation and the time you have. Third, it gives you a study plan and a partner-poem strategy that you can use for the rest of this course.

The fifteen poems

#	Poem	Poet	Date	Focus
1	La Belle Dame sans Merci	John Keats	1819	Fatal seduction, the supernatural
2	A Child to His Sick Grandfather	Joanna Baillie	1790	Intergenerational love, mortality
3	She Walks in Beauty	Lord Byron	1814	Idealised beauty, Romantic praise
4	A Complaint	William Wordsworth	1807	Lost friendship, emotional drought
5	Neutral Tones	Thomas Hardy	1867	The end of love, disillusionment
6	Sonnet 116	William Shakespeare	c.1609	True love as a constant star
7	My Last Duchess	Robert Browning	1842	Possessive love, jealousy, power
8	1st Date - She / 1st Date - He	Wendy Cope	1992	Nervous first meetings, dual voice
9	Valentine	Carol Ann Duffy	1993	Honest love, anti-cliché
10	One Flesh	Elizabeth Jennings	1966	Distant marriage, ageing parents
11	I Wanna Be Yours	John Cooper Clarke	1982	Punk declaration of devotion
12	Love's Dog	Jen Hadfield	2008	Ambivalence, the good and bad of love
13	Nettles	Vernon Scannell	1980	Father's protective love, military imagery
14	The Manhunt	Simon Armitage	2008	Wife's perspective, post-war trauma
15	My Father Would Not Show Us	Ingrid de Kok	1988	South African elegy, reticent father

The cluster is chronologically loose rather than strict — Shakespeare's sonnet, the oldest work, sits seventh — but it is thematically coherent. Every poem is about a relationship: between lovers, between spouses, between parents and children, between grandparents and grandchildren, and, in A Complaint, between friends.

Sub-themes across the cluster

Rather than memorising fifteen separate poems, it is far more productive to see the cluster as a network of overlapping sub-themes. The Edexcel comparison question will almost always touch on one of these.

graph TD
  A[Relationships Cluster] --> B[Romantic love]
  A --> C[Love turning sour]
  A --> D[Family love]
  A --> E[Love and loss]
  A --> F[Love and power]
  B --> B1[Sonnet 116]
  B --> B2[She Walks in Beauty]
  B --> B3[Valentine]
  B --> B4[I Wanna Be Yours]
  C --> C1[Neutral Tones]
  C --> C2[A Complaint]
  C --> C3[One Flesh]
  D --> D1[Nettles]
  D --> D2[A Child to His Sick Grandfather]
  D --> D3[My Father Would Not Show Us]
  E --> E1[The Manhunt]
  E --> E2[La Belle Dame sans Merci]
  E --> E3[My Father Would Not Show Us]
  F --> F1[My Last Duchess]
  F --> F2[La Belle Dame sans Merci]
  F --> F3[Valentine]

Notice that several poems appear under more than one sub-theme. La Belle Dame sans Merci is about romantic infatuation, but it is also about loss and power. My Father Would Not Show Us is about family love, but it is also an elegy. The overlap is useful — it gives you multiple valid comparison partners for almost any poem.

How the exam works

You will sit Paper 2 of Edexcel's GCSE English Literature. Paper 2 is divided into sections; the Poetry Anthology appears in Section B, Part 1.

Paper	Section	Part	What you do	Marks	Time
2	B	1	Anthology poetry comparison	20	~30 min
2	B	2	Unseen poetry	20	~30 min

In Part 1, one poem from your chosen cluster will be printed on the exam paper. That poem is named for you — you do not choose it. You then pick a second poem from the same cluster and compare the two. The second poem is not printed; you work from memory (closed book). That is why quotation-learning matters so much.

Assessment Objectives

AO	Marks	Focus
AO1	12	Read, understand, respond; textual references
AO2	8	Analyse language, form, structure; subject terminology

There is no AO3 (context) and no AO4 (SPaG) credit in this part of the paper. That is a crucial detail. Context can provide useful support in AO1 (for example, mentioning Hardy's pessimistic Victorian realism helps you explain the poem), but it is not independently credited. Do not waste time writing long biographical introductions.

How to revise an anthology cluster

There is no shortcut to knowing fifteen poems well, but there is an order of operations that works.

1. Know each poem's "elevator pitch" — a two-sentence summary of what happens and what it is about.
2. Learn four to six short quotations per poem, chosen so they illustrate different things (one for form, one for imagery, one for voice, one for ending).
3. Build a comparison web — for every poem, write down two or three possible partners and why.
4. Practise one comparison paragraph per day during the final month — not full essays, just paragraphs.
5. Time yourself on a full question only after everything above is in place.

Partner-poem pairing strategy

Because the first poem is named, your choice is about the second. A strong second choice shares at least one feature with the named poem but also offers a productive contrast. A weak second choice shares so much that your essay has nothing to say, or so little that the comparison feels forced.

Three useful ways to pair:

• Same theme, different tone. Sonnet 116 (exalted) with Valentine (anti-cliché). Both define love; they disagree on how.
• Same situation, different speaker. Nettles (father watching son) with The Manhunt (wife watching husband). Both are about protective partners.
• Similar imagery, different conclusion. Neutral Tones (water, grey) with A Complaint (dried-up well). Both use aridity; one blames a partner, one blames time.

graph LR
  SOnnet[Sonnet 116] --- SheWalks[She Walks in Beauty]
  SOnnet --- Valentine
  Valentine --- Wanna[I Wanna Be Yours]
  Valentine --- Loves[Loves Dog]
  Neutral[Neutral Tones] --- Complaint[A Complaint]
  Neutral --- OneFlesh[One Flesh]
  Nettles --- Manhunt[The Manhunt]
  Nettles --- Child[A Child to His Sick Grandfather]
  Child --- MyFather[My Father Would Not Show Us]
  Browning[My Last Duchess] --- Keats[La Belle Dame]
  Keats --- OneDate[1st Date She He]

Structure of the comparison essay

The comparison question will always begin with the same stem: "Compare how [theme / feeling / technique] is presented in [named poem] and in one other poem of your choice from the anthology."

A good essay has:

• A one-sentence opening that names both poems and your chosen point of comparison.
• Three or four comparative body paragraphs, each structured around a shared idea rather than around a poem.
• A short closing paragraph that lifts out of the detail to answer the question directly.

You must keep both poems moving at the same speed. A common failure is spending the first half of the essay on the named poem and discovering with five minutes left that you have barely mentioned the second.

Key AO2 terminology you will need

Area	Terms
Form	sonnet, ballad, dramatic monologue, free verse, elegy, list-poem
Structure	volta, enjambment, caesura, end-stopping, refrain, cyclical, linear
Sound	iambic pentameter, tetrameter, rhyme scheme, half-rhyme, sibilance, plosive
Imagery	metaphor, extended metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism
Voice	speaker, persona, first person, second person, dramatic irony

You do not have to use all of these, but examiners reward precise terminology. "Extended metaphor" beats "metaphor". "Enjambment" beats "sentence continues over the line".

Worked opener

Here is an opener you might write if the named poem were Sonnet 116:

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and Duffy's Valentine both attempt to define true love, but where Shakespeare elevates love as "an ever-fixed mark" — timeless, abstract and unshakeable — Duffy insists on a love that is embodied, imperfect and "fierce". Both poets reject superficial love; they disagree about what takes its place.

Two poems, one point of comparison, one quotation from each, already set up for contrast. This is a top-band opener.

Exam tips

• Do not write two essays joined in the middle. Comparative connectives — "similarly", "whereas", "in contrast", "both poets" — must appear in every body paragraph.
• Quote precisely and sparingly. Two short quotations per paragraph beats one long one.
• Do not paraphrase the poems. The examiner has read them. Analyse.
• Balance AO1 and AO2. AO1 is the bigger mark pot (12 vs 8), but AO2 is what separates Grade 6 from Grade 9.
• Leave yourself five minutes to check. Three minutes of proofreading can lift a response a grade.

Key quotations to memorise (this lesson)

• "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds" — Sonnet 116
• "I give you an onion" — Valentine
• "Then I found out my father's skin" — The Manhunt
• "My son would often feel sorry pain" — Nettles (paraphrased; exact wording learned per poem)

Extended worked comparison paragraphs

Because the comparison question is the whole of Section B Part 1, it is worth seeing more than one kind of comparative paragraph modelled. Below are three short worked paragraphs, each pairing two poems from the cluster on a different shared idea. Read them as models; copy their moves, not their content.

Paragraph 1 — Parental love across generations. Both Scannell in Nettles and Baillie in A Child to His Sick Grandfather render family love as quiet, close attention rather than declaration. Baillie's child-speaker notes the grandfather's "sunken cheek" in simple ABAB quatrains whose near-nursery simplicity dignifies rather than diminishes grief; Scannell's adult father watches his son's small injury and reaches — almost against himself — for the military vocabulary of "regiment" and "fierce parade", his veteran's mind projecting a larger threat than the nettles actually pose. Both poets use iambic tetrameter-based forms that pace the feeling without rushing it. Where Baillie looks up the generations in awe, Scannell looks down in protective anger. An examiner in Band 4 or 5 rewards a paragraph like this because it sustains comparison at sentence level, quotes both poems, names form in both, and arrives at a specific claim about what the two poets share.

Paragraph 2 — The failure of cliché. Duffy's Valentine and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 both attempt to define true love by refusing what passes for it; where Shakespeare dismisses "impediments" and love that "alters when it alteration finds", Duffy dismisses "a red rose or a satin heart". Shakespeare then elevates his definition into the cosmic — "an ever-fixed mark" — and works the whole argument through in three quatrains and a decisive couplet. Duffy pulls the definition downward into the kitchen, offering "an onion" and breaking her stanzas into short imperatives that refuse Shakespearean control. Both poets believe love deserves better definitions than cliché permits; they disagree about whether the honest alternative is abstract or embodied.

Paragraph 3 — Women silenced by male speakers. Browning's My Last Duchess and Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci both centre female figures who never speak in the poems that define them. Browning's Duke reduces his late wife to a painting "as if alive", controlled by a curtain only he can draw, and his rhyming couplets — hidden under relentless enjambment — mimic his own polished, almost-unnoticed control. Keats's lady speaks "language strange" that the knight never translates; she is framed as a "faery's child" whose supernatural otherness absorbs the knight's voice and leaves him "alone and palely loitering". Both poets dramatise male voices defining the women their poems are supposedly about — a feature that Band 4/5 Edexcel responses explicitly name and unpack.

Expanded mark-scheme walk-through

Edexcel's published band descriptors for AO1 and AO2 at this part of Paper 2 use a recognisable ladder of language. Knowing the ladder helps you self-assess your practice answers.

Band	AO1 language	AO2 language
1	"limited", "little understanding"	"limited identification of language"
2	"some", "attempts reference to text"	"some comment on language"
3	"clear understanding", "relevant reference"	"clear understanding of writer's methods"
4	"thoughtful and developed", "integrated reference"	"examination of methods and their effects"
5	"sustained, critical and evaluative", "assured"	"perceptive examination", "sustained analysis"

The jump from Band 3 to Band 4 is not about finding harder techniques; it is about examining effect rather than only naming it. "Duffy uses an extended metaphor" is Band 3; "Duffy's extended metaphor of the onion pulls love out of Shakespeare's cosmic register and into the kitchen, where it can be felt, smelled and cried over" is Band 4. The extra is explanation of effect, not extra jargon.

The jump from Band 4 to Band 5 is about sustained, nuanced argument. A Band 5 response is recognisable by its refusal to flatten either poem: it can say "on one reading... on another reading..." without losing momentum, and it treats the two poems as interlocutors rather than as two items on a list.

Modelled planning templates

Whatever the prompt, a workable plan fits on three lines at the top of your answer booklet. Here are three templates you can practise with.

Template A — shared theme, different approach.

1. Both poets address [X]; they approach it through [contrast].
2. Point 1: language / imagery.
3. Point 2: form.
4. Point 3: speaker / voice.
5. Closer: which of the two does the question's key word apply to more fully?

Template B — shared situation, different speaker.

1. Both poems dramatise [situation]; the speakers are [different in X].
2. Point 1: what each speaker reveals about themselves.
3. Point 2: what each poem does with voice / tense / address.
4. Point 3: form.
5. Closer: what the comparison tells us about the theme.

Template C — similar imagery, different conclusion.

1. Both poets reach for [imagery field]; they do different things with it.
2. Point 1: one image, both poems.
3. Point 2: a second image, both poems.
4. Point 3: form / structure as argument.
5. Closer: what the imagery decides.

Practice for the final month is two templated plans per week, one full opener per week, and one full essay in the last fortnight under timed conditions.

Summary

The Relationships cluster contains fifteen poems that explore every shape of love, from Shakespeare's idealism to Cooper Clarke's punk devotion. You will compare two of them in the exam: one named, one chosen. You have around thirty minutes and twenty marks to play for, with AO1 and AO2 credited, no AO3 and no SPaG. The lessons that follow in this course walk through every poem in the cluster, and the final two lessons show you how to compare and how to write under time pressure.

This content is aligned with the Edexcel GCSE English Literature (1ET0) Paper 2 specification.