AQA GCSE English Literature: Unseen Poetry: Analyse One Poem (24 marks)

This poem, The Last Bus Out by the (fictional) poet Niamh Carrow, describes a young person leaving the town where they grew up.

The last bus out is always nearly empty. I take the long seat at the back, alone, and watch the only town I've ever known slide off the window like a breath in winter.

There goes the chip shop with its buzzing sign, the church whose clock has lain to us for years, the bench where I once cried and no one came. I name them all the way you'd name the dead,

quietly, so the driver doesn't turn. The streetlamps hand me on from one to the next like careful nurses passing me along, and then the last one drops me, and it's fields.

I press my forehead to the cooling glass. The dark out there is not a thing to fear; it's only everywhere I haven't been. The bus leans into it. I let it lean.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In The Last Bus Out, how does the poet present the experience of leaving home? (24 marks)

This poem, Floodwater by the (fictional) poet Tomas Aldgate, describes a family watching a river rise into their home.

We measured it in stairs. By six o'clock the water owned the hall, the boots, the door; by nine it stood three steps from where we sat and counted, in the dark, the steps it took.

It came in brown and patient, like a guest who knows the house is his and takes his time, trying each room, the kitchen, then the stairs, touching our things the way a thief might rest

his hand on what he means to carry off. My father stood. My mother held the lamp. The wallpaper let go and floated free in long pale sheets, like skin a snake has shed.

And still it climbed. We did not speak of fear. We spoke of cups, of where the cat had gone, of anything but this: the steady, soft, unhurried sound of water taking ground.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In Floodwater, how does the poet present the threat of the rising water? (24 marks)

This poem, My Grandmother's Hands by the (fictional) poet Esme Quayle, describes the speaker remembering an elderly relative.

I think of them as two old gardening gloves left out all winter on a window ledge: worn soft, gone pale, the stitching come undone, and yet they fitted every job they did.

They shelled the peas. They wound the kitchen clock. They pressed a coin into my palm and closed my fingers over it, and would not hear a word of thanks, and turned me to the door.

They never once were still. Even asleep they twitched at some old work they had to finish, some loaf to knead, some grandchild to put right, some button, somewhere, waiting to be sewn.

And at the end, when all the rest had gone, the talk, the name, the knowing of my face, the hands kept on. They smoothed the folded sheet. They did the only thing they knew. They loved.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In My Grandmother's Hands, how does the poet present the speaker's feelings about the grandmother? (24 marks)

This poem, Homecoming by the (fictional) poet Daniel Roper, describes a soldier returning from war to an ordinary life.

They gave me back my coat, my keys, my name, and told me I was lucky, and I was. The train ran south through fields too green to trust. I had forgotten England came in colours.

At home the kettle worked. The tap still ran. My mother set a plate as if a plate could put a person back the way he was. I ate. I said the right words. I sat down.

But every door that banged was not a door, and every car that backfired in the street unmade the room around me for a beat, and put me, breathing hard, somewhere with sand.

I do not tell them this. They want me whole. So I learn the old shape of myself again, I wear it like a coat a size too small, and smile, and pass the salt, and stay awake.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In Homecoming, how does the poet present the difficulty of returning to ordinary life? (24 marks)

This poem, The City Wakes by the (fictional) poet Lucia Brandt, describes a city in the hour before it comes fully to life.

Before the buses, before the bright shop fronts lift up their shutters like a hundred eyes, the city is a held breath, grey and clean, and almost, for an hour, it is mine.

A fox trots down the middle of the road as though it owns the deeds. The traffic lights turn green for no one, red for no one, green, patiently rehearsing for the day.

A street sweeper goes by, and where he's passed the pavement shines as if it had been polished for some arrival. Pigeons, one by one, clear their grey throats along the parapets.

Then somewhere a first lorry changes gear, a baker's metal door rolls up and clangs, and the long machine of morning starts to turn, and takes the quiet from me, and the city wakes.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In The City Wakes, how does the poet present the city in the early morning? (24 marks)