Edexcel GCSE English Literature: Unseen Poetry: Compare Two Poems (20 marks)

Poem A is Allotment by the (fictional) poet Edith Marlow.

My father measures kindness in straight rows. He kneels to the dark bed as to a prayer, presses each onion set in by its thumb, and firms the soil the way you'd tuck a child.

He talks to nothing I can see. The beans he speaks to climb; the carrots he forgets come up forked, stubborn, laughing at his care. Nothing he loves grows quickly. He is glad.

All summer he gives vegetables away in bags too heavy for the neighbours' hands, and will not hear the word for what he does. He calls it just a hobby. It is love.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

Poem B is My Mother's Window Box by the (fictional) poet Callum Reyes.

She has no garden, only a tin ledge four floors above the buses, where she keeps a single window box of marigolds the colour of the warning lights below.

She waters them at dawn before her shift, leaning right out into the city's noise to coax one orange head back through the bars, talking the way some people talk to cats.

There is no harvest here, no row, no yield, just flowers that the wind tries hard to take and that she will not let it. Every bloom is one more argument she means to win.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In both Allotment and My Mother's Window Box the poets present a parent who tends growing things. Compare the ways the poets present this care in these two poems. You should compare: the poets' use of language, form and structure; the effects created. (20 marks)

Poem A is Night Shift by the (fictional) poet Aliyah Senna.

The bakery is warmest at four a.m. when the rest of the street is only locks and dark. She slides the trays in, and the ovens breathe a heat that fogs her glasses, kind as sleep.

Her hands know this without her. While they work her mind is somewhere else, a school report, a leaking tap, the son who will not call. The dough, indifferent, rises all the same.

By six the loaves are out, brown, split and good, and strangers she will never meet will eat them. She does not mind. There is a quiet pride in feeding people who don't know your name.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

Poem B is The Ward at Night by the (fictional) poet Daniel Okara.

He counts the sleeping like a shepherd would, moving from bed to bed along the dark, a torch held low so as not to wake the pain that all day has been screaming down the ward.

He does the small unthanked arithmetic of drips and charts, the turning of a man too weak to turn himself, the cup of water held to a mouth that cannot say its thanks.

No one sees this. The morning will arrive and praise the doctors, the machines, the cures. He clicks his torch off, watches the slow light, and is not bitter. Someone has to stay.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In both Night Shift and The Ward at Night the poets present a person working through the night while others sleep. Compare the ways the poets present this unseen work in these two poems. You should compare: the poets' use of language, form and structure; the effects created. (20 marks)

Poem A is Lighthouse by the (fictional) poet Margaret Ennor.

It stands the way the stubborn always stand, heels dug into the rock against the sea, and says the same word over every night: here, here, here, here, to anyone afraid.

It does not love the ships. It does not need the gratitude of any captain saved. It simply will not let the dark have them, and turns, and turns, and will not turn away.

I think of it when I am most alone, how some things shine not because they are glad but because they decided, long ago, that they would shine, and that would be enough.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

Poem B is The Foghorn by the (fictional) poet Tomas Quill.

All night the foghorn says the only thing it knows, a low note like a cow in pain, out into weather that will not say thanks, again, again, the patience of a stone.

It cannot see the boats it calls to shore. It trusts they're there. It groans into the grey on the slim chance that someone, somewhere, hears and steers a little further off the rocks.

There is a kind of faith in being dull, in saying one plain thing and saying it past tiredness, past the certainty of help, because the not-saying is the worse of two.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In both Lighthouse and The Foghorn the poets present a coastal warning that works through the night to keep others safe. Compare the ways the poets present this steady, thankless guardianship in these two poems. You should compare: the poets' use of language, form and structure; the effects created. (20 marks)

Poem A is Clearing the House by the (fictional) poet Rosa Whitlin.

We empty it in boxes, room by room, the house that held us all those years ago, and find ourselves surprised by what is heavy: not the wardrobe, but a drawer of cards.

The walls keep paler squares where pictures hung, bright ghosts of all the things we took down first. My brother laughs too loudly at a lamp. I cannot throw away a chipped blue cup.

We thought a house was bricks. It turns out walls are mostly what we did in front of them. We lock the door on rooms that are still full of everything we cannot put in boxes.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

Poem B is New Address by the (fictional) poet Samuel Friske.

The new flat does not know us yet. Our voices come back off the bare walls a stranger's size. The light falls in the wrong place on the floor. At night the heating ticks an unknown code.

We carry in our boxes, set them down, and they look temporary, even ours. The kettle is the first thing to feel home; the rest of us will take a little longer.

A house becomes a home by being lived in, by arguments and birthdays and burnt toast, by all the ordinary days that wear a place to softness, like a stair-tread does.

(This poem was written for this exercise.)

In both Clearing the House and New Address the poets present a family moving between homes. Compare the ways the poets present the relationship between people and the houses they live in in these two poems. You should compare: the poets' use of language, form and structure; the effects created. (20 marks)