A routine for any unseen poem

The last section of Literature Paper 2 (Section C) has two questions on poems you have not seen before. On AQA’s June 2025 paper they were numbered 28.1 and 28.2. Older past papers number them 27.1 and 27.2. They work the same way, so on this page we call them the first and the second unseen question.

• The first question asks how the poet presents something in one poem. It is worth 24 marks: 12 for your response and your quotations (AO1) and 12 for the poet’s methods (AO2).
• The second question gives you a second poem on a linked subject. You compare the methods the two poets use. It is worth 8 marks, all for methods (AO2).

Context is not marked in this section. You do not need to know anything about the poets or when they wrote.

Timing

Paper 2 lasts 2 hours 15 minutes and has three sections, so give each section about 45 minutes. In this one, spend about 30 minutes on the first question and 15 on the second. AQA’s Chief Examiner advises: “Don’t spend too much time on the final question as it is only worth 8 marks.”

The routine

Use the same four steps on every poem.

1. What happens? Read the title, then read the whole poem once without stopping. AQA’s teaching guide also suggests you “take in its shape and the white spaces”. Sum up the situation in one sentence.
2. Who speaks? The speaker is the voice in the poem, and it may or may not be the poet. Who are they talking to, and where are they?
3. How does it feel? Choose one or two words for the mood. Then look for the line where the mood changes, if it does.
4. How does the poet do it? Pick three or four methods that create that feeling. As the Chief Examiner puts it: “You don’t have to write about everything.”

The routine on one poem

Here is the routine on ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas.

1. What happens? A train stops at a small country station one hot afternoon. Nobody gets on or off. For a minute the speaker hears a blackbird sing, and then all the birds for miles around.
2. Who speaks? A speaker remembering, in the first person. The poem opens “Yes. I remember Adlestrop”, as if answering someone’s question.
3. How does it feel? Still and quiet at first, then wide and peaceful.
4. How does the poet do it? In the second stanza, short sentences make tiny sounds seem loud: “The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.” At the end the sound spreads out to “all the birds / Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire”, so one minute seems to fill two whole counties.

From there you can write a thesis, the main argument of your answer. For example: Thomas turns a minute when nothing happens into a moment of peace that seems to spread for miles.

Writing the first answer

Start with one or two sentences about the whole poem: what it is about, and how it makes you feel. Then write three or four paragraphs, each on one idea and the methods that create it. You can work through the poem in order, but make sure you reach the ending, because poems often change there.

Two habits cost marks. AQA’s 2025 report describes answers where students “listed features without exploring their effect or relevance”. A method’s name only helps when you say what it does. The same report found that answers at Level 2 “tended to summarise the poem’s content rather than analyse its meaning”. Retelling is a first step, and the marks come after it.

The second question: compare methods

AQA’s Chief Examiner tells students that “the question will tell you what the main link is between the two poems”. So the link is given. Your job is to compare how each poet presents it. The same advice suggests you “select one or two things that the writers are doing to present this shared idea”.

Compare like with like: the two speakers, the two endings, or the way each poem is shaped. For example, ‘Adlestrop’ and W. B. Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ both present a place of peace. Yeats’s speaker longs for a place far away, and the repeated “I will arise and go now” sounds like a promise. Thomas’s speaker remembers a minute that has already gone. Both poems end on sound. Yeats’s speaker hears the lake water deep inside (“I hear it in the deep heart’s core”), whereas in Thomas’s poem the birdsong spreads across two counties.

Use comparison words inside your sentences: both, whereas, similarly, in contrast. Two or three short paragraphs are enough for 8 marks.

Sources

• AQA, GCSE English Literature 8702 specification (Paper 2, Section C)
• AQA, Mark scheme: Paper 2, June 2023 (marks and assessment objectives for the unseen questions)
• AQA, Report on the examination: Paper 2, June 2025
• AQA, Teaching guide: unseen poetry (2024)