A GCSE method for the Power and Conflict anthology: compare how poets present power, war, nature, memory and identity, not just what happens in each poem.

Open guide 02

Ozymandias

Revise Shelley’s Ozymandias: pride, the decay of power, and the irony of a broken statue still trying to command.

Open guide 03

London

Revise Blake’s London: institutional power, suffering, and the “mind-forged manacles” of a whole city.

Open guide 04

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Revise Tennyson’s public war poem: glory, obedience, blunder, and the drumming rhythm of a doomed charge.

Open guide

Exposure

Revise Owen’s Exposure: nature as enemy, waiting as war, and the collapse of patriotic comfort.

Open guide 06

Remains

Revise Armitage’s Remains: modern conflict, guilt, and a memory that will not stay in the desert.

Open guide 07

Kamikaze

Revise Garland’s Kamikaze: a turned-back pilot, a family’s silence, and conflict as shame in the next generation.

Open guide 08

Love and Relationships poetry

A GCSE method for the Love and Relationships cluster: family, desire, distance, memory and the forms poets use to hold them.

Open guide 09

My Last Duchess

GCSE Power and Conflict revision of Browning’s dramatic monologue: the Duke’s control, art as possession, “I gave commands”, and a high-mark comparison with Ozymandias.

Open guide 10

Storm on the Island

GCSE Heaney revision: nature’s power against a prepared community, the turn from confidence to fear, and comparisons with Exposure and Wordsworth’s Prelude extract.

Open guide 11

Tissue (Imtiaz Dharker)

GCSE Tissue revision: paper, maps, light, identity and what lasts — Dharker’s argument that human power should be transparent, not stone, and how to compare it in Power and Conflict.

Open guide 12

The Émigrée

GCSE Rumens revision: a city held in sunlight, exile without a passport, identity that will not leave, and how to compare memory and belonging in Power and Conflict.

Open guide 13

Checking Out Me History

GCSE Agard revision: colonised schooling, phonetic resistance, Toussaint and Nanny as recovered light, and how identity is carved against “dem tell me.”

Open guide 14

Poppies (Jane Weir)

GCSE Poppies revision: a mother’s textile war, Armistice images, the aftermath of leaving, and a comparison with Kamikaze on families who live with conflict after the march-past ends.

Open guide 15

War Photographer

GCSE Duffy revision: the darkroom as church, rural England versus war zones, “a hundred agonies,” and how the poem implicates the newspaper reader — including you in the exam hall.

Open guide 16

Bayonet Charge

GCSE Hughes revision: a soldier dropped into a run, patriotic abstractions falling away, the yellow hare, and a comparison with The Charge of the Light Brigade on glory versus bewilderment.

Open guide 17

The Prelude (stealing the boat)

GCSE Wordsworth extract: stealing a boat, troubled pleasure, the huge peak that strides after him, and nature’s sublime power punishing pride — a flagship pair for Storm on the Island or Ozymandias.

Open guide 18

Power and Conflict exam questions

AQA-style comparison method for Power and Conflict: named poem plus one other, how to pair, comparative paragraphs from the first sentence, typical stems, timing, and a model thesis you can reuse.

Open guide 19

Neutral Tones

GCSE Love and Relationships revision of Hardy’s ash-grey memory: a failed love frozen in a winter pond, “neutral tones,” starved smiles, and a high-mark comparison with When We Two Parted.

Open guide 20

Porphyria's Lover

GCSE Browning revision: dramatic monologue, desire as possession, the strangling scene, “her darling one wish would be heard,” and comparison with The Farmer’s Bride.

Open guide 21

Winter Swans

GCSE Owen Sheers revision: a couple’s cold walk, swans as turning point, reconciliation after “gulping for breath,” and comparison with Neutral Tones or Walking Away.

Open guide 22

Before You Were Mine

GCSE Carol Ann Duffy revision: daughter voice, glamorous mother before motherhood, Marilyn and dancefloors, and comparison with Mother Any Distance or Follower.

Open guide 23

Singh Song!

GCSE Daljit Nagra revision: playful marriage, shop dialect, phonetic voice, “we is closin,” and comparison with Porphyria’s Lover or The Farmer’s Bride.

Open guide 24

The Farmer's Bride

GCSE Charlotte Mew revision: rural isolation, a frightened bride, locked doors, “too young,” and comparison with Porphyria’s Lover or Singh Song!

Open guide 25

Walking Away

GCSE Cecil Day-Lewis revision: father at the school gates, “love is proved in the letting go,” September ritual, and comparison with Follower or Mother Any Distance.

Open guide 26

The Manhunt

GCSE Simon Armitage revision: PTSD marriage, “foetus of metal,” careful touch, wife helping veteran, and comparison with Winter Swans or Porphyria’s Lover.

Open guide 27

When We Two Parted

GCSE Byron revision: secret affair ended, public silence, “silence and tears,” broken vows, and comparison with Neutral Tones or Porphyria’s Lover.

Open guide 28

Follower

GCSE Seamus Heaney revision: father’s farm skill, child admiration, role reversal in ageing, “will not go away,” and comparison with Walking Away or Before You Were Mine.

Open guide 29

Mother, Any Distance

GCSE Simon Armitage revision: umbilical metaphor, measuring tape, map of leaving home, “slackening towards endlessness,” and comparison with Walking Away or Before You Were Mine.

Open guide 30

Love and Relationships exam questions

AQA-style comparison method for Love and Relationships: named poem plus one other, how to pair, comparative paragraphs from the first sentence, typical stems, timing, and a model thesis you can reuse.