3.2.2.3The cluster at a glance
The cluster contains 'Lines Written in Early Spring', 'England in 1819', 'Shall Earth no More Inspire Thee', 'In a London Drawingroom', 'On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955', 'Name Journeys', 'pot', 'A Wider View', 'Homing', 'A Century Later', 'The Jewellery Maker', 'With Birds You're Never Lonely', 'A Portable Paradise', 'Like an Heiress' and 'Thirteen'.
- dialect
- regional speech used as a poetic resource, as in 'Homing'
- second person address
- speaking directly to 'you', used in 'Thirteen'
- the Romantic lyric
- a short personal poem about nature and feeling, as in Wordsworth's contribution
3.2.2.3Useful pairings
People and nature: 'Lines Written in Early Spring' with 'Shall Earth no More Inspire Thee'.
Language and belonging: 'Homing' with 'Name Journeys'.
Being judged or excluded: 'Thirteen' with 'A Century Later'.
City life: 'In a London Drawingroom' with 'England in 1819'.
3.2.2.3Themes
The cluster's central concern is connection to place: what it means to belong somewhere, to leave it, or to be told you do not. Placing nineteenth-century poems beside contemporary ones invites comparison of how the same concerns are treated across time.
Common mistake
Assuming the older poems are simpler because they are older. Shelley's sonnet is one of the most compressed political poems in any cluster.
3.2.2.3Poets' methods
This cluster rewards attention to voice and to form together: dialect in 'Homing', second-person address in 'Thirteen', the unbroken verse paragraph of 'In a London Drawingroom' enacting monotony, and the sonnet form containing Shelley's fury.
Worked example
Answer:
- Belonging is the cluster's central concern
- Older and newer poems treat the same concerns differently
- Voice and form carry meaning together here
- Shelley's sonnet is the most compressed poem in the cluster
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 2, Section B. The question is worth 30 marks and one poem from the cluster is printed and you compare it with one other poem of your choice from the same cluster. Allow about 45 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.