Poetry and Unseen Texts (9275): Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination, and do not reference specific People and Places anthology poems — apply Question 1’s method to your own studied selection. The poem in Question 2 and the prose extract in Question 3 are original short texts written for this resource, not reproduced anthology or past-paper material. These are not reproduced past-paper questions. Examination boards hold copyright in their own papers and anthology poems. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Question 3 (unseen prose) is Route A only. Route B candidates should stop after Question 2 and revise their non-exam assessment separately — confirm which route your centre follows before using this section.

Related: Poetry and Unseen Texts study guide, Poetry and Unseen Texts revision notes

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Section A (practise using your own studied anthology poems)

1. Choose two poems from your studied People and Places anthology that share a theme (such as identity, displacement, memory or a sense of place). Compare how each poem presents that theme through its use of structure and language. [30]

Section B (unseen poetry)

Read the poem below, then answer Question 2.

Postcard from a Border Town

The queue moves slower than the river does, though both, they tell me, reach the sea by dusk. A guard reads names the way you’d read a clock — not caring what the numbers mean, just checking they still turn.

My mother packed the good plates in a towel and left the rest for whoever came next, as if a kitchen were a kind of sentence you could simply leave unfinished.

I keep my passport open in my hand the way you’d hold a door that might blow shut. Somewhere behind me is a house still standing. Somewhere ahead, they tell me, is another. I have not learned yet which one I should call home, so for now I call this line, this queue, this waiting.

2. Analyse how the poet presents the experience of leaving a home behind in Postcard from a Border Town. [30]

Section C (unseen prose — Route A only)

Read the extract below, then answer Question 3.

Maya had rehearsed the walk to her desk a dozen times in her head, and none of the versions had involved tripping over someone’s bag strap in front of the entire floor. She recovered, laughed a beat too late, and sat down at a desk that still had someone else’s coffee ring on it. Around her, keyboards clattered in a rhythm she didn’t yet know how to join. A woman two desks over glanced up, smiled quickly, and looked away again — not unkindly, just busy, the way you smile at a stranger on a train before returning to your own window. Maya opened her laptop and stared at the login screen for longer than she needed to, listening to a language of acronyms and half-finished sentences that everyone else seemed fluent in already. She told herself it would take a week. She did not quite believe it.

3. Analyse how the writer presents Maya’s experience of feeling like an outsider on her first day. [30]

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Answers (worked approach — Question 1’s marks depend on your studied poems)

1. A top-band response names the shared theme precisely and identifies one genuine similarity and one genuine difference in how the two poems treat it, rather than stating both poems are simply “about” the theme [10]. It moves between both poems throughout the response — using comparative connectives such as “similarly,” “in contrast,” “whereas” — rather than discussing one poem fully before turning to the other [10]. It supports every comparative point with precise, short quotation and analyses structure (form, stanza shape, rhyme or its absence) as well as language, since both are credited equally in anthology comparison [10].

2. A strong answer notices the poem presents leaving indirectly, through concrete, small-scale detail rather than direct statement of loss — the mother packing “the good plates” while leaving the rest behind suggests both practicality and grief compressed into a single domestic image [2] [10]. The simile comparing a kitchen to “a kind of sentence / you could simply leave unfinished” is a striking, unexpected comparison worth close analysis: it turns an ordinary domestic space into something linguistic and incomplete, suggesting the speaker’s whole former life feels grammatically unresolved [10]. The final image — holding a passport “the way you’d hold a door that might blow shut” — and the poem’s closing move, calling the queue itself “home” rather than either the house left behind or the house ahead, works as a powerful, unresolved ending: a top-band answer will comment on how this refusal to settle on either “home” mirrors the poem’s own theme of being suspended between two places, and on the effect of the poem’s long, unpunctuated final lines, which delay resolution exactly as the speaker’s own situation remains unresolved [8].

3. A strong answer notices that the writer presents Maya’s outsider status through small, physical, sensory details rather than direct statement — tripping over a bag strap, a laughed-too-late reaction, a desk with someone else’s coffee ring still on it, all before Maya has even sat down [2] [10]. The simile comparing the co-worker’s quick smile to “the way you smile at a stranger on a train” is a precisely chosen comparison: it captures a moment of contact that is polite but fundamentally distant, reinforcing that Maya is surrounded by people without yet belonging among them [10]. The final two sentences — “She told herself it would take a week. She did not quite believe it.” — use short, simple sentence structure to convey doubt more powerfully than a longer explanation would, and a top-band answer will comment on how withholding Maya’s actual feelings until this understated final line, rather than naming her anxiety directly, makes the extract’s emotional effect land more strongly on the reader [8].

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Building comparison pairings before the exam

Because Question 1 requires comparing two anthology poems on a shared theme, the most valuable preparation is not re-reading all twenty poems individually but building two or three ready-made comparison pairings in advance — one genuine similarity and one genuine difference fixed for each pairing, so you are not searching for a second poem or a point of contrast under exam pressure. Revisit the Poetry and Unseen Texts revision notes for the recommended themes to build pairings around.

Approaching unseen texts under exam conditions

Questions 2 and 3 model the same three-step method recommended for both unseen sections: read once for overall sense, then annotate a second time for structure, language and effect specifically, rather than everything that stands out. Neither question can be prepared for with memorised content, so the only useful practice is repeating this method on genuinely unfamiliar poems and prose extracts under timed conditions until it becomes automatic.

Where marks are usually lost

• Summarising anthology poems individually instead of comparing them throughout the response.
• Comparing anthology poems on theme alone, without also analysing structure and language.
• Speculating about an unseen prose extract’s wider plot instead of analysing only what the extract actually contains.
• Naming a technique (simile, short sentence, structural break) without explaining the specific effect it creates.
• Route A candidates running short on time for unseen prose because more time than planned was spent on the anthology question, which feels more familiar.