The AQA Anthology
The AQA Anthology must be used for Section B of the GCSE Literature exam, which is based on poetry both pre and post-1914. [Section A of the exam is composed of essay questions on prose texts; short stories contained in the Anthology, or a choice from a range of named texts including Heroes, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird etc.]
These units concentrate on Section B of the Literature exam. There are two pairs of poets, only one of which do you need to concentrate on; Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke or Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy. These units look at the Duffy-Armitage pairing, along with core poems from the Pre-1914 poetry bank.
Students must answer one question from a choice of questions, in which one poem at least is named by the examiner; this could be an Armitage poem, a Duffy poem or a pre-1914 poem. They must then choose poems to compare it with, four in total, of which two have to be pre-1914, one a Duffy poem and one an Armitage poem. We have therefore arranged these units so that four complementary poems have chosen which have common ideas and themes and can be compared and contrasted. The themes we have chosen are love, death, revenge and child/parent relationship.
The poems are taken from the following anthology:
Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage and Pre-1914 Poetry:
GCSE Student Text Guide (Student Text Guides)
[Paperback]
by Lorna Smith [Author]
Paperback: 105 pages
Publisher: Philip Allan (29 Nov 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 184489228X
ISBN-13: 978-1844892280
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About the poets ...
Carol Ann Duffy
Poet, playwright and freelance writer Carol Ann Duffy was born on 23 December 1955 in Glasgow and read philosophy at Liverpool University. She is a former editor of the poetry magazine Ambit and is a regular reviewer and broadcaster. She moved from London to Manchester in 1996 and began to lecture in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; and Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize. The Hat (2007) is her latest poetry collection for children. Previous collections include Meeting Midnight (1999) and The Good Child's Guide to Rock N Roll (2003).
Source: http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth104
Simon Armitage
Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire. He has published nine volumes of poetry including Killing Time, 1999 (Faber & Faber) and Selected Poems, 2001 (Faber & Faber). His most recent collections are The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs, both published by Faber & Faber in 2002.
Simon has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award.
Source: http://www.simonarmitage.com/
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