Mark Grist's Blog

04-02-2010: The AQA Chief examiner...

We took a load of year 11s to Poetry Live in Cambridge on Friday. I really enjoyed the event but the Chief Examiner shocked me. He launched into a lecture on how to analyse poetry and chastised 'over 60,000 students' who, when analysing a poem had said that when turned on its side it looked like a cityscape.

Whilst I agree that the idea of the poem looking like a cityscape wouldn't have answered the question being asked, I was really concerned by the Examiner's rant on this form of analysis. He spoke in a really condescending manner and glowered at the students as he deadpanned 'the poem, like any poem turned on its side, looks like nothing more than a poem. On its side.'

Now, my concern is that I think that poems often do look like things when placed on their side. Also, I think that students (well anyone in fact) should be encouraged to recognise and analyse poetry however they want. I got into English at school because I like the idea that the world isn't full of right and wrong answers.  To hear this guy rant that certain ways of looking at poetry are completely off limits really upset me. Where does this restriction of analysis stop? Not good.

Anyway, here is a poem that I wrote for the guy and the kind of teaching he seems to want. Hope you like it.

 

By Numbers

You’ll make the grade, alright; A
Vaccination. Your mother bought you
The revision guide. Well done. Now just hide
Your mind as you slide towards the exam in June.
It’s easy for you. Laugh from the back of the room.
Feeding on metaphors that have lain brown around the poem for years
Because the world can be a science and don’t you think you’re worth it? Let’s skate
The surface. Get sick with boredom together. Borderline fear. Enjambment. Personify. Onomatopoeia.
Your prediction says so, so never shake that tree. Eat the sour stuff. Don't ever think to question me.

Soon you'll stagger off to the right University.

Divide yourself further from the quiet giants you laughed at
In the corridor. The herbivores you leapt over in class.
The Benchmarks of failure. Darwin’s lost hopes.
Who got their poetry all wrong.
Who wouldn't learn how to pass.