Fifteen poems, one anthology

The Power and Conflict anthology has 15 poems exploring how power is gained, used and lost, and how conflict is experienced and remembered.

• Ozymandias — Percy Bysshe Shelley — a ruined statue of an arrogant pharaoh; power fades, nature and time outlast tyrants.
• London — William Blake — suffering in an oppressed city; "mind-forg'd manacles".
• The Prelude (extract) — William Wordsworth — a boy overawed by the power of nature after stealing a boat.
• My Last Duchess — Robert Browning — a jealous, controlling Duke reveals (in a dramatic monologue) that he had his wife killed.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade — Alfred, Lord Tennyson — a doomed but heroic cavalry charge.
• Exposure — Wilfred Owen — WW1 soldiers dying of the cold, not the enemy.
• Storm on the Island — Seamus Heaney — a community braced against a violent storm; the power of nature.
• Bayonet Charge — Ted Hughes — a soldier's terror in the middle of an attack.
• Remains — Simon Armitage — a soldier haunted by killing a looter.
• War Photographer — Carol Ann Duffy — a photographer developing images of war back home.
• Tissue — Imtiaz Dharker — the fragile power of paper (money, maps, holy books) over lives.
• The Emigrée — Carol Rumens — memory of a lost, possibly oppressed homeland, kept bright.
• Checking Out Me History — John Agard — reclaiming Black and Caribbean identity erased by British colonial education.
• Kamikaze — Beatrice Garland — a Japanese pilot who turns back from a suicide mission and is shunned.
• Poppies — Jane Weir — a mother's grief as her son goes to war.

Learn poet + poem together: mixing up attributions costs easy marks — drill them as fixed pairs.

Who wrote it?

Subject and meaning

• Ozymandias: a traveller describes a shattered statue of a boastful pharaoh in the desert — "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" now mocks him, since only a "colossal Wreck" remains. Human power is temporary.
• London: Blake walks the city and hears "mind-forg'd manacles" — people are trapped by invisible, self-perpetuating oppression as much as by real chains.
• Exposure: Owen's soldiers wait in freezing trenches; "our brains ache", and "But nothing happens" — the real enemy is the weather and the futility of war, not combat.
• Checking Out Me History: Agard rejects the history "Dem tell me" in school and reclaims figures from Black and Caribbean history, "carving out me identity".

Subject vs theme: the subject is what happens in the poem; the theme is the bigger idea it explores (e.g. power fading, identity, the reality of war).

Understanding the subject

Poem ↔ poet & detail

Tap a poem on the left, then tap the detail that fits it.

Themes that link poems together

• Power of humans over others — Ozymandias, My Last Duchess, London, Tissue, Checking Out Me History.
• Power of nature — The Prelude, Storm on the Island, Ozymandias (nature outlasts the statue).
• The effects and reality of conflict — Exposure, Bayonet Charge, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Remains, War Photographer, Kamikaze.
• Memory, loss and aftermath — Poppies, Remains, War Photographer, The Emigrée, Kamikaze.

Why this matters: Section B asks you to compare a named poem with another you choose — knowing which poems share a theme lets you pick a strong second poem fast.

Spotting a shared theme

Quotations worth learning

• "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" — Ozymandias: the pharaoh's boast, now bitterly ironic beside his "colossal Wreck".
• "mind-forg'd manacles" — London: oppression that people impose on themselves and each other.
• "I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together." — My Last Duchess: the Duke's chilling admission of murder.
• "Into the valley of Death" — The Charge of the Light Brigade: the soldiers ride toward near-certain death.
• "But nothing happens." — Exposure: the numbing futility of waiting in the cold.
• "his bloody life in my bloody hands" — Remains: the soldier's guilt and trauma repeat and won't let go.

Learn short: a few embeddable words (e.g. "mind-forg'd manacles", "colossal Wreck") are worth more than long quotations you can't analyse — and poems are still in copyright, so keep quotations brief.

Method → effect, every time

Naming a device earns almost nothing. Marks come from linking the method to the effect the poet creates:

Methods to spot across the anthology: metaphor, irony, dramatic monologue, repetition/anaphora, caesura, enjambment, sibilance, extended metaphor, structure (e.g. volta, cyclical form).

Golden rule: never stop at "this is a metaphor." Finish the sentence: "…which suggests / emphasises / makes the reader feel …".

Method & effect

Name the method

Tap the method each quotation mainly uses.

How the exam question works

Paper 2 Section B gives you one named poem, printed on the paper, and asks you to compare it with one other poem from the anthology that you choose.

• Compare throughout — don't write about poem A, then poem B; move between them using comparative connectives: whereas, similarly, however, by contrast, both, unlike.
• Compare on the same dimensions — theme, tone, language choices, and form/structure — so each point is a genuine comparison, not two separate mini-essays.
• Choose wisely — pick your second poem based on a strong shared or contrasting theme (e.g. if given Ozymandias, London or My Last Duchess make strong pairings on power).

Weave, don't bolt on: a comparative point names the method in both poems and explains how the effect is similar or different — e.g. "Whereas Ozymandias mocks a single tyrant's fading power, London shows power oppressing ordinary people through 'mind-forg'd manacles'."

Building a comparative point

Which theme?

Tap a poem, then tap the theme bin it best belongs in.

Write a comparative point

How poems are built

Form and structure carry meaning just as much as word choice:

• My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue — a single speaker (the Duke) unwittingly reveals his own jealousy and guilt to a silent listener.
• Ozymandias is a sonnet with a broken rhyme scheme, mirroring the broken statue and undermined power.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade uses dactylic rhythm that mimics galloping horses.
• The Emigrée uses a repetitive, almost cyclical structure, showing the speaker's memory of home stays fixed and unchanging despite time and exile.

Don't ignore form: naming the form (e.g. dramatic monologue, sonnet) and linking it to meaning is a quick, high-value AO2 point.

Form in My Last Duchess

Knowledge slips to avoid

• Wrong attribution: double-check poet ↔ poem pairs — e.g. Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade, not Owen; Hughes wrote Bayonet Charge, not Armitage.
• One-sided essays: don't analyse poem A fully, then poem B fully — compare point by point using connectives.
• Long quotations: lean on short, memorised fragments (a few words) rather than trying to reproduce whole stanzas.
• Feature-spotting: naming a device without the effect earns little.

Fix: get poet ↔ poem pairs exactly right, then always push a quotation into method → effect, comparing across both poems.

What to take into the exam

You've drilled the knowledge and quotations for the Power and Conflict anthology. Press Finish to see your score.