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Songs of Ourselves Volume 1

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How the Exam Actually Works

  • You study one cluster of 15 poems from this anthology (listed below).
  • In Paper 1, Section A you get a choice of two questions on your cluster — you only answer one.
  • The full poem is printed on the exam paper, so you don't need to memorise it word-for-word — but you DO need to know it well enough to discuss it confidently and quote accurately.
  • Worth 25 marks, aim to spend about 45 minutes on it (don't let it eat into your prose question time).
  • Examiners want a "sustained personal and evaluative engagement" — that's the exact phrase they use. Translation: don't just describe the poem, argue something about it.
Biggest trap Quoting a line and explaining what it means is not analysis. Real analysis asks: why did the poet choose this word, this structure, this ending — and what effect does that have on me as a reader? Always link back to the question.

The 15 Poems in This Cluster

1. Song: Love Armed 2. A Different History 3. The Chimney-Sweeper 4. Where I Come From 5. Report to Wordsworth 6. Lament 7. The Cockroach 8. Follower 9. Storyteller 10. Before the Sun 11. A Married State 12. From 'An Essay on Man' 13. Carpet-weavers, Morocco 14. Sonnet 18 15. Hunting Snake

The Three Big Themes That Tie Everything Together

Almost every question the examiner writes is secretly about one of these three things. If you can place a poem within a theme and explain how it's different from the others in that theme, you're already writing a strong answer.

Theme 1 — Love & Relationships
Family love (Follower), unrequited/cruel love (Song: Love Armed), cynical views of marriage (A Married State), and idealised, timeless love (Sonnet 18). Notice how these four poems basically argue with each other about what love even is.
Theme 2 — Humans & Nature
Awe and fear of nature's power (Hunting Snake), environmental destruction from war (Lament, Report to Wordsworth), and harmony with nature (Before the Sun). These poems often borrow the voice of Romantic poets like Wordsworth to make a modern environmental point.
Theme 3 — Individual & Cultural Identity
Colonialism and language (A Different History), exploitation of children (The Chimney-Sweeper, Carpet-weavers, Morocco), place shaping the self (Where I Come From), and the human struggle for meaning (The Cockroach, An Essay on Man, Storyteller).

1. Song: Love Armed

Aphra Behn

Restoration poet & dramatist — from the 1676 play Abdelazer
Unrequited loveClassical allusion

What's actually happening: The speaker personifies "Love" as a cruel, god-like tyrant who sits "in triumph" over the "bleeding hearts" he's conquered. It's an extended metaphor turning Cupid — usually a cute cherub — into a sadistic warrior. The twist at the end: the speaker and their loved one together created this monster ("Thus thou and I the God have armed"), but only the speaker's heart gets hurt while the loved one walks away "victor... and free."

"Love in fantastic triumph sat, / Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed"
Key techniques
• Extended metaphor — Love as a tyrant/conqueror, subverting the traditional cute-Cupid image.
• Iambic tetrameter — a slow, steady, almost melodramatic rhythm that makes the pain feel drawn-out.
• Anaphora — "From me... From thee" contrast shows the total imbalance of power between lover and beloved.
Why it matters Behn is writing during the Restoration, a period that started mocking sentimental "perfect love" poetry. This poem is satire — it deliberately makes romantic love look cynical and violent, which was bold for a female poet at the time.
Practice Q: How does Behn present the destructive power of love in this poem?

2. A Different History

Sujata Bhatt

Born in Gujarat, India, 1956
ColonialismCultural identityFree verse

What's actually happening: Bhatt opens with the witty idea that "Great Pan is not dead; he simply emigrated / to India" — the Western nature-god relocated because Indian culture still respects nature (gods disguised as snakes and monkeys, sacred trees). The poem then shifts hard: it becomes a list of sacred rules about respecting books (a "sin" to be rude to one), before asking the devastating rhetorical question — is English, "the oppressor's tongue," something that can ever be innocent, even though generations of Indians now love it?

"Which language / has not been the oppressor's tongue?"
Key techniques
• Free verse, two irregular stanzas — mirrors the shift from calm cultural pride to bitter interrogation.
• Anaphora — "it is a sin" repeated like scripture, elevating everyday respect to religious duty.
• Final 7-line sentence — builds tension across the whole poem to land on the ironic, unresolved idea that "unborn grandchildren" will still love the coloniser's language.
Don't miss this The poem's message is genuinely ambiguous — Bhatt does NOT conclude that English is evil. She concludes that language itself isn't responsible for oppression; people are. That nuance is exactly the kind of point that gets top marks.
Practice Q: How does Bhatt explore the theme of cultural identity in 'A Different History'?

3. The Chimney-Sweeper

William Blake

From Songs of Experience, 1794 (NOT the Innocence version — check which one you studied!)
Innocence vs experienceReligious hypocrisy

What's actually happening: A child chimney-sweep, covered in soot so heavily he's barely recognisable as human ("a little black thing among the snow"), explains in dialogue how his parents abandoned him to labour while they went to church. The chilling twist: because the child still smiles and sings despite his suffering, the adults around him believe they've "done him no injury." The poem ends by blaming "God and his priest and king" for building "a heaven of our misery."

"They clothed me in the clothes of death"
Key techniques
• Nursery-rhyme rhythm (iambic tetrameter, rhyming couplets) — deliberately childlike, which makes the horrifying content hit harder by contrast.
• Dialogue — a classic Romantic technique that makes the suffering feel real and immediate rather than abstract.
• Final metaphor — "a heaven of our misery" is savage irony: religion, meant to offer comfort, is what enables the exploitation.
Context that actually helps In 18th-century England, boys as young as six replaced chimney-sweeps who died from soot exposure. Blake — a radical Christian who believed Jesus was a social revolutionary — is attacking the institution of the church, not faith itself.
Practice Q: How does Blake convey the loss of innocence in this poem?

4. Where I Come From

Elizabeth Brewster

Born 1922, rural Canadian logging town
Place & identityUrban vs rural

What's actually happening: The poem opens with a bold claim — "People are made of places" — then contrasts the cold, controlled, commercial smells of a city (smog, chromium offices, museum guidebooks) with the warm, chaotic, sensory memories of the speaker's own rural childhood home (blueberry patches, clucking hens, battered schoolhouses). It ends with memory as a physical sensation: "A door in the mind blows open" and a "frosty wind" rushes back in.

"Spring and winter / are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice."
Key techniques
• Free verse, no rhyme scheme — mirrors the rambling, unplanned nature of memory itself.
• Sensory imagery — smell is used repeatedly ("smell of smog," "museum smell") to show how place imprints itself physically on identity.
• Extended metaphor — memory as a "door in the mind" that can suddenly "blow open."
Exam angle This poem pairs really well in comparison questions with Report to Wordsworth or Lament (both also explore humans and their environment) — but Brewster's tone is nostalgic and personal, not political or angry like those two.
Practice Q: How does Brewster present the relationship between place and identity?

5. Report to Wordsworth

Boey Kim Cheng

Born Singapore 1965, moved to Australia
Environmental crisisSonnet form

What's actually happening: The speaker directly addresses the Romantic poet William Wordsworth (dead 150+ years) and reports back that his warnings about industrialisation have come true — nature has been "laid waste." Greek/Roman sea gods (Proteus, Triton, Neptune) are shown polluted, choking, and "beached." The poem ends apocalyptically with "God... labouring to utter his last cry."

"Poetry and piety have begun to fail, / as Nature's mighty heart is lying still."
Key techniques
• Sonnet form (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) — traditionally used for love poems, so using it here suggests a kind of tragic love letter to a dying planet.
• Classical allusion — mythological sea gods represent the timelessness of nature, made shocking by being shown polluted and dying.
• Apostrophe — directly addressing Wordsworth ("You should be here") creates urgency and echoes Wordsworth's own poem 'London, 1802' ("Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour").
Context worth knowing This poem deliberately echoes THREE real Wordsworth poems: 'London, 1802', 'Composed upon Westminster Bridge', and 'The World Is Too Much With Us'. Cheng is having a direct conversation across 200 years of poetry.
Practice Q: How does Cheng present the destruction of the natural world?

6. Lament

Gillian Clarke

Welsh poet, National Poet of Wales 2008–2016
War & environmentElegy

What's actually happening: Structured as an elegy (a tribute to something that has died), each of the 7 tercets ("For the...") mourns a different victim of the 1990–91 Gulf War — turtles, cormorants, a man named "Ahmed," farmer's sons who joined the army for camaraderie, sea creatures silenced by missiles, and finally the earth itself, ending in "the ashes of language" — the destruction of communication and civilisation itself.

"For the whale struck dumb by the missile's thunder."
Key techniques
• Anaphora — every stanza begins "For the..." like a funeral prayer or list of the dead.
• Extended metaphor of a funeral — "funeral silk" (cormorant feathers), "mortal stain" (oil in the ocean).
• Polysyndeton — piling up connectives ("and... and...") as the list grows, mirroring the speaker's rising anger.
Don't confuse this with... Report to Wordsworth — both are about environmental damage, but Lament is specifically about the human cost of ONE real war (the Gulf War), while Wordsworth's poem is a broader, more mythic complaint about industrialisation over centuries.
Practice Q: How does Clarke convey the far-reaching effects of war in 'Lament'?

7. The Cockroach

Kevin Halligan

Canadian poet, born 1964
Human conditionAllegory

What's actually happening: A speaker watches a cockroach cross a floor. At first it's calm and purposeful, but it soon becomes restless — jogging in "crooked rings," flipping over, scratching — before climbing a shelf and freezing, "uncertain where to go." The speaker wonders if this is punishment for a past "vicious crime," before delivering the gut-punch final line: "Except I thought I recognised myself."

"Was this due payment for some vicious crime / A former life had led to? I don't know,"
Key techniques
• Sonnet form with a disrupted volta — traditional sonnets turn after line 8; Halligan delays his turn to line 12, mirroring the confusion he's describing.
• Allegory — the cockroach's journey (satisfied → restless → lost) represents the human search for purpose.
• Verbs charting decline — "pace," "trace" become "jog," "circling," "flipping," ending in "climbed" and "stopped."
Great comparison poem Compare with Follower or Storyteller for "individual identity" essay questions — all three use an everyday, unglamorous subject (a cockroach, a father, a domestic woman) to explore something profound about being human.
Practice Q: How does Halligan present the search for meaning in 'The Cockroach'?

8. Follower

Seamus Heaney

Irish poet, Nobel Prize in Literature 1995
Family loveChanging power dynamics

What's actually happening: A son remembers his father as a powerful, expert farmer — "an expert," shoulders "globed like a full sail." As a small child, the speaker stumbled behind him, desperate to grow up and be just like him: "All I ever did was follow." The final, devastating twist: in the present day, the roles have reversed. The now-elderly father is the one "stumbling / Behind me, and will not go away" — and the speaker, once a "nuisance," now feels impatient with his father's dependence.

"It is my father who keeps stumbling / Behind me, and will not go away."
Key techniques
• Ballad form, six regular quatrains — steady and disciplined, mirroring the father's exacting, reliable character.
• Simile — father's shoulders "globed like a full sail strung" shows the child's awe of his size and strength.
• Tense shift — the poem is in past tense until the final stanza, where "was" flips to "is," delivering the twist about role reversal in real time.
Key insight This is one of the most naturally emotional poems in the anthology — Heaney doesn't editorialise, he just shows the memory and lets the irony of the ending land on its own. Great poem for discussing subtle tone shifts.
Practice Q: How does Heaney present the relationship between father and son?

9. Storyteller

Liz Lochhead

Scottish poet, born 1947
Oral traditionCommunity

What's actually happening: A woman in a peasant community tells stories every evening while other women do domestic chores (sewing, grating corn). Nobody minds that she doesn't do housework herself — her storytelling is valued as real "work," compared to "spinning" thread. The stories captivate the community night after night, then "dissolve" into the children's dreams at dawn like bats "hung... upside down," ready to "fly again" the next night.

"To tell the stories was her work. / It was like spinning,"
Key techniques
• Free verse, increasingly long stanzas — mirrors the growing anticipation of the community as the evening's storytelling builds.
• Extended metaphor — storytelling as "spinning" thread, an old sailor's expression for weaving a tale.
• Bat metaphor (ending) — stories "hung... upside down" by day, flying again "in the storytellers night," suggesting a magical, cyclical, living tradition.
Context This poem introduces Lochhead's 1981 collection The Grimm Sisters, which reworks old fairy tales with a feminist lens. She's celebrating an overlooked, undervalued form of female labour and power.
Practice Q: How does Lochhead present the power of storytelling in the poem?

10. Before the Sun

Charles Mungoshi

Zimbabwean poet, born 1947
Harmony with natureGrowing up

What's actually happening: A fourteen-year-old boy spends the night alone chopping wood in a rural setting, proud to handle "big logs." As dawn breaks, he playfully pretends to share his roasted maize with the rising sun, treating it like an imaginary friend or a "grown-up" — "one for the sun, / one for me" — until the corn cobs become "two little skeletons in the sun," a final image that's both innocent and quietly unsettling.

"I tell the sun to come share / with me the roasted maize / and the sun just winks / like a grown-up."
Key techniques
• Irregular, free-flowing form with occasional haiku-like short stanzas ("The wood hisses, / The sparks fly.") — captures the boy's spontaneous, unstructured thoughts.
• Personification — the sun is treated as a guest, a "latecomer to a feast," building an intimate, spiritual connection between boy and nature.
• Sensory imagery — smell, sound, and touch bring the rural night alive: the wood's "sweet nose-cleansing odour," the fire that "hisses."
Watch for this in the exam The final image of "skeletons" is a genuinely debatable moment — is it just a harmless description of eaten corn cobs, or subtle foreshadowing of struggle ahead? Examiners reward you for noticing ambiguity like this.
Practice Q: How does Mungoshi present the relationship between the boy and nature?

11. A Married State

Katherine Philips

17th-century British poet, early feminist voice
Marriage critiqueIrony

What's actually happening: The speaker delivers direct, confident advice to an unmarried woman ("Madam"): don't get married. Marriage brings "little ease," wives hide their misery behind fake smiles, and childbirth brings pain. Staying single, by contrast, is "crowned with much content." The poem ends with a witty, defiant rebuttal of an old proverb that blamed unmarried women for tempting good men — "There's no such thing as leading apes in hell."

"A married state affords but little ease; / The best of husbands are so hard to please:"
Key techniques
• Iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets throughout — a controlled, logical, almost legal-argument structure that makes the speaker sound rational rather than emotional.
• Anaphora — "No blustering husbands... / No pangs of childbirth... / No children's cries..." builds a persuasive list of freedoms.
• Direct address — "Madam" makes this feel like genuine advice between women, not abstract poetry.
Context Written in the 1640s–50s, when marriage for most women meant loss of financial and legal independence, and childbirth was genuinely life-threatening. Philips is quietly radical for challenging the idea that marriage was every woman's ideal destiny.
Practice Q: How does Philips present her attitude towards marriage?

12. From 'An Essay on Man'

Alexander Pope

Neo-classical British poet, Augustan Age, 1734
Human contradictionPhilosophy

What's actually happening: This extract argues that humans should understand themselves before trying to understand God ("Know then thyself, presume not God to scan"). Pope then lists a series of contradictions that define humanity: too wise to be a total sceptic, too weak to be truly stoic, caught between god and beast, mind and body, rising and falling — ending with humans as "the glory, jest, and riddle of the world."

"Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;"
Key techniques
• Heroic couplets, iambic pentameter — creates a controlled, rational voice suited to philosophical debate.
• Paradox — used throughout ("darkly wise, and rudely great") to show that human nature is defined by contradiction, not consistency.
• Anaphora — "With too much..." repeated to hammer home the idea of humans being caught in the middle of every extreme.
Context that unlocks this poem Pope lived under the "Divine Right of Kings" — the belief that monarchs are chosen directly by God. This poem argues that humans (even kings) delude themselves into thinking they're "great lord of all things" when really they're contradictory and flawed.
Practice Q: How does Pope present the human condition in this extract?

13. Carpet-weavers, Morocco

Carol Rumens

British poet, born 1947
Child labourCultural tradition

What's actually happening: An outside observer watches children weaving a Moroccan carpet, entranced by their skill and focus — "at the loom of another world." The carpet's design is compared to a "garden of Islam," linking the children's daily labour to religious and cultural significance — the finished carpet will eventually be taken to a mosque, "heaped with prayer." The poem closes by presenting the carpet as a timeless symbol connecting past and future: "the frame of all-that-was."

"The children are hard at work in the school of days."
Key techniques
• Four tercets, free verse — moves steadily through present labour, future purpose, and timeless meaning.
• Metaphor — "garden of Islam," "loom of another world" gives the carpet spiritual, almost magical significance.
• Cultural juxtaposition — Western reference ("television") against Moroccan/Islamic reference ("mosque," "Islam") highlights the observer's outsider perspective.
Balance point for your essay This poem is ambiguous about child labour — it doesn't condemn it outright like The Chimney-Sweeper does. Instead it presents the work as skilled, meaningful, and connected to something bigger, while still using the phrase "school of days" to subtly critique the fact these children aren't in an actual school.
Practice Q: How does Rumens present the significance of the carpet-weaving?

14. Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

16th century — one of the most famous sonnets ever written
Eternal lovePower of poetry

What's actually happening: The speaker asks whether he should compare his loved one to a "summer's day" — then spends the poem explaining why summer is actually a poor comparison (too short, too windy, the sun's too hot or too dim). His loved one's "eternal summer shall not fade" because — in a clever final twist — the poem itself will immortalise them forever: "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
Key techniques
• 14-line sonnet, iambic pentameter, final rhyming couplet — classic Shakespearean form, with the volta (turn) at line 9 shifting from "summer's flaws" to "you are eternal."
• Natural imagery — used to show that real beauty (nature, appearance) fades, but the poem's words won't.
• Metafiction — the poem is self-aware; it argues that the very act of writing this sonnet is what makes the love immortal.
The clever bit examiners love Shakespeare isn't really praising his loved one's looks — he's praising his OWN poem's power to outlast time. That's a bold, almost arrogant claim, and it's what makes this sonnet different from typical soppy romantic poetry.
Practice Q: How does Shakespeare present the power of love and poetry in Sonnet 18?

15. Hunting Snake

Judith Wright

Australian poet, conservationist, born 1915
Awe & fear of natureWilderness

What's actually happening: Two walkers on an autumn day suddenly freeze mid-step as a "great black snake" crosses their path. They watch, breathless and transfixed, as it hunts through the grass — beautiful ("diamond scale") yet dangerous ("fierce intent"). After it disappears, they share a look, take a "deeper breath," and simply continue walking — a brief but profound brush with the wild.

"Cold, dark and splendid he was gone / into the grass that hid his prey."
Key techniques
• Four regular quatrains, alternating rhyme — the ordered, steady form contrasts with the sudden interruption the snake causes.
• Juxtaposition — "cold, dark and splendid" combines menace and beauty in a single description, capturing the walkers' mixed emotions.
• Enjambment vs caesura — flowing lines mimic the snake's fluid movement, while abrupt pauses ("we scarcely thought; still as we stood") capture the walkers' frozen tension.
Context Wright was a founder of The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland — her poetry consistently treats Australian wildlife with both scientific respect and genuine emotional awe, never simplifying nature into "good" or "bad."
Practice Q: How does Wright present the encounter between humans and nature?

What to Memorise

Poetic form vocabulary

Sonnet — 14 lines, often love/argument (Report to Wordsworth, Cockroach, Sonnet 18).
Free verse — no fixed rhyme/rhythm (A Different History, Where I Come From, Storyteller).
Heroic couplets — rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter (Essay on Man, A Married State).
Volta — the "turn" in a sonnet's argument.

Techniques to spot fast

Anaphora (repetition at line starts) · Extended metaphor · Personification · Caesura (mid-line pause) · Enjambment (line runs on) · Juxtaposition · Allusion (classical/mythological reference) · Apostrophe (direct address to someone absent/dead).

The "Three W's" for any essay

What is the poet doing (technique)? Why are they doing it (intention)? What effect does it have on the reader/the question? Every paragraph needs all three.

Poems by theme, at a glance

Love: Love Armed, A Married State, Sonnet 18, Follower
Nature: Hunting Snake, Lament, Report to Wordsworth, Before the Sun
Identity: A Different History, Chimney-Sweeper, Carpet-weavers, Where I Come From, Cockroach, Essay on Man, Storyteller

Concepts Checklist

Exam Skills

Poem-by-Poem Knowledge

Analytical Techniques I Can Identify & Explain

Exam Tips — Straight from the Examiner Reports

Time management Both Section A and Section B are worth equal marks — don't spend 70 minutes on the poem and rush the prose question. 45 minutes max.
Start with the question Evaluative answers begin by engaging with the exact key words of the question ("moving," "disturbing," "memorable") — not with a poem summary or the poet's biography.
Skip the biography dump Long introductions about the poet's life history are actively penalised — "delays your answer." Context only earns marks when it's tied directly to the poem's themes or the writer's purpose.
Quote, then interrogate Never just translate a quote into modern English and stop there. Ask: what specific word choice, sound, or structural decision is the poet making here, and why does it matter to the question?
Use the poet's name often Writing "Behn uses..." rather than "the poem uses..." keeps you thinking of the text as a deliberate, conscious construction — which is exactly the mindset examiners want to see.
Structure = argument, not menu Don't just list techniques one after another. Start each paragraph with a clear point/interpretation, THEN support it with form/structure/language evidence, THEN explain the poet's purpose.
Songs of Ourselves: Volume 1 — CIE Assessment International Education Anthology of Poetry in English.
Revision guide compiled for personal study use.
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Paper 1 Overview
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