The Forward Prizes for Poetry have established themselves as central to the literary landscape of modern Britain. Andrew Marr

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As mentioned, the range of punctuation in ‘An Easy Passage’ is interesting because there are many hyphens, commas and semi colons used. This is to be expected for the longer sentences, as many of these examples could be seen as replacing full stops and full caesura so as to not break the continuous feel of the poem. Notably, there is the combination of both a full stop and a hyphen mid way through the poem at “on her thighs. – What can” which helps to add an extended and distinctive pause, further supporting the idea that the middle of the poem helps to act as a transition point in the narrative through the use of structure. Poetic Techniques A-Level Edexcel English Language and Literature past papers (8EL0 and 9EL0) can be found on the English Language section

Two free online poetry resources

The ambition of Coste Lewis’s project is revealed in the precision of its limitations, as described in the first sentence of the prologue:

The semantic field of the body is notable throughout the poem, with examples typically drawn from two sources. The first is the physical descriptions of the girl and her friend, with a focus on describing different parts of her and what she is wearing. The second main source is through descriptions of their surrounding environment, such as the “warm flank of the house” and “eye of the street”. The humanising descriptions of these surroundings are interesting because they encourage the idea of onlookers to the scene, further increasing the sense of importance of these actions. Use these questions to practice integrating comparison into essays, and strengthen your understanding of the prescribed poems, or as AS Level practice questions. structure - the title? - anaphora? - enjambement? - caesura? Medial caesura? - regular/irregular line length? - what does this emphasise or reflect? MAIN BODY: disagree - the poets come to a point of disagreement in their portrayals of how - in poem A, - on the other hand, poet B adopts a more - yet the reader becomes increasingly aware

- light/natural/pastoral imagery? images of joy? of danger?

transfers between the narrator, the robot, and to a certain extent the narrator’s wife. The narrator The list of poems set for study appears below. Follow the links for discussion of individual poems.