The 2008 edition of the AQA Anthology

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (the AQA) has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG).

2000 Anthology

The 2000 AQA anthology covered four sections: poets in the English Literary Heritage, poems from other cultures and traditions, 20th-century prose, and 20th- or pre-20th-century poetry.^[1]

2004 Anthology

The 2004 AQA Anthology was a collection of poems and short texts. The anthology was split into several sections covering poems from other cultures, the poetry of Seamus Heaney,^[4] Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, and a bank of pre-1914 poems. There was also a section of prose pieces, which could have been studied in schools which had chosen not to study a separate set text.

English: Poems from Other Cultures

Seamus Heaney

GCSE English students studied all of the poems in either cluster and answered a question on them in Section A of Paper 2. In 2005, Andrew Cunningham, an English teacher at Charterhouse School complained in the Telegraph that the inclusion of the poems represented an "obsession with multi-culturalism".^[5]

Cluster 1

• Edward Kamau Brathwaite: "Limbo"
• Tatamkhulu Afrika: "Nothing's Changed"
• Grace Nichols: "Island Man"
• Imtiaz Dharker: "Blessing"
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti: "Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People In A Mercedes"
• Nissim Ezekiel: "Night of the Scorpion"
• Chinua Achebe: "Vultures"
• Denise Levertov: "What Were They Like?"

Cluster 2

• Sujata Bhatt: "Search for My Tongue"
• Tom Leonard: "Unrelated Incidents"
• John Agard: "Half Caste"
• Derek Walcott: "Love After Love"
• Imtiaz Dharker: "This Room"
• Niyi Osundare: "Not My Business"
• Moniza Alvi: "Presents from my 'Aunts' in Pakistan"
• Grace Nichols: "Hurricane Hits England"

English Literature: Poetry

Seamus Heaney

• "Storm on the Island"
• "Perch"
• "Blackberry-Picking"
• "Death of a Naturalist"
• "Digging"
• "Mid-Term Break"
• "Follower"
• "At a Potato Digging"

Gillian Clarke

• "Catrin"
• "Baby-sitting"
• "Mali"
• "A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998"
• "The Field Mouse"
• "October"
• "On The Train"
• "Cold Knap Lake"

Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy

• "Havisham"
• "Elvis's Twin Sister"
• "Anne Hathaway"
• "Salome"
• "We Remember Your Childhood Well"
• "Before You Were Mine"
• "Education for Leisure" - removed from Anthology
• "Stealing"

Simon Armitage

• from Book of Matches, “Mother, any distance greater than a single span”
• from Book of Matches, “My father thought it...”
• "Homecoming"
• "November"
• "Kid"
• from Book of Matches, “Those bastards in their mansions”
• from Book of Matches, “I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself”
• "Hitcher"
• "The Manhunt"

Pre-1914 Poetry Bank

• Ben Jonson: "On My First Sonne"
• William Butler Yeats: "The Song of the Old Mother"
• William Wordsworth: "The Affliction of Margaret"
• William Blake: "The Little Boy Lost" and "The Little Boy Found"
• Charles Tichborne: "Tichborne's Elegy"
• Thomas Hardy: "The Man He Killed"
• Walt Whitman: "Patrolling Barnegat"
• William Shakespeare: Sonnet 130 - "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
• Robert Browning: "My Last Duchess"
• Robert Browning: "The Laboratory"
• Alfred Tennyson: "Ulysses"
• Oliver Goldsmith: "The Village Schoolmaster"
• Alfred Tennyson: "The Eagle"
• John Clare: Sonnet - “I love to see the summer...”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Ozymandias"

2008 Reissued Anthology

In 2008 the Anthology was reissued without "Education for Leisure" following complaints about its reference to knives and concerns about rising levels of knife crime in schools.^[6] In the new Anthology the poem was replaced with a "This page is left intentionally blank" notice. After removing "Education for Leisure" from the anthology the exam board was accused of censorship.^[7]

2010 Anthology

The fifth anthology was produced for first teaching in 2010.^[8]

The anthology includes poems under the heading "Moon on the Tides" and prose under the heading "Sunlight on the Grass".^[9] Some of the poems are by authors of poems in the first anthology such as Agard and Armitage.

The poetry anthology was divided into four clusters, titled "Character and voice",^[10] "Place",^[11] "Conflict",^[12] and "Relationships".^[13]

2015 Anthology

The newest edition of the anthology was produced for first teaching in 2015,^[14][15] in line with the reformed GCSE English Literature qualification. The anthology includes poems under the title "Poems Past and Present", and prose under the title "Telling Tales".

The poetry anthology is divided into two clusters - "Love and Relationships" and "Power and Conflict".

See also

• Poetry Live, events where poets perform their poetry for school children

References

External links

• AQA Anthology for GCSE