SONGS OF OURSELVES: THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY IN ENGLISH IGCSE SYLLABUS 0486 O LEVEL SYLLABUS 2010 NOTES FOR TEACHERS ON THE SET POEMS FOR EXAMINATION IN JUNE AND NOVEMBER (Years 2010, 2011, 2012)

[NOTE: there is a separate document about the different selection of poems set for examination in years 2007, 2008 and 2009.] CONTENTS Introduction: How to use these Notes 1. Thomas Hardy, ‘The Voice’ 2. Allen Curnow, ‘Time’ 3. Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’ 4. Adrienne Rich, ‘Amends’ 5. Ted Hughes, ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’ 6. Gillian Clarke, ‘Lament’ 7. John Keats, ‘On the Grasshopper and the Cricket’ 8. Vachel Lindsay, ‘The Flower-Fed Buffaloes’ 9. Boey Kim Cheng, ‘Report to Wordsworth’ 10. John Clare, ‘First Love’ 11. Dennis Scott, ‘Marrysong’ 12. Lord Byron, ‘So, We’ll Go No More A-Roving’ 13. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43 14. Edna St Vincent Millay, Sonnet 29

© University of Cambridge International Examinations 2008

Introduction: How to use these Notes

There are three key principles on which the format of these support materials is based: 1. The first is the fundamental assumption that no such materials can replace the teacher. It is the teacher’s task to introduce the poem to the students and help them to form their own personal responses to what they read. Examiners can easily differentiate between students who have genuinely responded to literature for themselves and those who have merely parroted dictated or packaged notes. Teachers, establishing their dialogues in the classroom, need to encourage and trust students to arrive at their own points of view, insisting only that these shall based firmly on what is being studied. This of course immediately rules out any thought of notes of ‘prepared’ answers to be memorised. 2. The notes take for granted that each poem is unique and must be treated in a unique fashion. Examiners are often dismayed at the way some students seem to have been