Climbing My Grandfather
Each poetry anthology at GCSE contains 15 poems and in your exam question you will be given one poem – printed in full – and asked to compare this printed poem to another. As this is a closed-book exam, you will not have access to the second poem, so you will have to know it from memory. Fifteen poems is a lot to revise. However, understanding four things will enable you to produce a top-grade response:
- The meaning of the poem
- The ideas and messages of the poet
- How the poet conveys these ideas through their methods
- How these ideas compare and contrast with the ideas of other poets in the anthology
Below is a guide to Andrew Waterhouse’s poem 'Climbing My Grandfather', from the Love and Relationships anthology. It includes:
- Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations
- Writer’s Methods: an exploration of the poet’s techniques and methods
- Context: an exploration of the context of the poem, relevant to its themes
- What to compare it to: ideas about which poems to compare it to in the exam
Exam Tip
'Climbing My Grandfather' is part of the Love and Relationships anthology of poems, and the exam question asks you to compare the ideas presented in two of these anthology poems, specifically related to the ideas of family relationships and love.
It is, therefore, as important that you learn how 'Climbing My Grandfather' compares and contrasts with other poems in the anthology as understanding the poem in isolation. See the section below on ‘What to Compare it to’ for detailed comparisons of 'Climbing My Grandfather' and other poems in the anthology.