Unseen poetry seems impossible!

Try to be as abstract as possible. That was my tactic. The craziest ideas are always the most interesting. If you can include evidence to back up your points like the poet's use of structure or the persona's use of imagery, that will get you marks.

i will try to do this, i guess if i can support it then i can write anything i want

SLIME and PEE

SLIME being an mnemonic for "structure, language, imagery, meaning, effect" as a format to analyse the poetry (structure here also refers to the physical structure/layout of the poem, as well e.g. rhyming and form i.e. is it a sonnet, couplet, limerick etc).

PEE for "point, evidence, explain" as a way to structure your response - state your point, provide the textual evidence, and explain how this supports your point. This applies to any form of media and not just poetry - SLIME can be used for texts other than poetry although some aspects are less relevant.

Another useful thing to consider when structuring/planning your essay is to think about whether you can summarise each paragraph in a single sentence. If not, then it should probably be multiple paragraphs. This can help avoid long run-on paragraphs, although is perhaps more useful in looking at coursework you're writing after you've written but before submitting - but you might catch yourself going "off topic" in a single paragraph in exam and remember to split it up. This could net you a couple extra marks, I don't know how the rubrics are oriented these days...

SLIME and PEE

SLIME being a mnemonic for "structure, language, imagery, meaning, effect" as a format to analyse the poetry (structure here also refers to the physical structure/layout of the poem, as well e.g. rhyming and form i.e. is it a sonnet, couplet, limerick etc).

PEE for "point, evidence, explain" as a way to structure your response - state your point, provide the textual evidence, and explain how this supports your point. This applies to any form of media and not just poetry - SLIME can be used for texts other than poetry although some aspects are less relevant.

Another useful thing to consider when structuring/planning your essay is to think about whether you can summarise each paragraph in a single sentence. If not, then it should probably be multiple paragraphs. This can help avoid long run-on paragraphs, although is perhaps more useful in looking at coursework you're writing after you've written but before submitting - but you might catch yourself going "off topic" in a single paragraph in exam and remember to split it up. This could net you a couple extra marks, I don't know how the rubrics are oriented these days...

We adopted a system in our school that we called PEEELA. It's an extension of PEE that some people might find interesting. It stands for Point, Evidence, Explain, Effect on the audience, Language, Alternative interpretation

When you first get your poem SMILE -
look at
Structure of poem - how many stanzas, line length etc.
Meaning
Imagery - e.g. metaphors
Language
Effect on reader

You could 'say what you see' but just make sure you ALWAYS link whatever point you're making back to the question somehow!
the best thing about english is you can bs a lot tbh

slimey pee. thats definitely something i will remember in my exam, i will actually be using that in the mock im taking in a few days. really appreciate your help!

No worries I always really struggled with unseen poetry...I think it was my lowest paper in IB English

I liked the slimey pee format because at least it gave me some basic format to start approaching it - it's very daunting to just go in without any plan!

It also helps to emphasise that it's not about the individual poem in the sense of having studied it before - it's about applying general strategies to provide a literary criticism of the text provided. They won't expect you to know the full context and history of the text and author, you just need to focus on a really close analysis of the text, picking apart everything you can.

I sat my exams last summer. Unseen poetry was one of my weaknesses but you just have to say what you see, what midden meaning there may be and of course state the grammatical features best of luck everyone