1. SOLO approach to poetry question: Anthology C
Saturday, 23 February 2019

2. Remember this? multistructural unistructural Extended Abstract
relational

3. We can apply it to anthology C
Using the knowledge from the previous sections to answer a specific question.
Extended abstract
Putting the ideas from more than one poem together to deduce, infer and compare
relational
What I know about more than one poem
multistructural
What I know about one poem
unistructural

4. In practice: We need a question.
Remind yourself of the poem Prayer before birth. Compare it with another poem from the anthology which also deals with parental love. Sounds tricky? Write it down on a clean sheet of flip chart paper.

5. NOW, to work: UNISTRUCTURAL
What do you know about Prayer before birth that relates to parental love?
Repetitive language
Focus on “me”
Focus on fears
Voice of unborn child
Fear of war evident
Make notes on each of these and any others you can think of…
Unusual layout

6. Unistructural - multistructural
Choose the second poem. I am going to use “IF-”
Find ideas for this poem…
Wants to put up with life’s difficulties
Single sentence
“you’ll be a MAN…”
Regular structure
Triumph and disaster are imposters
Father is speaking: focus on “you”

7. Relational Make the links between the two lists of ideas:
Focus of voice – foetus echoes parental fears whereas father voices advice
Structure lengthening stanzas suggest panic (sentence structure) whereas If- is utterly controlled series of conditional phrases
Some similar ideas… (find them)
Final line is negative in Prayer (ironic) and positive in If…

8. EXTENDED ABSTRACT
NOW – link the related ideas to the tile of the question.
The focus is on parental love. (I)
If- could be the title of both.
Prayer reflects the fears of the parents. ©
Both want the best for their child but deliver this idea in contrasting ways (I)
Both are aware of the difficulties to be faced in growing up as a good “man”. (I) (A)
Structure is central to delivering the message (S)
What else can you find?
Each point of relationship can be a paragraph. You can use SCASI here to focus your thoughts.

9. These are ideas… You need to try this task for yourself…
AS a revision exercise, try to work out several essay titles based on pairs of poems…
Then apply the SOLO criteria to the essay.