In your exam you will be asked to compare a certain aspect of one poem with another. In order to do this, we need to get to know this poem a bit better by considering one of its main aspects.
What follows is a sample question which concentrates on one feature of the poem and an answer (not necessarily complete!) to the question.
Question
Compare the presentation of the relationship between fathers and sons in Simon Armitage's Harmonium and Nettles.
Answer
Points you could make:
Nettles is about the protection offered to a young child by a father.
Harmonium is about the assistance offered by a father to his son, although the older age of the child changes the father's role in the poem.
Nettles presents a father who is violent in his desire to protect his son from the "wounds" of life.
The father in Harmonium is direct and openly discusses the time when the son might carry his father's coffin as part of a funeral service. Here the father is not seeking to protect his son from a "wound" that life brings.
Nettles is written from the perspective of the father. Brief observations are used to communicate the tenderness and love of the parental relationship with a child.
Harmonium makes observations of the parent-child relationship, but this time from the perspective of the son, rather than the father. The detail and precision of the descriptions convince the reader of the closeness and importance of the relationship.