Recommended Reading
Visit the poetry section of your local Waterstone’s and you will probably find there are more poetry anthologies to choose from than there are volumes by individual poets. For general use I would recommend only one of these, the same one as I have used myself since preparing for interview at Cambridge. This is The Norton Anthology of Poetry.
In this single volume you will find a survey of all the key poems and poets since the English language emerged. If you use it well, following your enthusiasms and exploring widely, you will gain a broad knowledge of poetry such as will enrich and nuance all your essays.
In addition you have Jon Stallworthy's classic introductory essay on poetic form, rhythm and rhyme. This will give you a whole new critical arsenal for the analysis of poetry, and a clear edge on candidates who are unable to connect a poem’s language with its formal and structural properties.
The most successful A-level English students are those who begin to make their own discoveries within the canon of English poetry, those who no longer read only what their teacher gives them to read, and who are able to describe the more technical aspects of poetic form. Norton is the perfect collection to help you achieve this. Happy browsing.
