The exam boards in England and Wales have constructed new 'A' Level English Literature syllabuses for first teaching from September 2008. Most of the new syllabuses pay very little attention to modern/contemporary poetry, but the Welsh Board (WJEC) has included a module on Poetry post-1900. Teachers can choose to read with their classes one of the following pairings of modern/contemporary poets; and, I suppose, the list represents a 2008 version of 'the Canon'. The choices are:

1. Carol Ann Duffy: Selected Poems (Penguin)
Standing Female Nude, The Other Country, The World’s Wife

WITH

Sheenagh Pugh: Selected Poems (Seren)

Or,

2. T.S.Eliot: Selected Poems (Faber)
Prufrock and Other Observations, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ariel Poems

WITH

W.B.Yeats: Selected Poems (OUP)

Or,

3. Seamus Heaney: New Selected Poems (Faber)
Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, Field Work [up to and including ‘The Badgers’], The Haw Lantern

WITH

Owen Sheers: Skirrid Hill (Seren)

Or,

4. Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings (Faber)

WITH

Dannie Abse: Welsh Retrospective (Seren)

Or,

5. Sylvia Plath: Poems Selected by Ted Hughes (Faber)

WITH

Ted Hughes: Poems Selected by Simon Armitage (Faber)

Or,

6. Eavan Boland: Selected Poems (Carcanet) New Territory, The War Horse, The Journey

WITH

Clare Pollard: Look, Clare! Look! (Bloodaxe)

The first text mentioned for each pairing is the one students are meant to concentrate on; the paired text being intended purely for comparison and contrast.

As lists go, it's an interesting one. Is it (despite the other Boards having chosen to ignore contemporary poetry almost entirely) still too conservative? Any surprising inclusions? Omissions? If you had to teach this module to seventeen year olds for 'A' Level, which pairing would you choose? And, without expecting people on this forum to do my work for me, what do you make of the bases upon which these pairings have been made?

A significant number of schools that regularly make the top-100 U.K. schools list in The Times and The Telegraph have chosen to abandon OCR (the old Oxford and Cambridge Board) to go with this Welsh Board syllabus for the new 'A' Level, probably because it's more imaginative and coherent across all the modules. But I'm particularly interested in what people make of the list of texts for this module.

All comments very gratefully received.

Of those pairings I'd probably pick Plath and Hughes, though I'm not sure why they're paired up (apart from the obvious, which seems to throw too much emphasis on biography above poetry). Would be more interesting to have a contemporary female poet - maybe Jo Shapcott - to compare and contrast Plath with.

Eliot and Yeats were paired up back in the day on my Oxford degree course, more - I guess - for being perceived as two big names of the canon writing in the early C20 than for any other reason. I think WS Graham would be a better c&c than Yeats, personally.

Nick Laird would be an interesting c&c for Heaney, given that he's very definitely writing within the influence of Heaney, Hahon, Longley, and also MacNeice. And I don't particularly like Owen's writing...

I don't know enough abot Sheenagh Pugh's writing to gauge her as a foil for CAD. I like Clare's writing a lot, though I think Look, Clare, Look! is the weakest of her three collections. Larkin and Abse is a creative juxtaposition - that might be my second choice to work with after Plath / Hughes.

I could nit-pick endlessly about who could have been included, but at least there has been some attempt to think outside of the standard boxes.

Oh, a subject close to my heart. I've watched my kids being systematically turned off poetry through the study of English Literature and it is very distressing.

This immediately makes me think about my daughter who will be starting her AS level English literature course in September. She has been studying WW1 poets for GCSE and the list you've posted makes me feel relieved that she'll be moving on.

For my seventeen year old (and her friends) I'd probably put CAD and Sheenagh Pugh at the top of the list, but Eavan Boland - for her emotional accessibility and Clare Pollard for her muscularity would also grab them I think. For my son (who finished his A level some time ago), Larkin/Abse combo would probably work well. Plath and Hughes because of the backstory could work well too.

I think it's a pity there's no Simon Armitage or Paul Farley on the list. What about Lavinia Greenlaw, Gillian Clarke? I could go on and on ...

I'm really thinking of what kind of poetry speaks to that age group, would enthuse and energise them and get them to love poetry rather than grow to loathe it.

I'm kind of sorry to say that the Eliot/Yeats combination would not appeal to most of the seventeen year olds I know.

But a really great teacher can turn you on to almost anything. We need more of those too.

Okay, so this hasn't actually started a bush-fire, but Alan and Jacqueline's comments are (to me) very helpful. Taking their ideas on board leads me to think that a range of c&cs for each of the first named poets, a cluster of satellites, might be a more interesting approach. So, in addition to the specified c&c, Laird and Longley and a few others to orbit around Heaney; WS Graham to join Yeats in orbit around Eliot; Shapcott and, perhaps, Alice Oswald to circle Plath and Hughes. And, Alan, I agree that it's good to see Clare Pollard getting this sort of recognition, and that one would want to show students some poems from her other two collections, particularly the second one. Following Jacqueline's recommendation, I'll certainly look again at the CAD v Sheenagh Pugh option (and do my best to make the course exciting and engaging).

I agree with Alan about the problems inherent in the biographical approach to Plath and Hughes. The Plath selected by Hughes isn't the same set of poems as in Ariel, so one would have to read a lot of Plath, and Hughes, and biography, in order to think about why he settled on that particular, later selection. This could almost leave the poems themselves as a secondary consideration. And why Hughes selected by Armitage? It seems to imply a sort of breadcrumb trail. I only need an Armitage selected by Frieda Hughes to complete this interesting, but quirky, approach to contemporary poetry.

Anyway, one point I thought people might raise was the number of Seren titles on this the Welsh Board syllabus. I have about 100 students studying A Level Lit. in any one year. The Welsh Board is still only small, in comparison with OCR and the others, but it may have up to 500 schools (perhaps more, although I can only guess at these numbers). Even with these guestimates, you'll be able to do the maths. Seren seem to have found a very canny way of injecting some rocket fuel into their sales. I don't know enough about sales figures for poetry, and the market share for each of the major publishers (Chris? Roddy?), but I think Seren may be on the cusp of considerably improving its position.

Are you saying Seren had any sway in this, David? Or that it's the Welsh educationalists supporting a Welsh publisher. I see no problem with a Welsh exam board putting some Welsh writers on their A level syllabus, but there are only two Welsh writers on the list here and they seem a bit vague in terms of how they fit in - certainly far more contrast than comparison!. Surely Gwyneth Lewis would be a far better choice than Pugh - perhaps they think her too difficult?

Hi, Roddy. Last things first: Gwyneth Lewis to join Sheenagh Pugh in orbit around CAD. I don't think difficulty can be a dominant factor in this list. Eliot and Yeats strikes me as quite a challenge, and probably more of a contrast than a comparison (although I really enjoyed studying Eliot, and Yeats, albeit not together, for 'A' Level). And, on this point, I'll launch a few pieces by Lumsden into orbit around Larkin, if I may?

There are three Seren titles on the list. Owen Sheers was born in Fiji, but I presume he's a Welsh 'national'. Will those inverted commas get me in trouble, I wonder? And I, too, don't have any problem at all with Welsh educationalists supporting Welsh poets. As I tried to imply, the Welsh Board have conceived the most coherent and forward looking of all the syllabuses, across all the modules. This particular module, as Alan suggested, is a very welcome attempt to think outside the usual boxes; and, compared to the other Boards, this one seems to be a step in the right direction for contemporary poetry generally, not just contemporary Welsh poetry.

There is one point of contact between the Board and Seren: Cary Archard is Chief Examiner for the Welsh Board's AS Level (that's Lower Sixth 'A' Level in old money, the year when students will study this modern/contemporary poetry module), but I don't know with any confidence how far he was involved in drawing up the list. Nonetheless, it strikes me that there are many advantages to having a poet and editor involved in mainstream education in this significant role: a more inspiring list of texts, for one thing; and confidence that the essays students write will be marked by someone with knowledge of and enthusiasm for contemporary poetry (and critical writing), rather than an apparatchik with a tick-box and propelling pencil. As is customary, the Board will probably change its list of set texts for this module after a couple of years (and it will be interesting to see who appears next). Whatever happens, Seren sales are about to receive a goodly boost, and I think this a good thing. I'd think it similarly laudable if a few other houses stood to benefit in the same way; but, the other exam Boards haven't looked at contemporary poetry with the same degree of interest. This may just be a happy confluence of factors for Seren.

Owen is certainly Welsh and Dannie Abse - none of the others though.

I would've liked to have seen Minhinnick in there somewhere, as someone who addresses Welshness, amongst other things. I do think Clare Pollard's pairing a curious one, though she's a good choice, even if I agree that Look, Clare, Look felt a bit more ragged than the other collections. (On the other hand, that in itself is an interesting feature, perhaps a signal towards a looser line being used..)

I've been looking at the various almost un-navigable websites of the exam boards to find out what gets on to the syllabus - the Poetry School has a vested interest in these things, of course - and David is of course right that there really is very little contemporary poetry. However, the AQA seem to offer a module at A level on 'The Struggle For Identity In Modern Literature', the set texts for which are And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, and Skirrid Hill, by one Owen Sheers. No Welsh conspiracy here, perhaps - but boom times for Seren.

I wonder if anyone knows anything about the process by which such works are selected - is there any engagement with publishers, or indeed with poets? Making the syllabus I imagine can have a massive impact on sales, profile, and perhaps most importantly a generation of students developing their engagement with contemporary poetry. One of the things I'm concerned about is what happens after people leave school - anecdotal evidence suggests that unless students go on to study literature at university, any sustained engagement with poetry is largely put aside completely until later in life. Why is this?

There used to be a body called Books For Students which promoted books to schools, but the key is to work with the examination boards directly. Since the OFSTED report on poetry in schools it's been expected that there will be a significant increase in interest, but it takes a long while for young teachers to acquaint themselves with poetry. I suspect, independently of exams, we've lost two generations of teachers now. I also suspect that those training the teachers have no real experience of what contemporary poetry is.

That Struggle for Identity theme suggests the emphasis is, as usual, on what the poems are about. I wonder how much time is devoted to poetic technique and, in a broader sense, what the poems do? Not much, I suspect - and the more intelligent students will probably conclude they could have learned more about the Struggle for Identity from a few well-chosen autobiographies.

Good question, Mathew.

Also, it is as usual plucked from a broadly mainstream base. Which non-mainstream poets would be good for the A Level syllabus?