Eduqas A Level · Poetry post-1900
Sheers and Heaney
Two poets of ground and grief: Owen Sheers and Seamus Heaney, read as a pair for the Eduqas post-1900 poetry section. Both are in copyright, so their poems live in your copies of Field Work and Skirrid Hill, not here; what this site holds is the reading around them, the comparison between them, and the practice that turns knowledge into an exam answer.
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Six ways in
Heaney, poem by poem
The 1979 collection in three movements: the Troubles elegies, the Glanmore Sonnets, and the turn towards love, art and Dante.
Skirrid HillSheers, poem by poem
The 2005 collection under the cloven hill: separation and landscape, fathers and sons, war and Welsh identity.
ThemesWhat they share
Land, violence, loss, family, love, memory and craft, with the pairings that bridge the two collections.
ComparingBuild the argument
The four-poem structure and how to keep a comparison two-way, holding both poets in every paragraph.
Exam skillsWrite the essay
The assessment objectives in plain language, a method for the hour, and an annotated model paragraph.
Mark my writingGet feedback
Paste a paragraph and the marking desk will comment on it like a teacher. No marks, no grades: comments only.
The one rule
A comparison is an argument about a relationship, not two commentaries in a trench coat. Every paragraph should hold both poets, name the connection, and then find the difference inside it: that difference is where the marks live.
The pairing in a sentence
Heaney writes from inside a living conflict, mourning men he knew and steadying grief with ritual; Sheers looks back at war and loss through landscape and objects, under a hill whose name means separation. Read them together and their likenesses (named ground, elegy, family, a distrust of easy consolation) throw their differences into relief. Begin with a collection, or go straight to the themes that bridge them.