Eating Poetry

Exam Q&A
Exam Questions
1. Identify and explain the figure of speech in the title. (2)
The title is a metaphor✓. The speaker compares intensive
reading of poetry to eating it ✓.

2. Refer to stanzas 1 and 2. What has happened to the

speaker? Quote in support of your answer. (3)
The speaker has been caught eating (reading) poetry in
the library by the librarian. ✓ ‘The librarian does not
believe what she sees’. ✓ ‘I have been eating poetry’.✓
3. In terms of the extended metaphor, what happened to the
poems that they ‘are gone’ in line 7? (1)
They have been ‘eaten’ i.e. read by the speaker ✓.

4. Comment on what the librarian symbolises. (HINT: refer to

stereotyping.) (3)
A librarian is stereotyped to be a bookworm who is
surrounded by literature ✓, but in the poem the librarian
finds the speaker’s passion for poetry to be strange.
Therefore it seems as if the librarian symbolises people
who witness someone else being passionate, fulfilled and
experiencing enjoyment ✓ but can’t seem to understand it
or experience it themselves even though they are
surrounded by what they love✓.
5. Explain what happens in the poem from the librarian’s perspective. (3)
The librarian is shocked when she first sees the speaker eating
poetry✓. When the speaker starts to see strange things she stamps her
feet and weeps because she does not understand what is happening to
him ✓. The speaker behaves like a dog and licks her hand, she screams
because she is frightened by his behaviour ✓.

6. Identify the idea the poet is trying to convey in the first and last
stanzas. Quote to support your answer. (3)
The speaker is happy in both stanzas ✓
‘no happiness like mine’ ✓ and ‘romp with joy’. ✓
7. List the effects that eating poetry has had on the speaker. (3)
Firstly, eating poetry has made the speaker feel extremely happy. ✓
Secondly, it transformed him into a ‘new man’. ✓ Lastly, It affected his
behaviour and caused him to behave like a dog, ‘I snarl and bark’. ✓

8. Refer to lines 9-12. Account for the change in mood

created in these lines. (4)
The light-hearted and joyful mood ✓ of the poem changes
from when the poet expresses just how happy he is after
eating poetry (line 2) ✓ to being chaotic and horrific ✓ when
the speaker describes the scary dogs coming up the
basement stairs (lines 9-12) ✓.
9. Identify the overall tone of the poem. (1)
The overall tone of the poem is joyful/exuberant/liberating. ✓

10.Why is this poem labelled as surreal? Quote from the poem to

support your answer. (2)
The poem contains strange and ‘surreal’ imagery✓ such as the speaker
who eats poetry “I have been eating poetry” and the nightmarish
descriptions he makes of dogs coming up the basement stairs “their
eyeballs roll” . ✓