The comparison question on AQA Paper 2 Section B asks students to write about one named poem and one chosen poem from the cluster. Choosing the right pairing under timed conditions is the single biggest decision in the answer, and it is the decision most students rush. This printable is built to slow that choice down: a thematic grid down one axis and a set of pre-built comparison spines along the other, so you walk into the exam with the pairings already mapped.
The 15-poem theme grid
The grid sets each poem against six theme clusters: war and conflict, power and decay, voice and silencing, nature, memory, and identity. Every poem in the cluster sits in at least two of these columns, and the strongest comparisons usually live where two poems overlap on two clusters at once. Use the grid in two ways: first, to find a partner poem fast when a named poem appears on the paper; second, to spot which poems you have under-revised because they sit in clusters you tend to avoid.
Poems mapped on the grid: Ozymandias, London, The Prelude (extract), My Last Duchess, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Exposure, Storm on the Island, Bayonet Charge, Remains, Poppies, War Photographer, Tissue, The Emigree, Checking Out Me History, Kamikaze.
Five ready-made comparison spines
Each spine gives you a paired thesis you can adapt to almost any wording of the question.
- Power and decay: Ozymandias and Tissue. Shelley's "colossal wreck, boundless and bare" sits against Dharker's "fine slips" of paper, both arguing that human power is impermanent, but Dharker reframes fragility as freedom rather than failure.
- War and humanity: Bayonet Charge, Exposure, and Remains. Hughes's "raw / In raw-seamed hot khaki" gives the body of the soldier; Owen's "merciless iced east winds that knive us" gives the elements as the real enemy; Armitage's "his bloody life in my bloody hands" gives the aftermath in the mind.
- Voice and silencing: My Last Duchess and Checking Out Me History. Browning's Duke who "gave commands" against Agard's "Dem tell me / Wha dem want to tell me" sets imposed silence beside reclaimed voice.
- Memory and grief: Poppies and Kamikaze. Weir's "individual war graves" beside Garland's "they treated him as though he no longer existed" pairs domestic mourning with state-imposed erasure.
- Place and power: London and The Prelude. Blake's "charter'd" streets against Wordsworth's "huge peak, black and huge" contrasts urban human-built control with nature's silent counter-power.
Pair this with the Power and Conflict revision hub and the analysis index for line-level notes on each poem.