Struggling to get your head around A level poetry? Maria, a teacher in Cambridge UK, analyses Helen Dunmore's poem from 'Poems of the Decade' for Edexcel, Pearson A Level Literature. Starting at the end of the poem, she uses the metaphor of picking at the scab to initiate her analysis. This is useful to support a first reading or generate debate in the classroom. Maria has a whole series of videos on Poems from 'An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry' which offer interesting ways to analyse poems via central themes rather than going through stanza by stanza. If you want to understand what the big deal is about poetry, this is a great place to start!