What things should I look for when approaching a piece of unseen poetry in an exam?

Unseen poetry comes up in both GCSE and A Level exams, although your approach will of course differ depending on which you are sitting. Some key things you might look out for are:Structure/form: how does the poem look? Think about what broader form the poem takes (e.g a sonnet or an elegy), as well as features like rhyme (does it follow a rhyme scheme?), the metre, and the specific placement of words. All of these features help poets to create meaning.Interpretation: try and think of multiple interpretations of the poem. First decode the simple narrative events of the poem, if it is a narrative poem, and then think of other ways the language could be understood. For instance, words with multiple meanings can always lead to polysemy (multiple meanings within one piece of literature).Semantic choices: look at the specific words the poet has chosen. Sometimes words can be grouped together easily (creating semantic fields); the poet will have done this for a reason. At other points, the poet may have chosen specific words to evoke a certain mood, or to connote or suggest something further.Voice and perspective: who is telling this poem? What can we tell about them from the way that it is written? Which parts of the poem are clearly objective, and which parts are from a certain point of view? How could we see things differently? Is the narrator reliable or unreliable?