
Worlds & Lives Anthology (2025+)
Various (15 poems) · · Paper 2 Section B
Context
The AQA Worlds & Lives anthology (first examined 2025) spans from Romantic poetry (Wordsworth, Shelley, Brontë) through Victorian verse (Eliot) to predominantly contemporary voices, with two-thirds of the poems published after 2000. The collection is both personal and political, exploring concerns about the world we live in: home, heritage, belonging, migration, identity, and connection. It features mostly living poets from diverse backgrounds — Caribbean, South Asian, West African, d/Deaf, regional English — rooted in the revolutionary spirit of the Romantics. In the exam (Paper 2, Section B), one poem is printed and students must compare it with another poem of their choice from the anthology.