GAMSAT Section I Humanities: Keats, Shelley or Frost?

If you encounter an unseen poem in Section I of the GAMSAT test paper, there is a significant chance that it was written by a well-known, popular British, European, Australian or American poet. So, it makes sense to develop an understanding of who some of these famous poets are. This way, you can also match the poet to the literary movement he/she belongs to for GAMSAT Section I. Establishing a connection between the poet and the literary movement he/she belongs to is important as it will give you an idea of the kinds of characteristics, themes and overall tone and mood of the GAMSAT Section I poem.
So, consider this as your ‘crash course’ in learning about the famous poets, their best known works and the literary movement they belong to, for the GAMSAT:

The Romantic Movement

1. William Wordsworth –The Prelude, Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known and The Daffodils.
2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan and This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
3. William Blake – The Lamb, The Tyger and A Poison Tree
4. Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind
5. John Keats – To Autumn, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale
6. Lord Byron – Don Juan

The Victorians

1. Alfred Lord Tennyson – Mariana, The Lady of Shallot, The Lotus-Eaters, Ulysses and In Memoriam
2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnets from the Portuguese
3. Robert Browning – My Last Duchess, Porphyria’s Lover and The Laboratory
4. Gerard Manley Hopkins – The Caged Skylark and As Kingfishers Catch Fire
5. Matthew Arnold – Dover Beach

The Modernist Movement

1. T.S. Eliot – The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock, The Wasteland, The Hollowmen and Rhapsody on a Windy Night
2. Ezra Pound – The Cantos
3. W.H. Auden – The Unknown Citizen, Funeral Blues and In Memory of W.B. Yeats
4. W.B. Yeats – The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, Easter 1916, The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium
5. Dylan Thomas – Fern Hill, In the White Giant’s Thigh and Death Shall Have No Dominion
6. Sylvia Plath – Ariel, Daddy, Tulips and Lady Lazarus
7. Ted Hughes – The Hawk in the Rain, Hawk Roosting, Fulbright Scholars, The Shot, Your Paris and Red
8. Seamus Heaney – Mid-Term Break, Blackberry Picking and Digging

Familiarising yourself with these poets and their works will help you immensely in preparing for GAMSAT Section I. It would be a good idea to read the poems listed here to familiarise yourself with the similarities between the poets listed in each movement and to get a feel of the various themes, poetic styles and motifs you can expect from each poet.

It is important to remember that this is not an exhaustive list, but a rather useful introduction to poetry. You may not get one of the poems listed in this article for GAMSAT, but you may get one of the poets and/or a poem from the same movement. Either way, exposing yourself to these poets and poems will give you a solid grounding in poetry, making you more comfortable with the prospect of deconstructing an unseen poem during the GAMSAT test.