Help! Unseen poem from 1975

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

First, this:
https://twitter.com/brian_bilston/status/1661264366568710146

which is lovely & reminded me of something which I've never found the answer to.

I sat my English A-level in England in the summer of 1975, but I can't remember what exam board it was. Everybody moaned about the unseen poem that year because it was really off the wall; but I loved it because I thought I knew what it was. (I was probably right, as I got a high grade in spite of never actually finishing bloody Chaucer's bloody Miller's Tale).

Anyway, I've never been able to find this poem since. I thought it was a parody/pastiche of the Liverpool poets of the 1960s & 70s. The only bit I can remember was something about a postbox being like a peeled baby. The fact that's such an OTT image is what made me think it was a literary joke of some kind.

Does anybody recognise the poem, or can anyone tell me how to find the old exam paper - is there an archive somewhere?

I can't help on the poem but to help you narrow your search down I can tell you that the exam board wasn't Oxford.

I didn't do my A levels in 1975 but my husband did them a bit earlier and I did them a bit later. We both did English Literature A level with Oxford Board and the format was the same. There was no unseen poem. We only answered questions on things we had studied.

Ah, thank you, @Fifthtimelucky.

What other exam boards existed back then?

The other things we studied were Persuasion, As You Like It, King Lear... can't remember beyond that & Chaucer's Prologue & Miller's Tale.

From memory the other boards were:

Cambridge
JMB (Joint Matriculation Board), which I think did mainly northern schools
AEB (Associated Examination Board)

There might also have been an Oxford and Cambridge Board, but I'm not sure about that.

I studied Persuasion for A level too. It's still one of my favourite books!

There’s a list of all defunct boards here:

https://www.gov.uk/replacement-exam-certificate/if-your-old-exam-board-no-longer-exists

I did Cambridge A level in 1974 and I don’t remember doing an unseen poem.

T S Eliot
Wilfred Owen
King Lear

Cheerful…not.

I looked at the old exam boards thing, & AEB sounds familiar. Apparently some libraries hold copies of old papers; but I also found someone's FOI request for 1970s papers which was denied on the grounds that it would take too long & cost too much.

Bizarrely, I studied Persuasion in two different schools: first, with a dreadful teacher who made it sooooo tedious & never actually finished the book, then for A level with a wonderful teacher who brought alive all the emotional subtleties. It became one of my favourite books, too.

Thanks to all for your help. @FlemishHorse gosh, depressing selection - though I adore King Lear & Kurosawa's version (Ran).