Assessment is most often held responsible for teachers' and students' mechanical approach to poetry in class. This article shows how examination pressure leads a group of poetry teachers and A Level English students at a post‐16 college in Malta to perpetuate an approach to poetry that is characterised by an emphasis on finding hidden meaning. However, it is also argued that to blame only assessment for this approach is to run the risk of ignoring the shared beliefs that teachers and students have about poetry.