This paper argues that recent changes to two national highstakes tests for English – the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in Aoteaora New Zealand and the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in England – have shifted the assessment emphasis further away from poetry than previously and have significantly constrained the defined space for the genre within examination specifications at 16+. In investigating the impact of these assessment changes, the paper considers opportunities that sample groups of teachers and their students in two culturally diverse cities have to engage with poetry in examination level classrooms and the constraints they experience. The research aims to inform international debates about poetry's position in culturally diverse classroom contexts and the implications of this positioning for teachers' professional knowledge and poetry pedagogy, as they prepare their students for high-stakes examinations.