Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Smart.

Great name for teacher, right? I knew you were thinking that.

What's your name? Nice to meet you.

Well, welcome to our new English unit, where we are going to be learning all about a poet called John Lyons.

We're going to be reading lots of his amazing poetry, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

Right, let's get started.

In this lesson, you are going to need an exercise book or some lined paper and a pen or a pencil to write with.

If you don't have either of those things with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In today's lesson, we're going to start by discussing what is a poet.

Then we're going to have an introduction to John Lyons.

We're then going to look at some of John Lyon's poetry collections.

And lastly, we'll finish with your independent task.

What is a poet? Have you ever heard of a poet before? What might they do? Pause the recording and write down anything you know about poets.

Right, so I'm sure you had lots of ideas.

So, a poet is a person who creates poems. We're going to be looking at some poems in this unit.

They have existed for many years.

There have been poets around since ancient civilizations, people writing poetry.

They're a little bit like an author, but they're actually called a poet because what they write is a poem and they write or they perform poetry.

So they might just write it down and publish it in books, or they might actually perform it as well.

And we're going to be performing some poetry later on in this unit, which I'm really excited about.

And poetry is often an opportunity for poets to express their ideas, their thoughts, and their feelings.

They can be about anything at all and poems cover a range of different subjects.

But often they can be quite descriptive as well, which is what I really, really enjoy reading poems. This is John Lyons, who we are going to be focusing on in this unit and he is a famous poet and he has published lots of different poems and he has published lots of different books, as well.

So a little bit about John Lyons.

He's actually not only a poet; he's also a painter.

And in the book that we're going to be focusing on, he has actually illustrated, he's drawn images to go with some of his poems, which makes me enjoy his books even more.

He was born in 1933 in the Port-of-Spain, somewhere called Trinidad.

We're going to look at a map in a moment to see where that is.

At the age of nine, his mother sadly died and him and his three siblings, his brothers or his sisters moved to another island, called Tobago, to live with their grandmother.

And he discovered the works of Walter Scott, of Conan Doyle, and any other author he could find in the library.

So he was really, really keen on reading.

He used to go to the library and take out all of the books he could possibly read.

Maybe that's where he got some of his ideas for his poems and his paintings.

So here is a map of Trinidad and Tobago.

So you can see on the left hand side, Trinidad and Tobago are two islands that are in the Atlantic Ocean and they are part of a group of islands that are often called the Caribbean.

And if we look at the world map, we can see where Trinidad and Tobago are.

So they're just North of South America.

So if you find where you live, I live in England, which on this map is right in the middle, and then you can see where that is in comparison to Trinidad and Tobago.

So, quite a long way away from me.

I wonder how far away it is from you.

So, a little bit more about John Lyons.

In 1948, he returns to Trinidad.

So remember, he moved to Tobago to live with his grandmother, but he then returned to Trinidad to live with his father and his stepmother.

He had to give up any further study to lessen the financial burden to his family.

So he couldn't carry on and go to university or do further study because his family, sadly, couldn't afford it at that time.

So he works for the Civil Service for five years.

So that means he worked for the government.

In 1959 though, things changed and he joined Goldsmith's college in London.

So he travelled from Trinidad all the way to London and he joined a university there and he graduated.

So that means he finished in 1964 with a National Diploma of Design, so using his artistic skills.

He then went on and gained an Art Teacher's Diploma at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1965.

So he became a teacher to just teach art, to, probably in secondary schools.

So he then moved to Manchester, which isn't too far away from Newcastle, in 1967, where he worked in secondary schools for nine years being an art and design teacher.

Then he moved on to a different college and he was an art and design lecturer.

And he worked there for 17 years.

So here we can see some of the places where he was educated.

So on the left-hand side is Goldsmith's College in London, where he gained his first qualification.

And then he moved on to the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where he trains to be an art teacher.

He continued to work on his writing and painting throughout his whole life.

So whether he was teaching, whether he was learning in education, he always enjoyed writing and painting.

And he actually became the co-founder and director of a gallery called Hourglass Studio Gallery.

And he's exhibited paintings since the 1960s.

So that means that they've been shown publicly to other people.

And he's also published eight poetry collections, so books of poems. The first one was in 1989.

And most recently, he's published books in 2015.

And that's one of the ones that we're going to be focusing on in this unit.

And he has won many prizes.

He's very, very successful and he's won awards, including a very famous prize Windrush Arts Achiever Award.

So as you can probably tell, he's a very creative man.

So we're now going to watch a video from CLPE Poetryline, where John Lyons is talking about how poetry makes him feel.

Well, poetry makes me feel connected, connected with my environment.

And also, apart from that, it gives me an opportunity.

I'm very excited about using language.

And that is that really is the buzz for me, you know, poetry.

That's how I feel about it, but also, it gives me an opportunity to share, as well, my work, which I love to, I'm a bit of a performer.

I like sharing my work with people.

Okay? And everyone.

So here we can see a few of John Lyons' poetry collections.

On the left-hand side, you can see "Dancing in the Rain," which is the collection that we're going to be looking at.

And then there's a few other covers there as well.

The middle book is particularly interesting because this is where John Lyons has combined lots of his passions into one text.

So you can see it includes recipes, poetry, painting, and anecdotes.

So he's brought all of his passions together into one book.

Here is a quote about "Dancing in the Rain," by John Lyons.

"Describing the texture of the Caribbean landscape "and the vividness of its peoples." So that gives me a bit of a clue that these poems are going to be all about where he came from, so Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.

Another quote is, "Enrichment "of the West Indian British voice." So, sometimes the Caribbean islands are referred to as the West Indies and people from there are called West Indian.

And lots of people from the Caribbean have moved over to Britain, particularly after World War II.

And this is an opportunity for West Indian people to share their thoughts and their feelings, and John Lyons is doing that through his poetry.

We're now going to watch another interview with John Lyons from CLPE, which is about why he thinks poetry is important.

Poetry is important, very important in my estimation, because from what I said before, it puts you in contact, connected, you should be connected with the world around you, with people and everything.

But also it gives it opportunity by the very craft of capturing of it, to play with language.

Playing with language actually, and the skilled association of ideas and so on.

That is so important for.

is basically, it's a sort of a different type of intelligence really.

And it's very, very good for everybody, youngsters, to play like this.

That's important.

Poetry is very important.

But also it can connect with other subjects as well.

You know, maybe you didn't have an opportunity to read.

And you did, maybe some poems where you might think, right, this is not really about the subject matter.

This is about geography or this is about history or whatever, but that's the nature of poetry that is so important because it can give confidence to youngsters as well, I think.

If they're writing poetry and listening to poetry is a good thing.

Well though John Lyons has written lots of different poetry collections.

We're going to be focusing on "Dancing in the Rain," by John Lyons in this unit, which is a collection of poems for younger readers.

And we're going to be exploring lots of those poems throughout this unit.

This book has been written and illustrated by John Lyons and that's one of my favourite things about this book, is that not only has it got amazing poems in, but lots of them have also got illustrations that John Lyons has done himself to bring them to life even more.

It was shortlisted for the 2016 Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award.

So it's been a very successful collection and very well received and it draws inspiration from Lyons' childhood in Trinidad and Tobago and the traditions of carnival and calypso.

We're going to be learning a little bit more about carnival and calypso later on in this unit.

The poems are filled with the people and places he knew as a boy, as well as mythical creatures, mythical figures, I should say, from Trinidad stories.

So he uses lots of the people, the family and the friends that he had in Trinidad and Tobago and the places he went to to use in his poems, as well as some of those characters and figures from the traditional stories.

Sometimes, he writes in Creole or Patois, which is the local dialect of Trinidad and Tobago.

So when we look at some of the poems, some of the words might be a little bit unfamiliar to you, but normally you can work out what they mean.

And his poems have a real musical feel to them.

His musical reading and the feeling he puts into his voice brings out the meaning of words and helps to feel the rhythm and patterns of his language.

So his poems almost sound like songs sometimes, especially when he performs them.

We are now going to watch a performance of "Carnival Dance Lesson," by John Lyons, from CLPE.

The inspiration for this next poem comes from carnival.

And it's following the same idea, the same inclination we all have in Trinidad to have fun, right? And it's called, "Carnival Dance Lesson." I wrote the poem.

And then after writing the poem, I've illustrated it.

And it's a natural thing for me because as an artist, I love illustrating my poems and providing images for youngsters, because in seeing the images, it actually enhances the experience of the poem, for youngsters, particularly.

And I draw popular images, really, rather than going into the cartoon part of it, right? And this here is the sketches I did after writing the poem in my sketchpad, sketch book and before I transferred it to the illustration.

Okay? For "Carnival Dance Lesson." One, two, three, you can dance like me with arms held high, that's how you start.

Let the music touch your heart.

One, two, three, you can dance like me.

Just be relaxed.

I insist with move with the rhythm, jerk your waist.

One, two, three, you can dance like me, shake up, jump up we celebrate.

It's carnival.

One, two, three, you can dance like me, jump in the band, let us have some fun, happy times have just begun.

One, two, three, you can dance like me.

Be-do, be-do, be-do you can dance like me.

Be-do, be-do, be-do you can dance like me.

Right, we have now reached the end of your first lesson of this unit, all about John Lyons' poetry.

And hopefully you feel that you've learned a little bit about the poet, John Lyons, in today's lesson.

So what I would like you to do is create a fact file with everything you have learned about John Lyons in today's lesson.

So these are some of the things that you could include.

You could write his name, of course, his country of origin.

Can you remember where he was born and where he grew up? His early life, so anything about his family when he was growing up.

His education, can you remember some of the places where he was educated? Jobs that he had and any of his achievements or things that he's done really well at in his life.

Congratulations, you've completed your first lesson in this unit.

If you would like to please share your work with your parents or carer, I'm sure they will be really interested to learn about John Lyons.

I will see you in our next lesson.

Goodbye.