Lesson video

Hello, I'm Miss Sewell and welcome to this English unit focusing on 'Telling Tales' by Patience Agbabi.

Now this lesson looks at Patience Agbabi and her retelling of the Chaucer classic, 'The Canterbury Tales'.

Now before we begin, I just want you to make sure that you've cleared away any distractions and turn off any notifications, even on this device that you're using to view this video.

Make sure you have a pen or a pencil and make sure you have some paper to write on.

I'll just give you a minute.

You can pause this video and make sure that you have all of those things completed.

In the meantime, I'm going to disappear so we have enough room on our screen to view the video in full.

So, let's get started.

In this lesson, you will master an understanding of performance poetry, discover who Patience Agbabi is, have a clear understanding of how 'Telling Tales' was influenced by Chaucer.

So, let's begin.

Firstly, we're just going to recap poetry.

So we're going to look, simply at what makes a poem.

So within poems, poets use lots of figurative language in order to stir readers' and audiences' imagination and emotions.

Poets do this by carefully crafting their language, form, sound, rhythm and rhyme.

Firstly, poets use lots of figurative language.

And what do I mean by this? Well, figurative language is when poets use metaphors, similes, personification, onomatopoeia and juxtaposition in order to convey or present an image or idea to their reader or audience.

Now you might just want to pause for a moment and jot down the elements of figurative language on your page, so you can refer back to them later.

So you might want to pause in three, two, one.

Secondly, poets can sometimes follow different forms of poem.

They might follow strict metre or have several lines or stanzas.

Examples of different forms of poems are sonnet, like Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, which is covered on the Oak website in another lesson.

So do go and find it.

Another example is epic poetry, like Beowulf.

But just to make things complicated, some poets also enjoy using free verse where they might use a variety of stanza, have sporadic lines, no metre and have no rhythm or rhyme.

You might want to pause for a moment and jot down the elements of poetic performance on your page.

You can do that now, in three, two, one, pause.

Poets also incorporate sound into their poetry, through repetition of words or phrases throughout their poems. They might use sibilance, which is the repetition of the S sound.

Plus they might use rhyme to play with the sounds of words.

However, just to make things more interesting, some poets enjoy using none of these.

You might want to pause for a moment and jot down the elements of sounds on your page.

You might want to do this in three, two, one.

Now rhythm is also important to some poets.

Rhythm is a poet's way of creating a beat, so their metre in their poem.

Sometimes a consistent rhythm allows people to remember a poem word for word, which is really helpful for someone like Chaucer, where that he didn't have a printing press.

So it meant he was able to spread his poetry by word of mouth, similar to how we remember lyrics in a song.

For example, we have Iamb, which is a non-stress syllable followed by a stressed one.

It would sound like, diff-daff, diff-daff, diff-daff, diff-daff.

We might have a Trochee, which is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.

So the opposite of an Iamb.

A Trochee would go, duff-diff, duff-diff, duff-diff, duff-diff.

Some poets will then vary the amount of syllables they have per line.

So they change the rhythm to suit their poem.

Again, some poets choose to have no rhythm to the their poem.

You might want to pause for a moment and jot down the elements of rhythm on your page.

You can do this in three, two, one.

Finally, poets may use a variation of rhyme within their poems to create effective sound.

Again, there are different forms of rhyme.

For example, we have couplet rhyming, which is where a pair of lines rhyme together next to each other.

So the pattern would follow, AA, BB, CC.

Another form of rhyme is alternate rhyme, where every other line rhymes together.

So the pattern would follow, AB-AB, CD-CD.

Then we have envelope rhyme, where a couplet is sandwiched between a rhyming pair.

So the person would follow ABBA, CDDC.

However, rhyming does not just have to occur at the ends of lines.

There may be rhyming throughout the poem or again, there may be no rhyming at all.

So you might want to pause the video for a moment and just jot down the elements of rhyme on your page.

You can do that in three, two, one.

Okay, so here are some true or false statements.

I'm going to read through the statements and I would like you to pause the video at the end and just jot down whether you think the statement is true or false.

A; poems always rhyme.

B; poems are sometimes written in stanzas.

C; Beowulf is an epic poem.

D; poetry is not intended to be read aloud.

So do pause the video in three, two, one.

So by now, you should have paused the video and noted down your answers.

So let's go through them.

So A; poems always rhyme, that is false.

Well done if you remembered that not all poems have to rhyme.

B is indeed true.

Poems are sometimes written in stanzas.

Don't worry if you got that wrong, the sometimes was there to make sure you were listening.

C is true, I gave an example of Beowulf as an epic poem.

D; excellent work if you realised that poetry is intended to be read aloud.

Could you imagine working really hard to get your rhythm and rhymes being perfect and no one reads your poems aloud? What a waste of time that would be.

So now we're going to learn a new word, the word is satire.

Can you repeat that after me? Satire.

If you're sat with headphones on and there are people around you, just mouth the word satire.

Okay, perfect.

So satire is the use of humour or exaggeration to expose people's vices.

Satire is the use of humour or exaggeration to expose people's vices.

How do we do satire in a sentence? So we could say, Chaucer uses satire in his poetry, which he does.

His satire is worth reading, which it is.

She ignored the faint note of satire in his tone, which I normally do.

So what I would like you to do now is to, on your page, jot down this definition for satire and fill in the words that are missing.

You can pause the video to do this in three, two, one.

So filled in, you should have put the use humour or exaggeration to expose people's vices.

Now, we're going to do that again.

But this time, there are more words missing.

So pause the video and write out the definition again, filling in the blanks for me, please.

So as an extra challenge, you could try and cover over the previous definition you wrote.

But do uncover it if you get stuck.

You can pause the video in three, two, one.

Again, you should have had use of humour or exaggeration to expose people's vices.

Now you can use satire in a serious way for protest or to expose people.

Or it can be used as a comical way to poke fun at someone.

For example, from 'Telling Tales,' the book we will study in this module, a mother says, my son's a writer, aye, but he'll not write to me, his poor old mam.

Now, this is an example of satire because the mother wants nothing more than her son to write to her.

But instead, he only writes for his job in order to be paid.

This is an exaggeration of how excluded the mother feels from her son's life and exposes the vice of their relationship, not being how it was before.

Another example is in Patience Agbabi's 'The Man of Law's Tale' poem, a mother is so desperate for her publishing son to write to her.

She is replaced in life by his new wife.

As a result, the mother forged a cruel and horrific note from her son to his wife, in order to send her away.

In the end, the son followed his wife back to Africa and leaves the mother alone to grow old in isolation.

This is satirical, through a use of irony.

The mother wants her son back with her and cannot stand the idea that she is being pushed away from her son by a new wife.

However, in her actions to bring him back to her, she fails and ends up completely alone.

This is satirical because it highlights the mother's vice of loving her son who hates her.

Now we see a lot of satire used in Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'.

If you haven't studied 'The Canterbury Tales,' do you head over to the lessons on this, on the Oak website.

We shall have a quick little recap now on the poem.

So 'The Canterbury Tales' contains 24 stories in the collection of poems. It is based on a group of pilgrims. Pilgrims are people who journey to a sacred place for religious reasons.

So the pilgrims are travelling from Southwark, which is a town just outside of London, to Canterbury, a city in the Southeast England.

Along the way, for entertainment, each Pilgrim shared stories on the journey.

What I would like you to do, in a moment, is pause this video and we're going to write out these key facts on your sheets of paper.

I'd like you to fill in the blanks as you go.

Remember to write in full sentences and check your capital letters for Canterbury and Southwark.

You can pause the video in three, two, one.

Okay then, so we're just going to give ourselves a tick for every correct space that you fill in.

So you should have four ticks.

So the first one, 24 stories in the collection of poems. A group of pilgrims who are travelling from Southwark to Canterbury.

That Canterbury should have a capital C.

And for entertainment, each pilgrim shares stories on the journey.

So give yourself four ticks if you managed to get all of those right.

Also within Chaucer's, 'The Canterbury Tales,' Chaucer had a heavy focus on satire in his poem.

But unfortunately, the poem was never finished by Chaucer, as he died before he was able to complete it.

So just as before, I would like you to pause the video and I would like you to write down these sentences and fill in the blanks as you go.

You can pause the video in three, two, one.

Okay, so give yourself a tick for everyone you get correct.

Heavy focus on satire, that should have been.

Remember, satire is the use of humour to expose people's vices.

The poem was never finished by Chaucer, because unfortunately he died before he could do so.

Okay so, at the time of writing, Chaucer relied heavily on performance poetry.

Now performance poetry differs slightly to the poetry we are familiar with.

Poetry specifically composed for or during a performance to an audience.

And performance poetry is very closely related to spoken word.

So sometimes you'll hear spoken word, instead of performance poetry.

It allows for extended metaphors.

So a metaphor that flows throughout the poem.

And the language is much richer, that songwriting does not allow for.

Performance poetry empowers the speaker.

It allows them to add emphasis where it's needed.

And it's a great way to convey message and story to an audience.

So performance poetry adds an extra layer to the poetry.

It brings the poetry off of the page and really to life, by expressing it out loud.

Another writer who believes that written poetry should go hand-in-hand with performance poetry is Patience Agbabi, the writer of 'Telling Tales.

' Agbabi was born in 1965 and is still creating poetry today.

She is a British poet and performer.

Now I've underlined performer because she is an advocate, so she is a strong believer in performance of poetry.

She emphasises the importance of the spoken word, so performance poetry.

My favourite performance from her is the performance of her Word poem.

Now you can find this in any search engine by just typing in, Word by Patience Agbabi, and it should bring up a reading from her.

Agbabi is bicultural, which means she moves fluidly between her Nigerian and British cultures.

Plus she discusses, openly in her writing and spoken poetry, about racial and gender identity.

So on your screen, you will see four statements.

One of these statements is false.

I'm going to read through the statements and you are going to point, on your screen, to the false statement.

Option 1; Agbabi uses performance poetry to discuss race and gender.

Is that true or false? Option 2; Agbabi is a British poet and performer.

Is that true or false? Option 3; performance poetry is sometimes referred to as spoken word poetry.

Option 4; performance poetry does not connect to written poetry at all.

Now remember, you're looking for the one that's false.

Option 1, which is true, Agbabi uses performance poetry to discuss race and gender.

She does do that.

Option 2 is also true.

Agbabi is a British poet and performer.

Remember, I underlined performer.

Option 3 is also true.

Performance poetry is sometimes referred to as spoken word poetry.

And option 4 must be false, as performer, oh sorry.

As performance poetry can be written down before it is performed.

Now we have to refresh our knowledge of poetry.

We know what satire is.

We know who Chaucer was and what 'The Canterbury Tales' was about.

We know what performance poetry is.

We know who Patience Agbabi is.

So now we're going to connect these things together.

Well, 'Telling Tales' by Patience Agbabi was influenced massively by Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'.

And we're going to see how.

The Canterbury tiles focuses on a group of pilgrims who are travelling from Southwark to Canterbury.

For entertainment, each pilgrim shared stories.

The poem was never finished by Chaucer.

Chaucer concentrates hugely on satire within his poem.

He uses language, so he uses Middle English.

So he'd moved on from Old English to Middle English, before our more recent English of the 21st Century, modern-day English.

And then he uses lots of slang within his poetry.

He also uses performance, in order to spread his poetry around the community and have it heard.

Agbabi's 'Telling Tales' is a celebration of 'The Canterbury Tales'.

It still focuses on a group of pilgrims who are travelling to Canterbury.

Satire is also used through her characters.

Her language is now 21st Century language.

It has slang and text talk used within it.

And again, she uses performance in order to celebrate 'The Canterbury Tales' she produces as 'Telling Tales'.

Now 'The Canterbury Tales' combine three main elements into its language of the poem.

We see dialects from the lack of punctuation, which makes it quite difficult to understand in places.

The tales are rich in slang from Middle English.

And only through performance of the poem, can we get a sense of this dialect and we can feel the slang coming through.

And therefore, we're able to build an understanding of that language.

The dialect, slang and performance all combine to show the importance of language in this unfinished epic poem.

As there was no printing press when Chaucer was writing, he had to rely on his performance of his poetry in order to have his work noticed.

What I'd like you to do now is pause the video and jot down the three things that combine together to create the language of 'The Canterbury Tales'.

You can pause in three, two, one.

Okay good, so give yourself a tick for each word you able to write down.

You should have remembered D for dialect, S for slang, P for performance.

And those three joined together to create the language of 'The Canterbury Tales.

' Now the satire of 'The Canterbury Tales' is created through a combination of language, character and again, performance.

So Chaucer used language to create humour and highlight the vices of his characters.

Plus he used performance to exaggerate the flaws of his characters.

Each pilgrim is very different in his stories.

By weaving language, character and performance together, Chaucer was able to create convincing satire for his audience.

Again, could you now pause the video and fill in the missing components that combine to create Chaucer's satire? You can pause in three, two, one.

Okay so to create his successful satire, Chaucer had to use language, characters and performance.

So make sure you give yourself a tick for all of those.

So L for language, C for characters and P for performance.

Well done if you've got all of those correct.

Now, all of these sections that we've picked out are mirrored in Agbabi's 'Telling Tales.

' And we can call these influences.

The language of 'Telling Tales' is rich in dialects from multiple nationalities.

She uses slang from 21st Century English.

She uses text slang, street language but also some standard English.

'Telling Tales' uses these to show the tension within our language.

Luckily, Agbabi has the luxury of printing her poetry.

However she wanted to revoice, so give a fresh voice to Chaucer's work.

And therefore, encourages the performance aspect of 'Telling Tales.

' In order to fully appreciate the transformation of Chaucer's work into the 21st Century, we should perform Agbabi's 'Telling Tales.

' So we can see that Agbabi was influenced by Chaucer's forming of language, to create her 21st Century tale.

Time for a quick pause.

So I would like you to do is jot down on your paper, what the L was on the right-hand side.

You can pause in three, two, one.

So we should have written down the language for that box.

Well done if you were able to remember that.

So finally, we move onto satire.

So Agbabi was inspired by Chaucer's satire to create her own satirical, 21st Century tale.

As a poetic echo, Agbabi's tales are also rich in satire, using humour to highlight the vices in her characters.

She too has a variety of pilgrims. She uses slang and text speak of the 21st Century, her modern English, her modern-day English, in her language.

She uses Chaucer's characters but gives them a twist by basing them on 21st Century life to create her satire.

But by using performance poetry, this allows her audience to hear all satire intended, as some is missed if we just read the poem in our head.

Once again, we're going to pause the video and jot down what that S word in the right-hand side box should be.

You can pause the video in three, two, one.

Perfect, so we should have written down satire there.

Which as we remember, is the use of humour or exaggeration to expose people's vices.

Now it's time for your main task for this lesson.

So you'll need to pause the video and complete these four fragmented sentences, by using the information you have learned today.

I will read through the sentences and then you can pause the video to complete these sentences.

Agbabi wrote 'Telling Tales' but Chaucer wrote, what? 'The Canterbury Tales 'was written about, blank.

The language In 'Telling Tales' is similar to the language in 'The Canterbury Tales' because, blank.

Performance poetry is when, blank.

Do you remember that you will probably need more than one word in order to finish these sentences.

So you can pause the video in three, two, one.

If you missed the pause, after the pause screen, the sentences will reappear for you to pause then instead.

Just as a reminder, these are the sentences you should have completed.

Number 1, Agbabi wrote 'Telling Tales' but Chaucer wrote, what? Number 2, 'The Canterbury Tales' was written about.

Number 3, the language in 'Telling Tales' is similar to the language in 'The Canterbury Tales' because.

Number 4, performance poetry is when.

So, here are some acceptable answers you could've come up with.

Don't worry if your wording is slightly different to mine.

Agbabi wrote 'Telling Tales' but Chaucer 'The Canterbury Tales'.

'The Canterbury Tales' was written about a group of pilgrims on a journey to Canterbury.

The language in 'Telling Tales' is similar to the language in 'The Canterbury Tales' because both poets use slang and dialect.

Performance poetry is when poetry is written, in order to be performed in front of an audience.

It is also known as spoken word poetry.

Okay, so that concludes today's lesson.

Well done for working so hard throughout the lesson.

The only thing you have to do next is complete your end of lesson quiz, which is on the screen.

In the next lesson, we will be meeting Agbabi's pilgrims. So I hope to see you then, where we get to know those characters.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

And tagging the @OakNational and use the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

Have a lovely day and stay safe.