Walking with My Iguana

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Brian Moses has been a professional children’s poet since 1988.. To date he has over 200 books published including volumes of his own poetry such as A Cat Called Elvis and Lost Magic: The Very Best of Brian Moses (both Macmillan), anthologies such as The Secret Lives of Teachers and Aliens Stole My Underpants (both Macmillan) and picture books such as Beetle in the Bathroom and Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe (both Puffin).

He is also founder & co-director of a national scheme for able writers administered by his booking agency Authors Abroad. Intentionally, I have not included the whole of the poems in this blog as some of them are fairly long. The whole versions are all easily found for free online. Ask children to note what is going on in each section. What do we learn about the iguana and how it behaves: from the way it is described? and from the way people react to it? Role playing questions.This poem was written by Brian Moses to celebrate an unusual sighting on the beach at Hastings, where he lives. Year 3 and 4 used it to think about animal movement and adverbs, and had a go at performing it themselves. Opportunities for PSHE are also here i.e. what can precipitate confrontation between family members and how can that be resolved? There is lots of great vocabulary to explore here which gives could give children the impetus to find out more about Georgian England. The relatively simple rhythm and rhyme scheme makes it easy for children to write and add in their own verses perhaps supplying the poem with a new and happier ending!?

Moses originally wanted to be a musician. [1] That original musical influence can still be heard in his work; he performs so that pauses, tone of voice and speed become a central part of the poem, such as the hiss in "The Snake Hotel" or the Tom Waits growl in "Walking with my Iguana". As well as just learning for the sheer joy and enjoyment it brings, performance poems can have additional and powerful fringe benefits. They can, for example, be a great way to inspire children to write their own verses or new poems, they can be an introduction to new and exciting vocabulary and could also be the catalyst that sparks an exciting and informative debate on contentious issues relevant in the KS1 and 2 classrooms. They can also ultimately be the inspiration for all different genres of writing including plays, interviews, diary entries, stories and much much more. To find out more about Brian Moses and his poetry, visit his blog at http://brian-moses.blogspot.co.uk/ and be inspired by his and others’ performance poems. I would share a couple of performance audio clips but refrain from doing so as I no longer am at the school (it being one of my placement schools) and I don’t have permission of the parents to share anything online, even if it is only their voice. What primary classroom would be complete without Please Mrs Butler? Let’s face facts, this poem is virtually your birth right if you are in junior school and is certainly a poem that every teacher should read to their children. It’s iconic, it’s cheeky and it’s fun- what more could we ask for?

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Where does poetry end and song begin? It’s hard to tell in Brian Moses’ poetry – and you certainly have to listen to his performances to get the full effect! Brian skillfully weaves percussion with the rhythms of the poem, and makes full use of pitch, pace and pause and bring out the drama. Listen to the way he relishes every syllable. I needed to do something or run the risk of losing the children’s engagement and probably the result I wanted from my entire placement as first impressions always count!

This was an important learning experience for me but also, I’m sharing this because it is a great poem. I am aware, like my poem-deriding colleague from earlier, that poetry can be dull – but only if it is made dull. And this is the same with any topic/theme/skill I think…although fractions I’m still working on! 😉Brian Moses (born 1950) is an English poet. He mainly writes for children, has over 200 published works and is a children's poet. His poetry books and anthologies for Macmillan have sold in excess of 1 million copies. Moses was asked by CBBC to write a poem for the Queen's 80th birthday.