The Tellery

2011 FOOL video

2011-12-01T18:59:00.001-08:00

2011 FOOL - festival of oral literatures

2011-11-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

Chaucer By Heart

2011-11-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

This article was first published in The New Quarterly.

Chaucer By Heart
Dan Yashinsky

Marvin Mudrick was my teacher at university. He taught English literature and creative writing at the College of Creative Studies (which he founded) at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Professor Marvin Mudrick is the reason why I have a particular affection for women’s "haunche-bones." This little-used term for a woman's thighs comes from a scene in Chaucer's Miller's Tale, and Professor Mudrick used to recite the passage with great relish and, we all assumed, expert knowledge:

That on a day this hende Nicholas
Fil with this yonge wyf to rage and pleye,
Whil that hir housbonde was at Oseneye,
As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte,
And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,
And seyde, "Ywis, but if ich have my wille,
For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille."
And heeld her harde by the haunche-bones ...

I can't vouch for the authenticity of his Middle English accent (I always thought it had a Philadelphia edge to it), but he certainly communicated Chaucer's supremely generous understanding of sex, desire, and good, good lovin'.
I ended up memorizing the Miller's Tale, all 600 lines of it, inspired by my friend Ellen Yeomans, another one of Mudrick's students in the late sixties. We were at the College of Creative Studies, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. One hot summer afternoon a few of us had climbed up Mission Canyon and were skinnydipping in one of the rock pools by Seven Falls. As we and the salamanders stretched out naked on the smooth stone, Ellen recited the entire, hour-long story. When I got back to Toronto, I spent a whole summer jamming every couplet into my faulty memory. I was driving around Ontario on a storytelling tour, so there were many hours on remote highways where I could talk to myself in the car, unafraid that other drivers would take me for a lunatic as I went over my lines.
Learning the Miller's Tale by heart is one of the most useful things I've ever done. Mudrick had a way of teaching literature that made it feel practical, important, as if novels, poems, and plays carried real weight in the world. As if it mattered that those pilgrims made their way to Canterbury, yarnspinning on the King's Highway; or that Boswell caught and commemorated Dr. Johnson's conversation; or that we ourselves, scratching away at fiction in his creative writing classes, were doing something of value in the late twentieth century, and sometimes something noble.
How is it useful knowing all that Middle English in my head? For one thing, I can recite Chaucer as I swim laps. If I swim a mile, I'm usually climbing out of the pool about the time Alisoun, the Carpenter's wife, and Nicholas, the horny student who rents a room in their house, are finally hopping into bed: "and ther was the revel and the melodye." The best use to which I put the poem was when our second son was in the neo-natal intensive care unit at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Once we got over the shock of catastrophe that attended his birth, I started sitting by his crib telling stories, reciting Chaucer, reading The Jungle Book and Just So Stories aloud and trying to convince him the world was too beautiful for a short visit. We used to say that, if he survived, his first words would either be "beep beep beep" from the ubiquitous monitors or "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote ..." Our son lived, thanks to the doctors and nurses and his own fierce courage, and we've wondered ever since if hearing a non-stop stream of words and stories -especially about love and desire, likerous young women and guys who know they'll spill if they don't get their fill - may have provided the beacon his soul needed to find its way in. I've heard that Buddhists chant sutras to the dying. Perhaps we need to sing lullabies and tell fairytales to the fragile babies in the NICU.
Another useful thing about knowing poems in your head is that you've got a stock of quotes that tend to pop up at life's odder moments. Sometimes when I'm not sure where someone is, I remember what the monk told Absolon, Alisoun's unlucky admirer, when he asked where John the Carpenter was: "Wher that he be, I kan nat soothly seyn." When I hear a friend has broken up with boyfriend or girlfriend, I remember what happened when Absolon falls quickly out of love with Alisoun after kissing her, not on her mouth, but in an unexpectedly rough and long yherd place, considerably south of her beautiful face: "His hoote love was coold, and al yqueynt."
Speaking of queynts, there are things you learn about a poem or story when you memorize it and say it out loud. As a storyteller, you catch the rhymes and echoes on your tongue, and that opens a new sense of the poem. For example, the Miller's Tale may be the only example in world literature of a quadruple entendre. The first entendre of one of Chaucer's favourite words is in the passage I quoted above, when we find out that Nicholas, the horny astrologer-clerk, has figured out his landlord is out of town and that voila, his gorgeous young wife has just come into his room: As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte; that is, cunning. He has pIanned his assault on her virtue well. In the very next line, just before Nicholas confesses his desire to Alisoun while holding her hard by her haunche-bones, he starts his courtship with a part of her anatomy just above them: "And prively he caughte hire by the queynte." She wasn't too impressed, at least not until he gan mercy for to crye, and spak so faire, and profred him so faste. We may well imagine just what he was proferring to convince her to become his lover. So the second queynte is what the Wife of Bath sweetly calls her belle chose. The third entendre shows up when the Carpenter, convinced by Nicholas that the flood is coming, runs to tell his beloved Alisoun the bad news. She's in on the plot, of course: And she was war, and knew it bet than he, what al this queynte cast was for to seye. In this context, it again means something like ingenious or clever. But what a splendid pun - for the trick they're playing on the stupid, jealous husband is indeed all about her queynte. The fourth change Chaucer rings on it comes in the line I quoted above, the one I remember when my friends' hearts are broken, as Absolon's hot love became instantly cold and, graphically, yqueynt: quenched. The same word rhymes with cleverness, cunt, ingenious, and quenched; and echoes the progress - or lack of it - of the protagonists seeking access to Alisoun's belle chose.
When you read it aloud, or tell it from memory, you quickly discover that Chaucer wrote for the ear. Apparently he would read his pieces aloud to the lords and ladies at court. Besides hearing the astonishing music in the language, it seems to me the stories unroll in a cinematic way when you say them out loud. Sometimes you realize that Chaucer has pointed his camera at angles and scenes the words only hint at. For example, after the Carpenter has entered Nicholas's room - after breaking down the door with his knave, "who was a strong carl for the nones" - he finds Nicholas sitting immobile, just as the knave described (he'd come up earlier and peeked in through a hole at the bottom of the door). After the Carpenter exhorts him to wake up and think on God "as we doon, men that swynke" - that is, work - Nicholas says that he'll reveal the terrible secret of the impending aquatic destruction of the world, but only and privately to John. He says, "Fecche me drynke, and after wol I speke in pryvetee of certeyn thyng that toucheth me and thee." As a teller of this story, I know exactly where he's looking as he says this line. Chaucer doesn't spell it out, but if you let your mind's eye dwell on the scene you'll catch a glimpse of the knave standing over by the now-doorless doorway. How could he tear himself away from the strange mise-en-scene? He's lurking there, hoping to find out why Nicholas was staring up into the air for two days straight, and especially hoping to hear the revelation that Nicholas has just promised to tell his boss, the good, dumb, hard-swynking Carpenter. As he tells the Carpenter to bring the beer that his apocalyptic secret requires, he glances over at the hovering, eavesdropping knave. "I wol telle it noon oother man, certeyn," he whispers to John, glaring at the strong carl who is by now scurrying away, daunted by Nicholas' baleful gaze.
It doesn't matter if this is in the text. Beyond Chaucer's words is the story, the world, if you will, where the various shenanigans of the Miller's Tale take place. In Tanzania, the traditional storytellers begin: "I have been and I have seen." Their audience calls back: "See so that we may see." Chaucer doesn't need to tell us where Nicholas is looking because he trusts that we, hearing the tale, are seeing it as fully and richly as our imaginations allow.
Another example of how telling the story releases new meaning comes early on, when we first meet Nicholas. He's a typical student, from the thirteenth or twenty-first century. He likes to jam on a stringed instrument, drink way too much beer, chase girls, dabble in things spiritual, and mooch off his friends. Describing his musical talents, Chaucer tells us:
And al above ther lay a gay sautrie,
On which he made a-nyghtes melodie
So swetely that al the chambre rong;
And Angelus ad virgenem he song;
And after that he song the kynges noote.
Ful often blessed was his myrie throte."

Generations of scholars, apparently, have struggled to figure out just what song "the kynges noote" may be. In the text Mudrick used, Chaucer's Major Poetry, edited by Albert C. Baugh, we learn in a footnote that "All attempts to identify this song or tune are unconvincing." However, if you've ever been a student, and sat around drinking beer and playing guitars or sautries, thinking of all the girls in town who may be angels or virgins or likerous eighteen-year-olds, but are, most of them, just plain unavailable, you'll know that this isn't a song at all. It's very likely that Nicholas - after singing his holy, seduction-worthy ballads - let go with a good, lonely-guy-in-his-bedroom burp. "The kynges noote" is Medieval slang for the slightly subversive rude noise that somehow needs to be expressed just after hymns, ballads, or reverences to distant authorities. Or it could be a fart. But I vote for a traditional undergraduate burp - and when better than after singing, lustily and longingly, Angelus ad virginem. Can I prove my theory? Of course not. But it seems to me true to the scene, to the character, to the story, and to my own memory of student life. So when I recite the Miller's Tale I imagine Nicholas's hearty burp. You'll see and hear your own mind-movie, of course.
Professor Mudrick used to teach us that Chaucer was the greatest poet in the history of literature, not only because he dwelled at the very wellsprings of the English language (all of its linguistic streams had come together recently, and are still audible in Middle English); not only because, Mozart-like, he was able to write with humour about terribly serious things; he was the greatest poet because he measured and expressed human life with the greatest and most compassionate moral compass. There was room for everyone on the pilgrimage. One little phrase gives a clue to this moral vision. Nicholas and Alisoun are in the midst of planning the ruse that will buy them a night of amorous bliss. It involves, you'll recall, convincing the Carpenter that a flood of Noah-like magnitude is coming, and that he must hang three tubs in the rafters so they can all escape the water. In plotting their trick, while the Carpenter was again out of town,
Hende Nicholas and Alisoun
Acorded been to this conclusioun,
That Nicholas shal shapen hym a wyle
This sely jalous housbonde to bigyle;
And if so be the game wente aright,
She sholde slepen in his arm al nyght,
For this was his desir and hire also.

The scene ends on a purely Chaucerian note. We're reminded that, yes, it was the impetuous Nicholas who initiated this affair, but it is, in fact, a mutual choice of intimacy. Without her sovereign decision to take him as her lover (and we know from the Wife of Bath that sovereynetee is the thing that all women most desire), love would not be possible. The last three words - and hire also - come almost as an afterthought, a throwaway line to cap the scene; but in Chaucer's moral universe they become a delicate reminder of the nature of true desire even in the middle of his bawdy yarn.
I was a student at the College of Creative Studies from its first year until 1972. Once I stopped being scared of him, I spent as much time as possible in Mudrick's classes and office. Chaucer led me to Homer, then on to Icelandic sagas, then into the world of storytelling. That journey has taken me to festivals and gatherings all around the world. I often think that Mudrick, who died in l986, was like Harry Bailly for his Californian literature students. Harry was the Keeper of the Taberd Inn on the high road to Canterbury, and it was his passion for stories that launches the Tales. Seeing this likely group of travellers show up at his Inn, he insists that each of them tell their own story - "tales of best sentence and moost solaas" - along the way: For trewely, confort ne myrthe is noon, to ride by the weye doumb as a stoon. Mudrick believed that a life lived without literature and music and art is indeed to live stoon-doumb.

FOOL - festival of oral literatures

2011-11-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

The 2011 FOOL - festival of oral literatures was a blast ... Check out www.foolfestival.ca for a video of this year's event.

The Mayor and the Storyteller

2011-08-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

This came out in the Toronto Star on Saturday, August 20. It's a storytelling take on the use of metaphor in politics, focussed on Toronto's current mayor, Rob Ford.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1041607--the-tale-of-rob-ford-and-how-he-s-lost-the-plot?bn=1

Your wild-haired, sockless storyteller

2011-05-09T07:28:00.000-07:00

This lovely article came out in The Star on Thursday, May 3. Catherine Porter dropped by with her amazing kid Lyla, and not only did they stay and listen for an hour, they did a great tandem telling. The storytent has been one of my favourite places to explore storytelling. Since I began, with support to Storytelling Toronto from the Metcalf Foundation, more than a thousand people have stopped by to talk story. It has been a true case of "build it and they will come ... and tell their stories!"

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2010 FOOL - festival of oral literatures video

2011-01-03T14:48:00.000-08:00

The 2010 FOOL - festival of oral literatures took place Oct. 21 - 24. I worked with co-founder/co-director Lisa Pijuan-Nomura and a great production team (Dave Pijuan-Nomura, Andrew Gooderham, Luigi Bianco, and my son Natty Zavitz) to bring this celebration of the arts of voice and story to more than 600 people. FOOL happened in houses, libraries, the JCC, Artscape Wychwood Barns, Na-Me-Res, and the Alliance Française. I hope you enjoy the video that Luigi Bianco, our videographer, put together.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDKn01ehe-U

Talking You In news

2010-12-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

Photo credit: Lori Ives-Baine, taken Oct. 30, 2010 at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Talking You In, the "canta storia" that I wrote with composer/musician Brian Katz has travelled quite a bit this fall. It is the story of a father who tells "emergency" stories to his baby son in the neo-natal intensive care unit. It is a kind of Scheherazade story, where voice and story make an essential link for parents trying to humanize the terrifying environment of the NICU. We performed it at the Barbican in London, England, as part of their Performance Storytelling series (curated by Crick Crack Club). We also did it as a keynote at the National Perinatal Conference, in Washington, DC. And we were delighted to present it at the launch of It Was Midnight On The Ocean - the neo-natal intensive care unit book of rhymes and stories, edited by Celia Barker Lottridge. This booklet was commissioned by the Hospital for Sick Children, in Toronto, as a way to develop their family-centred care approach. It was inspired by the interest of staff and NICU parents in Talking You In, and I was honored to work with Celia, Dr. Jonathan Hellmann (Clinical Chief, NICU), and Jonathan Blumberg (whose Sasha Bella Fund, named in memory of his daughter, provided funding). The launch was a fundraiser for Parent-Child Mother Goose program, which was a partner in the booklet project.

Talking You In continues its journey through the critical care community. In Washington, a woman who works in an NICU and also had had a child born in one commented afterwards that the story allowed her to cry for the first time since her son was born. I asked how old he was, and she answered, "Twenty-one."

If you'd like to listen to a demo of Talking You In (recorded 2 1/2 years ago), please write to dan.yashinsky@sympatico.ca and I'll send it to you as a zipped mp3 file.

2010-10-07T19:56:00.001-07:00

My friend Lisa Pijuan-Nomura and I are pleased (and surprised: she and Dave had their baby Max Antonio 5 weeks ago, and then he needed an operation from which, thank goodness, he's recovering well) to announce that the second edition of FOOL - festival of oral literatures is starting soon. This is a celebration of the arts of voice and story, and it brings together storytellers, performance poets, theatre artists, tradition-keepers, and dancers who use narrative. You may remember from last year that FOOL happens in house concerts and at the Artscape Wychwood Barns; this year we've added Alliance Française, the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, Palmerston Library. As we did last year, the first two nights will wind up with an after-party at Terrazza Restaurant, on Harbord just east of Ossington. Our special guests this year include Laura Simms (New York), one of North America's greatest storytellers; Hilary Peach, an incredible performance poet from Gabriola Island; our good friend Alan Shain, spinning poignant hilarity from his wheelchair; Éric Gauthier, a fine young teller from Québec; and we even have a surprise guest: the wonderful Regina Machado, from Sao Paulo, Brazil - founder/director of Boca do Ceu International Storytelling Festival.

For all of the program info and to order tickets (highly recommended due to the intimate size of some of the venues), please visit www.foolfestival.ca.

I'm doing four things this year as a teller and teacher. On Thursday, Oct. 21, I'm telling with Éric and Regina at Sagatay (Native Men's Residence), on Vaughan Road south of St. Clair. I performed there last year, and the front room is a magical, firelit hall, with a trace of sweetgrass in the air. I'm telling a new story titled Stormfool's Cool Gig, a pretty wild tall tale about a freelance storyteller who gets the best job in the world. I just did it at the Israel Storytelling Festival in Ramat Gan. Lots of fun. Regina will be telling stories from Afro-Brazilian traditions, and Éric brings his surreal Montreal yarns and a great retelling of the story of Ganesh.

On Saturday morning, Oct. 23, I'm hosting Bread and Stories at the Barns from 10 - 12 at farmers' market at the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Some of you know this is a regular gig for me, while I've been working as Storytelling Toronto's Storyteller-in-Residence this year. On Oct. 23 I'll be joined by my friends Celia Lottridge, Adwoa Badoe, Dahlia Eagle-Ellis, and Gurpreet Chana for a morning of stories and music. It's free, and we'd love to have you come out to the market.

That afternoon, from 1 - 3 pm, I'm co-teaching, with photographer Dave Pijuan-Nomura, a workshop titled See So That We May See. This is an exploration of how storytellers can "see" and re-imagine their stories, discovering what lies beyond the text. Dave and I will be asking participants to visualize their stories in a cinematic way. Should be fun and challenging. Bring your mind's eye and your imaginary cameras.

And on Sunday, Oct. 24, we're doing And The Story Changed Everything, from 5 - 6:30 pm at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre. This session includes Laura Simms, Alan Shain, the great jazz/klezmer/improv guitarist Brian Katz, Regina Machado, and me. Brian and I will be performing Talking You In, the piece we do about a father telling stories to his son in the neo-natal intensive care unit. (If you can't make it on the 24th, we're doing it again at the Hospital for Sick Children on Oct. 30 as part of a fundraiser for Parent-Child Mother Goose Program.)

Besides these events, FOOL is full of great house concerts, a main-stage gala on Saturday night, FOOL en français (at the Alliance Française), and a very funny show on Sunday afternoon (3 -5 pm) at Palmerston Library, which features National Theatre of the World, the greatest improv troupe in Canada.

Hope to see you at some or all of these FOOL sessions!

2010-08-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Performed at The Music Garden with the great mbira virtuous Rainos Mutamba and my all-time guitar wizard friend Brian Katz. We did dilemma stories from around the world. The weather was rainy all day, but cleared just in time for the show. Storytelling magic? The Music Garden, on Queen's Quay just east of Bathurst St., is one of the most wonderful venues for live performance in the city. Our show was the first time they'd presented storytelling. Everyone (most of all us!) was amazed at the big crowd that came out. The photo of me perching on a rock is by my friend Dolores Steinman.

2010-07-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'll be at Toronto's wonderful Music Garden with two great musicians - Brian Katz, guitarist, and Rainos Mutamba, mbira player - on August 8 at 4 pm. We're doing The King's Feast, a concert of dilemma tales, riddles, jazz, and traditional Zimbabwean music. The show is free - hope to see you there.

Other performance news:
Brian Katz and I are taking Talking You In, our canta storia about a father telling stories to his baby in the neo-natal intensive care unit, to the Barbican (October 15, and to The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, October 16. We are then keynoting with Talking You In at the National Perinatal Association in Washington in early November.

I'll be travelling to the Israel Storytelling Festival September 23 - 30 (with support from the Canada Council for the Arts). I'm doing a talk about the art of storytelling, and a performance of Stormfool's Cool Gig, a new "tall tale" about a freelance storyteller who gets the best gig in the world.

And as of August 6, I'm back in the Storytent at farmers' market at the Artscape Wychwood Barns (601 Christie St., 2 south of St. Clair Avenue West), trading yarns with anyone who drops by from 10 am - 1 pm. Come by and we'll "talk story."

2010-07-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Can a folktale go viral? The Tellery and Center for Digital Storytelling have done our second storytelling video. This is part of the Future Folklore project. The story is based on a traditional legend found in several northern countries. You can read my own version of it in Suddenly They Heard Footsteps - Storytelling for the Twenty-first Century, as part of a longer story titled The Storyteller At Fault. For our Youtube telling, the story is told in the second person present tense. Hope you enjoy it! Jennifer Lafontaine (Director of the Toronto branch of Center for Digital Storytelling) and I had fun finding the location. It's a small park north of Queen Street near Leslie. We were amazed to find the rock with the word "spirit" carved into it - very appropriate for this story.

Future Folklore Part 1

2010-04-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

Lost Rivers of Toronto update

2010-03-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

My son Nathaniel Zavitz and I are working on a script for a movie titled Lost Rivers of Toronto. It is a triple love story, a comedy, and an exploration of the things about Toronto we love the most. I'll post updates about the development of this film as they happen. It is currently being considered by a producer. Storytelling and film share one artistic imperative: suspense. Natty and I are both passionate about the principle, "Never play an ace when a two will do." As a kid he once commented (about a movie called Finding Forrester), "They left too little unknown." This is still the best criticism I've ever heard, of film, storytelling, or any other artform. Stay tuned to more news about Lost Rivers!

Future Folklore Project on Youtube

2010-01-21T07:01:00.001-08:00

I'm working with Jennifer Lafontaine, at the Center for Digital Storytelling, on the Future Folklore Project. It's an experiment to see if folktales can go viral on the web. Our first video - "You're walking on a dark road ..." - has been entered into the Cuentocorto storytelling video contest (wish us luck!). Here's the link: http://storycentre.wordpress.com. Or just search Future Folklore on Youtube. Instead of doing a presentational approach, with the viewer/listener a spectator of a taped performance, Future Folklore puts folktales into the second person present tense. "You" are the hero of the story. My aim is to shake up the frame a bit, to subvert the distancing forces of camera, screen, geographic isolation. And also to have fun by telling stories in a new way. We'll be launching 10 folktales over the next few months. Who knows? Maybe one of them will get zapped and forwarded around the world.

Storytelling on Quadra Island CD

2009-10-12T17:26:00.000-07:00

This summer I was on Quadra Island, on the east coast of Vancouver Island. I'd gone there to interview Robert Bringhurst, poet and scholar of oral tradition (not to mention designer, typographer, and translator of Haida mythology). My old friend Ron Evans, a great traditional storyteller and Metis oral historian, was also on Vancouver Island, with José Brown, his ceremonial apprentice and storytelling companion. The stars aligned in such a way that we were all able to stay at Heron Guest House, on Heriot Bay, on Quadra Island. While there, we had a storytelling soirée, hosted by Linda Inrig, the keeper of the guest house. She ordered oysters (from across the bay) and put the wine on to chill, and, despite a downpour, about a dozen people, two dogs, and a ring-neck dove gathered in her living room. I recorded the stories, and am delighted that a double-CD is now available. Storytelling on Quadra Island is an unusual CD. Along with our mix of traditional, personal, and historical stories, you'll hear the hiss of the fire, the rain on the roof, the dogs padding across the floor, a very squeaky chair, the ocean a few metres away, and the dove (who seems to come in right on cue). It was a wonderfully intimate time and place for storytelling, and I only realized afterwards that the recording would work as a CD. Ron and I have known each other for more than thirty years. He's one of my true storytelling heroes. It was an honour and a huge delight to swap stories back and forth with him. We hope, if you listen to Storytelling on Quadra Island, some of this friendship, spontaneity, and joy comes through. To order, write to: dan_yashinsky@hotmail.com OR use the Paypal buttons on the CD page. They're available for $25 Cdn. plus postage.

F.O.O.L. - festival of oral literatures

2009-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Delighted to announce the first-ever F.O.O.L. - festival of oral literatures, which I'm co-directing with good friend and amazing storyteller Lisa Pijuan-Nomura. Please drop by www.foolfestival.ca for the full schedule. It runs Oct. 22 - 25, in house concerts, a farmers' market, The Barns, and Bread and Circus at Kensington Market. We would love to see you there! Lots of experimental storytelling, dance, spoken word, dub poetry, and two of the finest mbira players this side of Zimbabwe.

Article coming out in JEU revue de théâtre

2009-04-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

JEU, a theatre journal in Québec, asked me to write an article about the Festival interculturel du conte de québec, founded and directed by my friend Marc Laberge. They wanted the perspective of someone from outside the quebeçois storytelling movement. I've been a big fan of storytelling in Québec, both in French and English, ever since I heard the incomparable Jocelyn Bérubé thirty years ago. Until I met Jocelyn, I had never dreamed that the art of storytelling could be so rooted in traditional stories and so avant-garde at the same time. He remains, for me, one of my all-time storytelling heroes - one of the greatest lyric storytellers in the world. Over the last thirty years, the storytelling renaissance has developed rapidly, and one of the places where it has found the richest soil is Québec. Storytellers there are experimenting with repertoire, performance styles, audiences, venues - and as a result they have attracted some wonderful younger tellers.

The piece is called Les fusées improbables: notes sur le Festival interculturel du conte de Québec, (translated by Michel Vaïs) and is coming out in the next issue of JEU (www.revuejeu.org), which is devoted to storytelling.

Radio documentary on CBC Radio Tapestry

2009-04-16T06:36:00.000-07:00

CBC Radio One's show Tapestry recently aired (on Easter Sunday) a radio documentary about my experience as a father with a baby in the neo-natal intensive care unit at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Ines Colabrese was the producer, and she brought together extensive interviews to create a fifteen-minute piece. It includes the remarkable story of my neighbour, Liliane Scarpellino, who brought across the street her life-affirming story just when we most needed to hear it. You can catch the documentary at CBC's archives: http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2009/041209.html

This was the hospital experience that led to the creation of Talking You In, a canta storia about storytelling in the NICU, which is set to the music of Brian Katz.

Stories and Borders

2009-02-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Found this while I was digging around my UNICEF files. A few years ago I was UNICEF Canada's storyteller-in-residence. I still like this short description.

STORIES AND BORDERS

“The story is our escort,” says African writer Chinua Achebe, reminding us that today’s world is full of borders. They are drawn on maps and in minds. They separate countries, groups, and generations. But stories escort us into new territory. They carry a safe-conduct and pass freely through every frontier. A story can begin in English, travel for awhile in Ojibway, grow Arabic roots, wear Xhosa robes, and wind up in Chinese. Aladdin came to Quebec and became a trickster named Ti-Jean. Wherever stories are told and valued, they help humans communicate the things that most need to be remembered. “You must invent your own literature,” writes Vivian Paley about a class of four-year-olds (in The Boy Who Would Be A Helicopter) “if you are to connect your ideas to the ideas of others.” Stories cross time as well as geography, sharing their wisdom across generations. A story, they say, is a letter sent to us from yesterday. When we receive it we add our own message and send it on to tomorrow. Long before humans fought over borderlines in the sand, we laughed together at storylines around a shared fire. Story is our first language, our universal Mother Tongue.

Check out The New Quarterly winter issue

2009-01-28T10:12:00.001-08:00

The winter issue of The New Quarterly has just come out. I have a piece in it called Chaucer By Heart. It is a tribute to Marvin Mudrick, my literature professor at the College of Creative Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara. It is also about the value of knowing poetry by heart, in this case, the Miller's Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. At one point in my life, I memorized the whole thing, all 600 lines of rhyming Middle English couplets. This is probably the most useful thing I've ever done. Having that much Chaucer in my head has proven to be an excellent companion on the road, good counsel at troubling moments, and a great way to get through my laps in the swimming pool. Check out www.tnq.ca to find out more about this fine Canadian literary journal.

News from Grant Land

2008-11-04T16:41:00.000-08:00

Just received the welcome news that I was given a Chalmers Arts Fellowship from the Ontario Arts Council. The grant will fund a year's worth of travel, research, thinking, and storytelling around the theme of whether a new myth is coming to life through the voices of the contemporary storytelling renaissance. There's a Gaelic saying that "every force evolves a form." I'm curious to explore the nature of the force that evolved the form of modern storytelling. The grant will help me travel to Hudson Bay to talk to Pennishish about his Omushkego myth-cycles; to Sao Paulo to talk to Regina Machado, one of the world's great thinkers about story; to British Columbia to spend time with Robert Bringhurst. I'm also hoping to interview Laura Simms, Sean Kane, Ursula LeGuin, Kay Stone, Bruno de la Salle, Ben Haggarty, and other storytellers, scholars, and imaginers. Not quite sure what the fruit of this journey will be - maybe an audio journal, or series of talks/tellings, or essay. 1,001 thanks to the Chalmers family for endowing the fellowship, and to Ontario Arts Council for helping artists undertake new adventures.

2008-10-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

Check out the National Post on October 16 to read my gentle revenge on CBC radio. Itah Sadu and I pitched a storytelling show to their new program development committee, but the pilot episode had too many folktales for their taste. Today, Yashinsky strikes back! Link: www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=883210

Storytelling with Nexus Percussion ensemble

2008-10-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

From October 8 - 10 I'm performing with the great percussion ensemble Nexus at a symposium called Talking Drum, at the University of Toronto. We're doing a mix of material, including A Praise for Listener, set to their mbira piece "Tongues." This praise-poem is from my book Suddenly They Heard Footsteps - Storytelling for the Twenty-first Century, from the chapter titled "Dreaming A New Myth." We're also doing How Heart Came Into the World, set to cow-bell accompaniment, and The Land of Those Who Were Thrown Away, a story from Zimbabwe that Nexus improvises behind. It could be every storyteller's dream to jam with these astonishing musicians. Final performance in this series is Friday, October 10, 7:30, at Walter Hall, Faculty of Music, St. George campus of University of Toronto.

Storytelling in Holland

2008-10-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

From October 17 - 19 I'll be at the Amsterdam Storytelling Festival (www.storytellingfestival.nl), performing Talking You In with musician/composer Brian Katz. Talking You In is a modern "canta storia" - a poetic text set to music - about a father telling stories to a baby in the neo-natal intensive care unit. We're also doing The Roussalka, a wonderful story by American writer Rebecca Boroson, set to Brian's Jewish-themed improv, and the Japanese story Urashima Taro, also with musical accompaniment. I'm delighted to be able to collaborate with such an exceptional musician. The festival takes place in ships at a wharf in Amsterdam. My Dutch storytelling friends Mia Verbeelen and Ernst Weerstra are involved in planning it. I'm also teaching a workshop called The Red Thread of the Story - Exploring Narrative Suspense for a mix of professional and recreational storytellers.

Telling Bee is going international

2008-08-31T19:27:00.001-07:00

Two friends from Germany, Martin Ellrodt and Suse Weiss, are both adapting the Telling Bee for use in German schools. The Canadian approach, where children collect stories from parents, step-parents, and grandparents doesn't always work in a society where older people can still be very guarded about their personal history. But Martin and Suse have found innovative ways to turn the students into adept hunters and gatherers of stories. Martin recently sent me a book of stories in German from his first Telling Bee. This idea and program is available to any storyteller who wants to use it. Check out the guidelines on this website, or contact me directly.

Fabula Festival in Stockholm

2008-08-31T19:24:00.001-07:00

I'll be performing at the Fabula Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, September 19 - 21. Check out http://www.fabulafestival.se for details. This festival was founded by Mats Rehnman, a good friend and wonderful storyteller and visual artist. I'll be telling Mister Globus and Laughing Boy, and also sharing the stage for a session called "Emergency Storytelling" with my friend Noa Baum. She is doing some remarkable work with storytelling by Israeli and Palestinian women.

Toronto Star interview

2008-08-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't catch it, here's part of an interview I gave to journalist Diane Flacks for the Toronto Star on August 16 ("Storytelling in the neonatal unit"):

For the past 30 years, Dan Yashinsky has travelled all over the world as a storyteller, author, teacher and radio host.

He has learned that "storytelling is not only an entertaining way to pass the time, it is also an art that can mend broken souls." Including his own.

In August 1991, Yashinsky's second child, Jacob, was born with an Apgar score of 2 out of 10. Two is the lowest score you can get in the Apgar measurement of newborn responsiveness and still be alive.

Jacob became a patient in the neonatal intensive care unit. He was limp, barely breathing, white and waxy-looking. Yashinsky describes him as "a scrap of humanity washed up on the soil of the NICU."

Sixteen years later, in a Toronto coffee shop, Yashinsky hands me a CD of his latest piece, Talking You In, a story (with musical accompaniment by Brian Katz) about Jacob's three weeks in the Hospital for Sick Children's neonatal ICU.

On the CD, Yashinsky rightly calls the intensive care experience one of rush and reverie.

After Jacob was born, the doctors immediately rushed him into a recovery room. Yashinsky and his wife, Carol Zavitz, were in shock, but she was able to insist that they name this baby.

Yashinsky explains now, "We wanted everyone to know he is here as part of a family. He has been noticed."

As the chaos whizzed around them, they whispered the name together: Jacob.

Yashinsky also reached out physically. "I felt instinctively that I must make a connection to wherever his soul is. The image in my mind was that he was somewhere out there, real scared and really lost. And even if he died that night, I needed him to have been touched and named."

For the rest of the interview, see www.thestar.com/article/477212.

Storm Fool's chronicle

2008-02-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

In putting together the piece-meal, crazy quilt career of a storyteller, many misadventures can occur. This afternoon I loaded many books into a knapsack, picked up one of my talking sticks, slung my normal shoulder bag over my ... and set off to a school where I was going to do a session for parents. I took the streetcar to the subway, and the subway to the school. I was early. Some puzzled caretakers told me that yes, the school was open that night, but no, they hadn't heard about a special meeting. I went for a coffee at Tim Horton's on Yonge St. north of Lawrence. I scribbled a few notes about the session in my journal. Then hurried back for my session. When I finally found the vice-principal on the second floor of the school, she looked at me and said, "Hi Dan. We're expecting you on Feb. 21!" I hadn't crossed out the first booking when we re-booked, as I discovered when I got home. So back on the subway, streetcar; back through the very snowy streets. Is this a sign? And, if so, what does it signify? Funny enough, none of it made me cross or even impatient. Sometimes "storm fools" arrive before their audiences!

Welcome to The Tellery blog

2008-02-01T15:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks for dropping by. This is where I'll be posting information about forthcoming appearances, special projects and recent publications, just to keep you, the friends of The Tellery, informed.