This book stack is full of stories and the importance of storytelling, particularly one that link us to a place. There are three books that come out of Devon in England that rehydrate old tales connected to specific landmarks. There are books that illustrate (in a couple of cases, literally) the power of story to affect the world. And there are stories of memory and family history. It is a mix of graphic novels, poetry and prose storytelling. These books understand how to tell a story.
River Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland by Lisa Schneidau, The History Press, 2022
Scneidau has assembled a collection of stories rooted in the landscape of the British Isles. Covering Britain and Ireland with a focus on Devon where she lives, the stories reveal the origins of rivers, the spirits that haunt streams and pools and the animus Mundi of waterways. Her aim is to remind us of the soul of rivers. Through narrative dynamism she rekindles a reciprocal relationship to locality.
Dart by Alice Oswald, Faber and Faber, 2002
Oswald is a poet of place and silent resonance. Dart follows the river of that name from beginning to end. (See the above book for more lore emanating from that river). Oswald gives voice to those who work along the river, to the fish and to the rapids. It is a praise song that can serve as a model for another river system.
Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain by Amy Jeffs, Riverrun, 2022
Jeffs is an artist and a scholar of folklore. Going deep into the Old English elegies in the Book of Exeter, she rehydrates the stories with a first person perspective and enigmatic woodcuts. She searches for an old and wild Britain, at times conflating different stories. Each story contains a telling and then a commentary. They are arranged around themes such as “Earth", “Fen” and “Catastrophe”. Like the above books, it may be specific to Britain but it offers a model for engaging in other places through story.
Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko, Arcade Publishing 198
If you’ve read past essays you know Leslie Marmon Silko looms large for me. In Storyteller, she mixes mythic stories, autobiography, tribal history and photographs. The result is a kaleidoscopic sense of place and family. Through story, Silk reminds us that we connect to ancestry and land.
Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking by Tyson Yunkaporta, Text Publishing, 2023
Yunkaporta is an amiable writer. He is clear and funny, dead serious and prickly enough to never fall into sentimentality. In this new book, he talks about Right Story being the stories we construct as a society that can actually make change and Wrong Story; that which eats its own tale and causes destruction. To navigate his thinking he travels with bee keepers, computer programmers and economists. An essential read for thing about the stories that are shaping our cultural and political ecologies.
El Arte de Volar by Antonio Altarriba and Kim, Edicions de Ponent, 2007
Altarriba tells the story of his father who jumped out of a window to his death, His father lived through the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. The Art of Flying refers to the book's structure that uses each floor of the building he is falling from as an era in his life. Illustrated by Kim, the Spanish cartoonist it displays what comics do best: compress and expand narrative time. There is no English translation that I know of. It combines the specifics of the personal life with the grand sweep of historical forces.
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024
In a similar exploration of family, autobiography and history, Tessa Hulls’ debut graphic novel tells the story of her grandmother’s flight from Communist China. Stunningly rendered in black and white ink drawings, Hulls move through time and space effortlessly connecting, past present, fiction and memory.
Land of the Dead: Lessons from the Underworld on Storytelling and Living by Brian McDonald and Toby Cypress, First Second, 2023
A primer and a treatise in comics form about the centrality of the Underworld and death in storytelling. McDonald, a screen writer moves through world myths, folk tales and finally into popular novels and films to compare and contrast. He explores mythic motifs, psychological readings and literary devices. Cypress is a storytelling partner, not just an illustrator. He understands the power of the narrative image in storytelling.
THE GROUND BENEATH US AT BUILDING FIVE
STORYTELLING AND DRAWING WORKSHOP
COST : $400
Register at www.buildingfive.org
These workshops connect one’s innate creative spark with deep-time storytelling and straightforward drawing exercises. Oral storytelling and image making exercises are braided together into each session. We go deep into old stories and myths to examine how they speak to our lives in the present day. Each weekend begins with a telling of a story. We build drawing exercises around the images in each story. Through discussion, exercises and critique, each participant creates their own image world from the stories.
This course is for anyone interested in unlocking their visual storyteller: teachers, writers, artists and the narratively curious. This is not about technical prowess, but storytelling and expression. The drawing exercises do not require previous training. Participants come away having created their own story based in image and text; gaining tools for telling stories with pictures and thinking in mythic time.
Saturday and Sunday 10AM-4PM
JUNE 28-30, 2024:
River Stories
Stories from the Mabinogion, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Chinook stories about rivers, water spirits and the energy of moving water. We consider the energy of rivers at the Building Five site. History of the ironworks, the buried rivers of Portland and the Willamette and the Columbia.