posted 16 October 2005 06:01 PM                   

I find it really compelling when I see someone who is good at doing it. It's a real artform.

posted 17 October 2005 10:41 PM                

i'm excited to see RPN launch and glad to be a part of it. Since podcasting first exploded onto the digital scene i've thought of doing a storytelling show. I'm not sure about how oral storytelling can work best on radio or podcast - CBC has had two attempts (Ricardo Keens Douglas' show Cloud Nine which lasted about 2 years at the beginning of the 90s; and Dan Yashinsky's show Talking Stick which ran for 8 episodes a few summers back). I realized as an adult that the culture i grew up in most was, in fact, almost exclusively oral. How so, in our so, so literate world, you ask? Okay, so i'm the one asking (how rhetorical of of). I'm Acadian. Alas, living in a kind of exile in Toronto. But i recall growing up in Dieppe and realized that Acadian french is almost exclusively oral. When we were taught to write we were taught "proper" french. Antonin Maillet has made a bit of a difference to this and there are numerous collections of tales collections taken down in the Chiac that we spoke when i was a child. But the vibrancy of Acadian culture is to be found largely in the spoken word. All that to say that i love orality. And i love a well-told tale. And i plan to use Comeuppance to share the stories i love to tell and to feature some of the incredible diversity of storytelling happening across Canada. I also want to talk about storytelling - both the oral practice of it as well as the nature of narrative, the way stories have been used to teach and pass on culture and so on. I welcome debate and dialogue and even requests - both for research and for telling.