Legendary storyteller Martin Shaw on his retelling of one of the greatest Irish myths

In this interview we catch up with storyteller and Poetics of Imagination lecturer Dr Martin Shaw ahead of his retelling of the classic Irish myth The Pursuit of Dermot and Grainne at Dartington on 11 February.
A princess with wolf blood in her veins chooses love over protocol and a kingdom erupts. This electrifying tale is a hinge between the end of the pagan age and the beginning of the Christian. Thrilling, funny, heartrending, and complex, we are flung headlong into the exhilaration of an ancient story, telling us something directly about the lives we live today.
Martin Shaw is an internationally renowned storyteller, writer, and mythologist. Dr Shaw founded the Oral Tradition course at Stanford University and is Course Leader on the Dartington Art School’s MA Poetics of Imagination. Author of many books, he is Director of the West Country School of Myth.
Book tickets for Martin's retelling of Dermot and Grainne here: www.dartington.org/event/the-...
Find out more about the Poetics of Imagination Master's at Dartington Arts School, which Martin runs along with the poet Alice Oswald, via this link: campus.dartington.org/poetics-of-imagination/

[@tomsawyer2338]

Sitting here by the fire in North America listening to the story.

[@shellhawkens]

Will there ever be a way to listen to Martin tell this story if we aren’t lucky enough to hear it in person? I would pay dearly for it, and be far richer in so doing.

[@beatriceschmid9]

Thanks a million for this opportunity to go deeper into this story. For the first time, I read about Fionn MacCuill and Grainne and Diarmuid in Germany. I think it is a the book by Morgan Llywelyn and it completely captured me. I had never been to Ireland before but when I moved there years later, the stories came to live. At the same time, Grimm's fairy tales stopped being present. There's no way to connect to Snowhite or Little Red Riding Hood between crooked whitethorns. I finally understood how entangled myth, stories and land are. I lived in Sligo, and as you said, parts of the story play in the area. If you walk at the foot of Ben Bulben you cannot help but to let you eyes wander the open wide grassland and meadows and look out for a deer and a little boy playing between the reeds or check for caves and stones where Grainne and Diarmuid where sleeping. The land carries a memory and you can dip in and breathe it and feel the heart beat of the journey.