Jo Blake: What Does Myth Do Anyway? #3
”Flowers become flesh becomes bird…”
The first guest on our show is Jo Blake, a performer working across the disciplines of storytelling, theatre and dance. She has written a PhD about her project of unearthing the mythological character Blodeuwedd (flower-face/owl) from the depths of the Mabinogion – a medieval Welsh text regarded as one of the oldest and most complete repositories of British Celtic Myth.
We talk about mythic ambiguity, female trickster figures and the importance of making the wrong choice…among many other things!
Jo Blake’s website
Video trailer for Jo’s performance Blodeuwedd Untold
Pdf about Jo’s storytelling course Body, Breath & Story
REFERENCES
Four Branches of the Mabinogi (Blodeuwedd is in the Fourth Branch)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Branches_of_the_Mabinogi
Robert Bly
Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
LWA (Vodou)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lwa
The sword from the lake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_the_Lake
Snorri’s Edda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda
Voluspa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Völuspá
In the Beginning was the Scream by Henning Kure
Ben Haggarty on commentary – Extract 3: The Storyteller’s Grammar
Book: Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/sand-talk
Odin on the world tree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil
Book: Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56450.Trickster_Makes_This_World
Carl Jung
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
Numinous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous
Book: The Soul’s Code by James Hillman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/970831.The_Soul_s_Code
Torgrim Mellum Stene’s poem The Fall
Marie-Louise von Franz