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Classical Stories and Fantasy: The Birder and Other Tales · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Mythbakers. Mythbakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today
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  I am joined by a very special guest who I met in our favourite town of Oxford and that
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  is Dr. Lorna Robinson. Now I invited Lorna onto the podcast because she has a number of interesting
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  strings to her bow, not just as a writer herself but also through her work in education. So Lorna
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  is the founder of the Iris project which takes information exposure to the classical world
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  and it's myths into state schools in the UK and she's also the founder director of the Rumble
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  Museum which is a very unusual project in that it's a credited museum but actually in a school in
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  Oxford and that is the Cheney School. So if you know anything about Oxford that's up towards
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  where CS Lewis lived on the road up to the road to Heddington, a large state school. Anyway so
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  welcome to Lorna. Thank you I'm really delighted to be on the podcast today and looking forward to having a chance.
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  Yeah so Lorna is actually if you're looking at this on YouTube she's actually sitting in her museum in the
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  school so lots of all sorts of creative things like scissors and interesting artifacts behind her so a
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  creative space within a school. So Lorna let me ask you first what took you in the direction of I
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  suppose spreading the good news about classical myths for this generation and why you think it's
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  important to do so. I guess if I wanted to trace it right back to its inception it was someone
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  giving me an us-born book of Greek myths and legends when I was about seven years old I think
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  that's where the journey started because I remember the completely enamored with stories that I
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  met there and it has so many that know the book might seem to look at these amazing illustrations of
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  like Medusa and the Minotaur and things like that. So I think I was scripted from quite an early age
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  and then I was fortunate enough to study Latin at secondary school and it was too learning Latin
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  and then later ancient Greek but I found my love of classics deepened. Went on study here at Oxford
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  University did my first degree in classics and then a doctorate in orbits metamorphosis. This
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  amazing poem that we'll probably talk about a bit later on and this literary movement magical
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  realism which I was really interested in and it was around that time I was supporting my doctorate
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  like a lot of people doing with teaching and I discovered therefore that I really loved teaching
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  I really loved talking about classics and telling young people about classics and that I was
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  aware that the jobs that I could get were all in private schools at the time and that was something
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  that I suppose was kind of quite deeply on my mind that I was aware of the limitations of access
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  to classics and this subject that I loved so much and I guess I knew I wanted to be involved
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  in broadening it I didn't just want to kind of stay teaching in private schools I wanted to sort
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  of do something that was a bit wider and so I came up with this idea of setting up a charity
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  that I called the Iris project up to Iris the message that got us the travels on a rainbow
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  and it started off with a magazine that was designed called Iris magazine and it was assigned
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  to present classics in imaginative and creative ways and we sent three copies to state schools
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  and we sold it to private schools so that was the model of it and then gradually we started
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  running projects in state primary and secondary schools looking at storytelling of myths to teach
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  Latin and then many years later I set up a community classic centre at Cheney School a big
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  complex school as you mentioned in headings in a new Oxford and since then about 20 years really
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  it's been the base for a lot of the activities and teaching that I do a bit of a potty history there
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  yeah so quite a lot of our listeners are over in the US so just to explain the sort of state
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  private thing here the state education sector is where the vast majority of people go
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  and the private system they will have heard of schools like Eton and those kind of places
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  better resourced and that's where classics and classical languages tend to still get taught
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  so it is regarded as a bit of an elite subject which is odd really because I was about to say that
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  I think this current generation if my own children I think to go by actually know a huge amount
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  about classical stories through very new roots so they know about it from playing various
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  video games and in the world of reading they know about it from the Rick Reardon
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  Percy Jackson series but also they read Attica's The Storyteller you know another of these
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  collections of books stories and I think that they probably don't need an awful lot of persuading
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  about how relevant it is because they'll be at you can point to programs on TV I mean there was
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  a recent series called Chaos wasn't there which was another version of this so when you're
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  talking to young people what's the starting point of their knowledge do you find do you get some
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  kids you know absolutely more than you I find that sometimes going around schools or is there
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  are you often starting from zero with people trying to actually explain the classical world
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  yeah so it's a big mix uh definitely I will occasionally come across students that have like
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  obsessively read every variation of Greek myths and they'll be like oh but miss what about this
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  and so that got kind of an intimate knowledge but equally I will meet students that have arrived
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  for Cheney that weren't prepared at the minotaur or kind of stories that I always sort of associate
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  with lots of children knowing and that's partly we Cheney is a very diverse catchment and you get
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  children from lots of different backgrounds so there's sort of quite a mix of knowledge of
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  classics that comes from different backgrounds so but you're absolutely right I think that
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  there are things like the Percy Jackson novels things like Harry Potter those have got
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  young children really kind of interested in stories and myths that are connected to classics they
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  might not necessarily realize in case of Harry Potter for example which ones you know the like
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  which which things are connected to myth and which aren't but it's they're aware of of
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  classical stories and of Latin and they're interested in it so I would say that I never
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  experienced any kind of negativity about classics from children whereas very occasionally from
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  parents who have had negative experiences at school because Latin I think for a while it was
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  compulsory for everyone before the school system changed and it was probably talking quite an
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  old fashioned way and put some people off so so I do occasionally get those sort of negative
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  reactions from people who are older but from children it's just like wow this is really cool stuff
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  we love these stories we read these books um or they might know nothing but as soon as they hear
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  the stories they're really interested because we wouldn't be they're really great stories
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  and I suppose it's also a bit like being aware of let me guess uh King James Bible underlying so
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  much of literature and poetry that if you want to understand the history of culture you need to
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  understand what a reference to Cerberus might mean or a reference to humanities or I mean you can
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  go through pick your pick your poison in the sort of sort of mythical world because it's given
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  rise to so many retellings or metaphors or images in poetry or references in Shakespeare that if you
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  don't have some of the big hitters under your belt like Icarus or something like that then you
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  will be missing out on a huge range of enriching cultural references yeah yeah I think that's
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  definitely true I think it's sort of I mean I definitely think the stories in their own ride
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  even without that knowledge are really interesting but but knowing the layers of storytelling that
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  lie beyond um adds this this enriching um aspect to it and I kind of I love I love the children's
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  faces when they realize some of the kind of backstories things that they're aware of as well so it's
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  like this this moment of enlightenment and um I am one of the reasons I was really drawn I think
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  within classics even before the classical reception of today where there's lots of retellings
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  even in the period itself the Roman authors for example they were always trying to retell
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  older Roman and Greek stories so that spirit of um what you might even call like fan fiction
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  was already there um in Greek and Roman times I feel like obid's netimal bases in many ways
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  was a little bit like a kind of fan fiction of all the myths that came before him um so
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  I think that that spirit is there and it kind of continues today so speaking about the obid
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  metamorphoses um it links very well to your own book you've written and published independently
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  the birder um which you have done in conjunction with the illustrator Lydia Hall who you've worked with
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  on previous projects retelling um so in a way it's your own fan fiction about this can you say what
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  what drew you to write this book it's not actually aimed at very young children at all it's very
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  much adult or YA title because of the nature what it's dealing with um john to tell us a bit about
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  that because it's got an interest really fascinating interesting central conceit which is your
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  starting point yeah so it's back it's starting to life uh back when I was doing my doctorate so
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  you know this is like 25 years ago and I was reading lots because my doctorate as I mentioned
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  was looking at magical realism this literary mode associated with Latin America um primarily um
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  and this Roman poem of its metamorphoses and I've always loved writing and I always just write
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  wrote lots of random stuff and I just one day decided oh imagine a universe where people
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  metamorphosed instead of dying so I wrote a short story um at the time but I just shoved in a draw
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  and didn't do anything else with but many many years um because I just wanted to explore
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  what what might a world look like uh where this was what happens to people um can you explain that
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  term so people know what you're talking about uh there's a metal places yeah what happens if you
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  don't die but you metamorphose what happens yes so um in of its poem the poem is strong together
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  like interconnected stories where people change into other things or um usually things like trees
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  but sometimes people change into rocks or insects and all things like that so um there is in the
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  world of all of its poem people die as well uh but they transform usually at a point of heightened
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  emotion or drama so for example uh definitely when she's running away from the god Apollo
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  she prays to her father for help and then she starts to transform into a laurel tree so you get these
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  kind of intense moments where people transform in the burger it's different in the sense that there
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  is no death in this universe people don't die um everyone transforms into an animal of some sort
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  but this usually happens just like death in our universe as people you know become old
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  but sometimes again like death in our universe people might suddenly metamorphose as young people
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  and that's something that always is a great tragedy and scientists and medical professionals are
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  trying to work out why that happens so we see that in the book that they are aware that
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  it with brain scans they can see if someone is going to metamorphose sort of before their time
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  and they're trying to understand the processes why um so I really in the book I suppose I wanted to um
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  use metamorphoses as a way of like I suppose a bit of a mirror of how we think about death
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  but because we're looking at it differently if there's different concept it changes
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  it de-familiarizes death by suppose um and that shifts how we think about lots of different things so
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  um it was in very much inspired by orbits metamorphoses and trying to kind of put into action
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  of the central concept of his poem but also I wanted and this is where the magical realism comes in I
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  wanted to make it feel real like feel like a kind of normal universe but with this one can you
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  change and um and I suppose as well as classics a big inspiration for the book is a book that maybe
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  many of your listeners might have heard or called never let me go uh by Casua Shigare and I must have
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  read that about 15 when maybe 10 years ago and I was very struck by the way that he presented
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  quite a big change in in his universe a scientific change that was but in a way that made it
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  feel very normal so orbits poem and that book in many ways were the two things that intersected
• 14:58
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  life sleep so you're your main character Merrill um you stop with her brother suddenly when they're
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  young people together you know children he suddenly turns into a blackbird and it's quite disorientating
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  that first chapter when you first read it and you think what's going on you know um and then as
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  the book unfold she's traumatized by that event but also intrigued by it so she's trying to
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  in a very scholarly way which perhaps reflects the writer I don't know but she's looking into if
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  there's any difference between the birds song of creatures of birds who have been people
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  and changed into birds and you're common a garden you know bird and so she's on that quest
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  and she has a very good friend Daniel whose secret is that he knows when he's going to um
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  well die metamorphos yeah so John who's the priestly character in it who's in a way trying to
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  defeat the death in this world by persuading people they don't have to change so it's I would say
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  it's a story of those three but you've divided it into chapters named after different birds and
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  each story reflects something connected with that bird different ways of metamorphizing
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  and this this lens to great work by your collaborator Lydia Hall because she does these
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  wonderful are they woodcuts or lino cuts lino cuts of the various birds it's a beautiful volume
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  to actually look into so it's a case where I would definitely suggest people get the physical copy
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  it's great fun to actually read and and find these very careful illustrations so when you were
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  writing this and you're saying you're in the this magical realism strain were you thinking about
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  it makes me wonder what the Greek writers as far as we can imagine what they thought they were
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  doing when they were coming up these stories because they treat these stories as serious real stories
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  don't they yeah it's very difficult this is one of the big questions about the ancient world
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  actually is what what do people really believe and of course it's to a great extent unknown yeah um
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  but uh I mean I would suggest that a poet like obid who comes quite later in the tradition and
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  he's quite uh he's sort of a bit of a man about the city of Rome and he quite likes being clever
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  and witty and you rather get a sense that he doesn't take any of it too seriously he's a he's
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  whereas if you look at say like a poet like Virgil who orbited boring heavily from Virgil's
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  very serious and intense person it feels like there's more of a deep belief in in the gods in
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  everything that's going on and so yes it's very difficult to tell one of the things I loved about
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  the metamorphosis is the way in which um if you look at how metamorphosis stories are told by the
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  Greek writers and by some of the Roman ones the actual moment of change has passed over so
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  of all of turns I mean a deathly turns into a tree but it's not really described it's just presented
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  to something that happens and what obid does is it's he almost behaves like a scientist he like
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  wants to get inside what how did that happen so he imagines you know first of all her
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  head turns to leaves and then her a big feel a bit heavy like a turning into bark and so he's
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  definitely very interested in the moment of change the moment of translation um I it's
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  it feels to me that he is someone that's enjoying the stories but but doesn't really believe that
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  they have done certainly and if we go back to very much more ancient writers like Homer then it's
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  much more up for grabs you know what's what they give and obviously the gods are a key mechanism
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  behind a lot of the magic in their universal a lot of the supernatural in a universe and
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  um we the bird are very specifically obviously there's a bigger character in it but it's it's not
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  the metaphoricist past not explained by any religious view no but his his his role in society is to
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  um be at the ceremonies and so it's yeah you know he's he's conflicted because he's there both
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  he and Merrill both feel they're in the wrong universe yes and they often say that they too and
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  um I mean in many ways I suppose the deep distant inspiration for the book is um I suppose my own
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  and I'm not a sort of person of a sort of patientist site I don't sort of have a certainty about
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  anything I'm very uncertain about why the universe is where it is but I've always had the
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  stealing that that we we live our lives as mortal creatures and we know we're going to die and this
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  feels like a very traumatic thing but it's just embedded in our universe and we accept and part of
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  writing the birder I suppose was to um imagine a universe where there wasn't death and then
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  used metamorphosis as the way of um I suppose exploring this so so and that so you mentioned at
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  the beginning it's not really a book for small children and you're absolutely right because it is
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  it is exploring this big theme of of death and how we live with death and we accept but it's
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  something that's absolutely central to our lives um and yes it is this the very traumatic thing
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  um in many ways or it's most people people feel visitors um yeah I mean I don't know why that can't
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  also be what the Greek writers and others were also doing yeah because perhaps our categories
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  of did they believe this or not is not the right question so much as to what did they think this
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  said about the nature of being alive um you know the experience of this strange if we're lucky 70 plus
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  years we get um just a blink in the eye of the universe and where that fits uh so where are you
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  going next with your exploration of classical myths there is a an environmental theme that you
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  very strongly follow at the Rumble Museum the connection between these stories and the environment
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  so where are you going next so since the birder I published another book which was set in
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  Minoan times but I'm now writing a new book um which I'm hoping to finish in the next few months
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  and this has a very strong environmental theme um in that it's set in a future universe where the
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  environment has has changed um and it it weaves in uh ancient belief in the sense that there is a
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  political passing that is in power that is trying to return some of the Roman ideas about
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  worship of nature into society um so it's I suppose this book is a blend of yeah exploring
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  Roman religion and myth with environmental change and there's also it's sort of
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  straining a little bit into science fiction um because there are some scientific advances as well
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  now I'm not a scientist so it's been quite difficult to write those in a way that sounds plausible um so
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  sometimes with the scientific advances I sort of left the details a bit opaque um so I don't fall
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  into some kind of error uh that's that's what I'm involved in at the moment and I'm really
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  enjoying writing about it and and yes that sort of environment is something that like a lot of
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  people is sort of a source of deep anxiety and concern for the new personally and terms of
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  thinking about the future of society and are we all going to manage to make this work um and sort
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  of mitigate some of the effects and and also um as a mother I'm thinking about what kind of
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  what kind of world is it going to be like for my daughter when she's I know 50 or 60 um and things
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  like that yes indeed so um as your book is um very much founded on of its metamorphosis um would you
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  do you have a favorite edition of that I mean I've most recently read it in the Ted Hughes
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  poetic treatment yeah yeah where would you direct someone if they wanted to have a go at
• 24:43
  reading the of it version of it come on um so I do really like the Ted Hughes version I think it's
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  very it's very loose in the sense that he's not stuck closely to the to the Latin um but he's done
• 24:58
  in a really interesting way so I would definitely recommend Ted okay coming from the outside I think
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  um he was into class system is not kind of looking at the original Latin I think Ted Hughes is a
• 25:08
  great place to start um I don't know I don't think I have a particular favorite translation I mean
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  for example I quite frequently just used the penguin translations uh when I was working with the text
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  and um so there isn't really one to me that stands out which it's not like with the Iliad I have a
• 25:29
  very strong sense if I read I for example really enjoy the Latin water translation I just think that's
• 25:33
  that's the one that I that I like the best although I know there's a newer one by Emily Wilson I haven't
• 25:39
  read yet so I should really get myself reading that but with with all the yes I think I probably
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  say have a look at Ted Hughes like I'm suggested because he has such an interesting take and such a
• 25:50
  modern take and I think that's some of the translations might feel a bit conqueror uh he definitely
• 25:59
  has that kind of blood and sinews sort of because of his poetry and that's of grittiness the auction
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  the auction in him um I think sort of adds adds that weight to the physical experience
• 26:15
  yeah of change yeah definitely it's very visceral and um and also just the sort of rhythm of
• 26:22
  the rhythm of his translation I like it's sort of it works it's quite it's really quite different from
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  all but it's but but I think it's a really good starting place so someone wants to kind of
• 26:35
  um pick it up from fresh knowing nothing about it they just seem to be a bit of a re um
• 26:41
  wow it's never really gone away but just thinking about recent treatments of classical stories
• 26:46
  we've had the refined film the return but also coming up we've got the Christopher Nolan epic
• 26:54
  yeah Odyssey um so I think you know we're not young people are going to be very familiar with
• 27:02
  many of these stories by the time we finish this year uh so are you looking forward to that film or
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  I'm hugely looking forward to it because I'm actually quite a big fan of Christopher Nolan
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  as director okay I think I think he's very atmospheric and has a really interesting
• 27:19
  sort of soundscape that he creates to hide the detail I in fact I just the other day
• 27:25
  YouTube with its clever algorithms worked out to advertise it to me and so the trailer popped up
• 27:32
  and I was I was gripped I think I think that went everywhere because I don't think it's short
• 27:37
  or marketing value no I'm sure that's true yes and so I'm hoping to organize a trip for my sick
• 27:44
  form classicists that we'll all go together and watch it because I think that will be really exciting
• 27:49
  okay and I lost the fact that there's so much retelling of classics going on it makes it
• 27:54
  it makes it such a fresh and exciting feel to be working it and to be teaching it
• 27:59
  yes because each generation finds its own relevance of course yeah yeah okay well thank you so
• 28:05
  much for joining us in order and we look forward to see what else you do with classical myths
• 28:11
  and so as you go on so thank you thank you for having me
• 28:20
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