Liz Warren | Storyteller

           For years Barry Vaughan, the director of Study Abroad Ireland has been telling me that there was a sheela-na-gig on the Nun’s Chapel at Clonmacnoise.  So, this year, on our annual trip to the beautiful monastic site set at a crucial crossing of the north-south Shannon and the east-west            I thought Barry knew…

           I was over at Danielle Allison’s the other day for lunch on my way to Ballinasloe to tell stories at the library. She handed me a packet of crisps, which is their generic term for potato or corn chips, plus anything else crispy that comes in small sacks.  Chips, by the way, is what…

    I have an excellent group of storytellers this summer in The Irish Storytelling Tradition.  That's all of them with Liz Weir last Thursday. After each story that they tell, they submit a reflection paper in which they tell me why they chose the story, how they prepared to tell it, and how they thought the…

             I spent a beautiful Dublin afternoon with storyteller Niall de Burca on Saturday, June 13th. I took the DART from the center of the city east along Dublin Bay to Sandycove, where Niall fetched me in his silver VW Golf.  He filled my head with local lore for several hours as we wandered the landscape.  It…

            Last Thursday night at the Dublin Yarnspinners, Batt Burns spoke a very moving poem by Brendan Kennelly called “The Story”.  Right away I knew I wanted to learn it.  I found the volume that houses it, Familiar Strangers: New and Selected Poems 1960-2004, at Waterstone Bookstore on Jarvis Street, but decided not to buy it…

            The Dublin Yarnspinners is held the first Thursday of every month at 8:00 p.m. in the Club na Múinteoirí, the Teachers Club, at 36 Parnell Square.  This month’s session was on the top floor, and when the participants of Study Abroad Ireland arrived we found Aideen McBride at the door and her father Jack Sheehan…

             Or something very much like its soul, anyway.  On Thursday morning when I got up my computer did not.  I got a screen that basically said, “You are screwed, girly”.  Windows had crashed, and it wanted a disk that I did not have.  It was about midnight in Arizona, so I figured Mark would be…

             Dr. Pat Ryan is one of the most scholarly storytellers I’ve ever met.  He conducts research, develops and conducts research projects, teaches and trains, collects stories, and tells them in England, Ireland, Italy, America and beyond. He is associated with Glamorgan University in Wales, with whom he conducts some of his innovative projects.  He has…

             Wednesday morning my students finished telling their first Irish story in class.  They did very well all the way around; they chose stories that suited them and told them with verve and style.             After a quick break, Simone Schümmelfeder came in to tell them a couple of stories.  She started with a story she…

            The second week of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival was a busy one.   On Monday, Fionnuala (fin-oo-la) McKinley arrived from Warren Point in Co. Down, and Pat Ryan arrived from London.  They were both put up at the Carlton Sheerwater, a nice new hotel in Ballinasloe. I told at the Ballinasloe library and collected Simone…

             On Sunday, June 7th, Barry and I went to Belvedere House and Gardens near Mullingar.  The year Carol and Mike Kearney were here, we went twice and loved it both times, so I was excited to go again.             We’d seen signs during our travels the previous days advertising a home and garden show at…

  Friday, June 5th, was our annual visit to Loughcrew.  I always look forward to visiting the Sliabh na Callighe, which translates roughly as the hill of the hag. I’ve come to expect to learn stories about the Cailleach when I am there and this time was no different. We left Athlone at 10:30, got…