The Arts

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Storyteller breathes new life into ancient art

By: Carolin Vesely

Posted: 09/18/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Acclaimed poet and storyteller Ignatius Mabasa from Zimbabwe will spend three months at the University of Manitoba.

Once upon a time, the only form of social media was the human mouth.

When people wanted to connect with one another, they went to a social networking site called a campfire, where they could spin yarns and impart wisdom without fear of being deleted, flamed, or un-friended.

Ignatius Mabasa, who has spent nearly three decades retelling the tales he learned at his grandmother's knee in his native Zimbabwe, is dedicated to saving it from becoming a lost art.

He'll spend the next three months advancing that mission as writer/storyteller-in-residence for the University of Manitoba's Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

"Stories are vitally important in times of chaos. They're universalized metaphors that help us humanize our world and bring coherence to our lives," Mabasa told a reception at the U of M this week.

The 40-year-old novelist, dub poet and raconteur will visit classes, mentor writers and storytellers, and give several performances throughout the fall term, including at the upcoming Thin Air writers' festival. He will also complete his third novel, Vana Venyoka (Brood of Vipers), written in Shona -- the majority language of Zimbabwe.

It was in the process of retelling -- and embellishing ---- his grandmother's stories to his siblings and cousins (starting at age eight), that Mabasa says he discovered creative writing.

"The more I told the stories, the more I realized had the freedom to change things, to make them more relevant," he recalls. "My grandmother probably learned those stories from her grandmother. If told them the same way she told them to me, I'd lose two-thirds of my audience. They wouldn't be able to relate to the issues."

Although it's one of the earliest forms of entertainment, Mabasa says that storytelling, in its purest form, aims to do more than amuse or distract.

"It's a slice of reality -- reality dressed in fancy clothes," he says, adding that traditionally, stories almost always had a moral or offered up some kind of lesson. At the very least, they aimed to get listeners thinking and reflecting.

"When I tell stories, I don't prescribe a solution, I just present the issues," says the father of two, whose day job back home is deputy director of the British Council. He's also working to establish Zimbabwe's first official storytelling venue. "When you're raising issues in an informal way, people tend to respond better."

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 18, 2010 C5

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