World Storytelling Day & World Poetry Day

Mar 21, 2010 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

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– By Petamber Persaud

(Yesterday, March 20, was World Storytelling Day. Today, March 21, is World Poetry Day. It is not without significance that these two days are so juxtaposed. Man’s first stories were narrative poems. Poetry is the mother of all literature. And therein lies the nexus between storytelling and poetry.
The following interview is a celebration of both World Storytelling Day and World Poetry Day.
Extract of an interview with Peter Jailall, February 2008, Georgetown, Guyana. Jailall is the author of four collections of poems, The Healing Place, 1993, Yet Another Home, 1997, When September Comes, 2003 and Mother Earth: Poems for Children, 2009. His M. A. thesis is titled The Challenge of Language and Literacy in Guyanese Schools.)
Petamber Persaud (PP): You are a poet and storyteller and you combine poetry and storytelling as teaching strategies in the classroom, targeting younger children. How effective is this method?
Peter Jailall (PJ): It is very effective because all of life is one long story. Just think about that….from the time we are born until we die. And children as well as adults do enjoy an interesting story. We can teach children a lot that they need to know through poetry and a good story.
PP: You’re saying that storytelling is something we can easily relate to?
PJ: Yes. It’s a familiar part of our lives and we can relate to it easily. People are engaged in storytelling all the time. We share stories all the time with friends and relatives – at the end of the day, after work and school, persons will relate what happened during the day.
In Guyana, we call it gaff. I am from the country and we would sit in the afternoon on the koker or the bridge or under the coconut tree in the moonlight and we would talk for hours about everything under the sun… ah mean stars. Gossip is part of storytelling too.
The spicier the gossip, the more attentive the listener. Like the dog crying during the night or the sound of the jumbie bird and people wondering who will die?
These are some of the ways stories start and develop through spontaneity and collectively, like Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a man and his donkey and his cow and his sheep and they lived in a very tiny red house. Then one day they decided to go for a row down the river. Then the man sang the first song, ‘row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream’. And the cow attempted the song, moo, moo, moo-moo-moo…And children like that, they can relate to that and the story can go on and on.
PP: I understand this process now that you’ve revealed its working.
You have travelled from land to land, telling stories. What are some of the similarities and differences, some of the challenges you have faced and with you are still dealing within a foreign land, and in Guyana where you were born?
PJ: Just the transfer of language skills. In Canada, I tell stories that pertain to the Canadian landscape and experience– the snow, the subway, the big buses, the huge airports and how people move fast. I tell stories about the coyote and the cunning fox. Here, I tell stories about spider and Anancy, the baccoo and the jumbie and the ole higue.
When I come to Guyana, I have to switch codes because the landscape here is different – the speedboat in Mabaruma, big rivers, big trees, children going to school in boats, paddling their own canoes, how they moor their boats on the landing and wrap their books in plastic to prevent them from getting wet.
Although the landscapes are different many stories have universal themes. I tell the children in Canada how children in Mabaruma go to school and the children in Guyana how children in Canada go to school – in big buses that pick them up from their homes and drop them off at the school door. So you have to use what is relevant to the particular culture to tell stories and you have to use the language with which the children are familiar. In Guyana, I use the dialect a lot mixed with Standard English. In Canada, I use a bit of our dialect too.
PP: How useful is storytelling and poetry in the teaching and learning process?
PJ: Well, first of all, this strategy makes children relax, they are happy and learning is fun. The chalk and talk method for small children is abrasive and boring. Children like stories and will ask for more. The medium of story helps them to wonder, to fantasize, to extend their imagination. And this wonderment makes them curious. It is getting them to like school, and learning so we may progress to more difficult matters with ease, or ease into more serious subjects. From listening and enjoying we move now to writing, getting them to write stories, to make their own texts…
PP: So you are extending them from listening to writing…
PJ: Yes, from oral to written and back to oral because they would be encouraged to read their version of a story in their own words. And if they are ambitious enough and with some help, they can use that same story line to write a play and then act it out. Play writing can be done at an early age; you need not wait until you get to Theatre Guild. Can you imagine what it does to children allowing them to create? It is not difficult – the same storyline in poetry, in story and in drama.
PP: Sheik Sadeek was one of the few Guyanese writers to have done that – using the same idea to produce a poem, a story and a play.
Let’s go back to the oral and the written in children.
PJ: Well, first of all, when you provide opportunities for children to write freely, they take ownership of their writing which has voice. The writing can be published in the form of a booklet or bound and made into text to be shared with an audience. You can also start a newsletter; let them see themselves in print. There is so much we can do to bring out the best in our children. Take that to another level, see if the local newspapers could publish a few efforts of these children. And when the children see their writing appear in print they will become more enthusiastic. Now let’s go back to the little booklet and see the far-reaching effects of this. The children take this booklet to the home, show the parents, the grandparents, friends and other relatives – so eventually, you are including all in the teaching and upbringing of that child. You bring the community into play.
PP: Like that African proverb: it takes a community to raise a child!
We have talked about writing, what about reading, getting children to read.
PJ: First and foremost, we can do the oral – tell stories and recite poems, get them comfortable with the oral and let the language flow. The children’s own text can be used as a base for teaching reading. But this must be supplemented with the use of appropriate children’s literature.
Within the community, it is important that parents, guardians and grown ups read to children, get them to listen to words, words forming pictures and music as in poetry. Teachers should read more and more to children; find poems and stories that tell about different lands, peoples and cultures, poems and stories about science and other subjects. Learning will then become pleasurable and meaningful.
PP: You sound as if something is wrong with the present education system?
PJ: There is room for improvement in the education system. Look closely at the word, ‘primary’. Children need to be taught using the right methodology which involves a variety of strategies.
PP: We seem to have lost that community spirit and I contend it is because we have stopped telling stories as an art form.
PJ: Storytelling can be very captivating; children are yearning to listen to a good story. But we need tellers, we can’t have communities if we don’t have tellers. In my time, it was sitting on the back steps and my grandmother telling stories, sometimes tricking us to tell our own stories, asking us, ‘How many egg you eat?’…and so many stories you will have to tell,
PP: In closing, what could storytelling do to a child’s mind?
PJ: Storytelling will expand the child’s mind and make him a critical thinker, make her think logically. Storytelling will help children follow a pattern when writing – the beginning, the middle and the end. Storytelling will also help in character building and in the education of the emotions. Many of these stories have a moral base. Also, there is a need to preserve our oral tradition and to maintain our Guyanese culture.
PP: So we need to recapture our community spirit through storytelling which will go a long way in building a better society.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com
What’s Happening
· You are invited to the celebration of World Poetry Day on Tuesday March 23, 2010, at the Umana Yana, Kingston, Georgetown, Guyana, at 1730 hours (530 pm). Poetry will be performed in various languages of the world including Spanish, Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Americanism, and English. Guyana’s performance will include creolese and an Indigenous language.

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