The Crane Bag Podcast

The story is not the words - the story as dialogue with the natural world and the spirits - remembering the story with the body - imagining your way into the story - the story as offering - story as emotional workout - maintaining healthy relationship with the story

Where does poetry come from? What helps that wild horse to arrive into our lives? An exploration of these questions by poet and storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

An interview with the storyteller, teacher, and theater maker Janardan Ghosh by Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

Approaching a story - story as storm, song, and animal - the story is not a tool - story as forest, story as traveler to be welcomed - the skills of the hunter - courting a story - our illusion of control - orality and literacy - story as dream - Jung's insights as they apply to story - stories approach us

A reading and exploration of part five of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" by storyteller and poet Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

The Iliad brought to life without a script and without a net by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

Part eleven of the Iliad, as told by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. A complete archive of stories performed on this podcast can be found at the website below. www.JayLeeming.com

"The hard and strong will fall, the soft and weak will overcome": two poems from the Tao Te Ching, read and then explored by Jay Leeming, poet and storyteller. www.JayLeeming.com

Poet and Storyteller Jay Leeming reads and comments on book one of Homer's Odyssey. Note: Unusually for this podcast this is not a storytelling performance but a reading, for those who wish to dive a little deeper into the Homeric version of this story which has inspired my own.  www.JayLeeming.com

Notes from poet and storyteller Jay Leeming during his two-month storytelling journey through Greece and Cyprus in 2025.  

A story from the Irish epic of Finn MacCool (Fionn MacCumhail) brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of the poem "Sometimes a man stands up during supper" by Rainer Maria Rilke.   www.JayLeeming.com

A deep dive into the craft of storytelling with performance storyteller Jay Leeming, exploring the creation of the opening scenes of his version of the Iliad.    www.JayLeeming.com

A princess born from a fire; a journey to speak with gods at the top of the world; a small boy who remains miraculously alive in an apocalyptic wasteland. These are three stories from the great epic of India known as the Mahabharata, brought to life through words and music by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

www.JayLeeming.com

Storyteller and poet Jay Leeming explores canto one of "The Cantos" by the American poet Ezra Pound. Sequoia trees, blood for ghosts, and the dance of Aphrodite amid a shimmer of gold. www.JayLeeming.com

"If you want to find out who you are, cut off your head and enter the forest." A story out of French alchemy, told and explored by storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

It's desperate times for the Greek soldiers as Hector leads his warriors against them, determined to burn their ships and maroon them on the Trojan shore.  www.JayLeeming.com

With Achilles out of the fighting the Trojans drive the Greeks back to the beach, where they all are faced with hard choices as the story of Troy continues. www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of the American poet Gary Snyder's poem "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout" by poet and storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

What moonlit god comes down to punish the Greeks with his arrows? What stray dog is the first unlikely victim of Agamemnon's wrath, and what the heck is that boat full of onions and cabbages doing in this story? The story of the Iliad continues, as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com    

An exploration of Pablo Neruda's poem "The Art of Poetry" by poet, storyteller, and musician Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of Robert Frost's poem "Directive" by poet, storyteller, and musician Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Irish hero Finn MacCool (Fionn MacCumhail) comes to a close in this story brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of Emily Dickinson's poem "I heard a fly buzz when I died" by poet, storyteller and musician Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of James Wright's poem "Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium" by poet, storyteller, and musician Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

When the Greek army arrives at Troy they encounter Cygnus, the indestructible man, and wrestle with the prophecy of Calchas which says that the first man to step ashore will be the first to die.    www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of the poem "The Diver's Clothes Lying Empty" by Jalal al-Din Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks.   www.JayLeeming.com 

Before you go to war, it's probably best to spend a year living as a dancing girl on the island of Skyros. That's the wisdom which this beautiful story brings to us, just in time for us to put on our own dancing shoes and sing our way into the deepening wilderness of this epic brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of the poems "To the Harbormaster" and "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara.   www.JayLeeming.com

When I got to the whispering forest and the dark I thought of the sacrifice of the horse, and how it bound us to the god of the sea and the way the horse's nostrils flared and later by the fire the branches devoured by flame seemed wrinkled ancestors confessing their bright crimes to the rain.   www.JayLeeming.com

An interview with the poet Steve Scafidi, who reads his poem "What if Faulkner is Wrong and We Do Not Endure or Prevail" and discusses laughter, oblivion, religion, high school, and poetry with host Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

Achilles is born and narrowly misses his change at immortality; meanwhile a storm drives prince Paris across the sea and to the palace of a particularly wild and beautiful queen.   www.JayLeeming.com

An exploration of the poem "California Swimming Pool," by Sharon Olds. www.JayLeeming.com

An interview with Professor Joel Christensen about Homeric Epic and the possibility of regarding stories as living beings. www.JayLeeming.com

The odes of Pablo Neruda explored by poet and storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Iliad brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Iliad, brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

Performance storyteller Jay Leeming brings the sprawling epic of the Iliad alive with all of its birds, thunder, and goddesses intact.    www.JayLeeming.co

Once again Finn MacCool stumbles into relationship with the Otherworld, in this story from the Irish Finn cycle brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

Do we live in a world of infinite possibilities, or of barriers and limits? A wizard, a blue snake, and a mermaid help us to explore this question in this story from deep within the mythic cosmos known as Stories from One Thousand and One Nights.   www.JayLeeming.com

Though these stories seem to focus on the exploits of Finn and his band of poetical warriors, the Goddess is always present in all her forms and liable to show up in the most unlikely of circumstances. In this episode Finn sets out into the wild but soon finds himself in a territory of weakness and forgetting unlike any he has stumbled into before.   www.JayLeeming.com 

Here's a rowdy dream-vision involving a house thatched with feathers, pigs that never die and a sea-god for whom story is the fire that warms his house; it's the journey of King Cormac into the Otherworld as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.  www.JayLeeming.com

Storyteller Jay Leeming and playwright Geetha Reddy discuss her recent adaptation of the Mahabharata.

The Irish epic of Finn MacCool, brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com

The Irish epic of Finn MacCool brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com 

There's trouble out there, big nasty toothy trouble and this life isn't just sitting with bread and honey by a warm fire. That's the truth expressed in this age-old narrative of innocence becoming wisdom, a primal building-block of story explored by storyteller Jay Leeming and who knows if on the way we might also meet the Buddha on the road? www.JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www.JayLeeming.com

A live and unscripted riff on hunger, myth, and the origins of poetry by performance storyteller Jay Leeming, unedited and rowdy as an apple on a branch. www.JayLeeming.com  

The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www.JayLeeming.com