Dr Martin Shaw

Dr Martin Shaw is a writer, mythographer, and Christian thinker. He founded the MA Myth and Ecology and MA Poetics of Imagination programmes at Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School. Author of seventeen books, Martin is the director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University. His book Bardskull was described as “rich and transgressive” by Erica Wagner in The Sunday Times and was Book of the Day in The Guardian. A hugely respected oral storyteller, Shaw has toured internationally numerous times, and led symposiums at both Oxford and Cambridge University, Robert Bly describing him as “a true master, one of the very greatest storytellers we have.”

Martin completed his PhD in patterns of metaphor within rites of passage, specifically working with Irish and Siberian folklore. His Celtic poem translations with Tony Hoagland have been published in Poetry International, The Sun, Orion, The Mississippi Review and many others, and his catalogue and conversation with Ai Weiwei was published by the Marciano Arts Foundation. His book of Lorca translations (with Stephan Harding) are entitled Courting the Dawn, and anthology of the Irish philosopher John Moriarty is A Hut At The Edge Of The Village. His works include Scatterlings, Stag Cult, Courting the Wild Twin and Smoke Hole, his first, A Branch From The Lightning Tree, winning the Nautilus Book Award. Lightning Tree was the first of its kind to weave myth and rites of passage so overtly together proving influential to a whole generation of storytellers and wilderness guides.