This week we welcome to the show the one and only Dr Martin sure now Martin I do this thing where I

introduce people now and get them to correct me as to stuff that I've missed out or got wrong to begin with.

So I've written yours out.

Dr Martin Shaw is a poet, storyteller, teacher, and mythologist.

I want to play with that word and founder of the West Country School of Myth.

He is the author of numerous books, including the recently released Bad Skull. So good, bad, 80%, how is that for an intro?

Very good. I think ironically the problem is probably in the very first word is poet, because it's a funny thing,

although I would say I'm alive to a certain type of poetic, well actually what James Hillman used to call the

poetic basis of mind. I always fall short of calling myself a poet, but I don't, it's

not unenjoyable when someone else says it

Shamus heaney

Shema's heaney always said that a poet is it's such a praise word that you have to be terribly careful about giving it to yourself and you know

this is heney this is this is a huge thing he know about poetry you know I think. I mean, what did he know about poetry? You know, I mean, you know, with Heaney, I love his poems, but actually I just think as a sort of

a cultural imprint after Yates in Ireland, they desperately needed him. And Kavanaugh too in a different type of way, but anyway, sorry, I'm going in a different direction.

But no other than...

And tell me about the mythology's query. Well so Bard's goal is I actually I wrote this out because I want to see if you like these we were just talking before we hit record that it got a write up in the Sunday Times which is excellent. But did they say because I read this book in actually quite the last two books of yours I've read have been in

geographically unusual situations so according the wild twin I believe I mentioned

I picked up on the way to the southwest coast of Tasmania, which is Gondwana survival forests. There's nothing around, like the edge of the world.

The entrance to Macquarie Harbor is called Hell's Gate and when you get there in the boat

and it's this huge volume of water going out into the southern ocean and nothing.

It's incredible, right? So it was a really odd place to do it.

And this time I was reading Bard's skull in New Zealand, which I thought was just going to be an

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