Fort Smith - For a famed storyteller, Jim Green's first experience in front of an audience was not encouraging.

In 1973 while living in Spence Bay, his first book of poetry was released and his publisher arranged a cross-country tour.

Jim Green of Fort Smith considers going paper free - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"In my opinion, I was just abysmal," Green recalled recently of his onstage delivery. "I did the best I could, but I didn't know how to do it."

After the tour, Green listened to radio to learn how writers use their voices. And, he collected recordings of readings by writers and poets and listened intently.

"The next time, I felt more confident," he recalled.

In fact, he has developed his storytelling skills into entertaining, humourous, and sometimes even outrageous performances.

Storytelling can be an exhilarating experience with the right story for the right audience, said Green, who now lives in Fort Smith. "Mostly you're an entertainer and they want to be entertained."

Over the years, Green has performed as a storyteller across Canada, released a recording of music and poetry, produced freelance articles, provided radio commentary, and written Dog River Tales, a weekly radio series about a fictional village.

Despite such an eclectic resume, which includes a journalism degree, Green is best known as a storyteller.

"I think storytelling is definitely my thing," he said.

And he is still evolving in the craft.

Green has always performed with written stories in front of him, but may be moving away from that.

He recalled attending the Whitehorse Storytelling Festival, where aboriginal people performed without notes.

"There wasn't a piece of paper in the whole bloody place, except mine," Green noted. "That was really a turning point."

In 2006, an organizer of Yellowknife's Festival of Stories suggested he perform without paper.

Green told a couple of stories without paper for the first time and discovered a more natural flow.

"It was just wonderful," he said.

Without paper, he was free to gesture more, he explained. "You can deliver with your whole body."

One story was about playing Little League baseball. While telling the story from memory, Green recalled things he had forgotten. "I was just liberated. I was just flying."

Green will be back at the Festival of Stories in Yellowknife in early June. For the first time, there will also be a satellite festival in Fort Smith June 8 and 9.

Green said he has to decide which stories are ready to deliver without paper. "Not all stories are rip snorters. What if you give a story free range, and it doesn't want to go anywhere?"

Born in Alberta, Green began travelling the world at 19. Three years later he was back in Canada, after being a waiter in New Zealand, a dishwasher in Paris and a bit-part actor in Madrid for the Sophia Loren movie "Fall of the Roman Empire."

In the late 1960s, he came to the NWT as a jug hound - a worker who strings out geophones for seismic crews.

Heading South in the spring, Green checked out Yellowknife when his flight stopped for fuel and he stayed.

"I spent my first night in Yellowknife at the Gold Range Hotel, right above the jukebox," he said, adding he tried to go to sleep for hours before giving up and going down to the bar.

He and his wife lived two years in Yellowknife, three years in Spence Bay and two years in Whati.

They and their two children moved to Fort Smith 30 years ago, where Green, 65, is a researcher and communications person for the Northwest Territory Metis Nation. His life in the North has inspired many of his hundreds of stories.