Joe Goodkin is a Chicago-based singer and songwriter who has spent much of his career reimagining Homeric stories through original songs and playing his music internationally in the bardic tradition.

Goodkin performed his Iliad retelling, “The Blues of Achilles,” at the Becker Communication Studies Building on March 6.

The Daily Iowan: What would you say is the first step in taking an old story and turning it into something more accessible?

Goodkin: One is identifying universal themes, and the second is putting it in a medium that reduces some of the strangeness and barriers and being willing to sacrifice some specificity for what you think is important. Knowing that part of retelling a story is letting go of some of the culturally specific things that prevent people from getting into it.

What drew you to the work of Homer over other pieces of classic literature?

I took a lot of Greek classes as an undergrad. So, the Greek language was my window into the world, and all the Greek and Homer I read was on a different level for me. It had a real emotional impact on me. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but I think it was a real powerful human connection to the other storytellers who first heard the stories. I thought maybe I could create that feeling for other people by presenting it to them in a mode that allowed them to access it easier.

Which “Blues of Achilles” song was the hardest for you to write, and why?

There were certain challenging aspects of the whole thing, but I would say the single one that was most difficult for me was writing the war lullaby, which is the portrayal of Achilles on the battlefield killing people. I find that singing about violence is hard and also ineffective in getting the impact across to a listener.

What made you choose Iowa City as one of your touring locations?

I had been here before. I’ve played my first Homer piece, “The Odyssey,” in 2018 or 2019, and the classics department here is unique in that there’s also this translation program. I think that this tour was a collaboration between the classics department and this translation arm, and it allowed me to do more different things in conjunction with considering my work not just in retelling but translation.

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What has been your favorite part of keeping the bardic tradition alive?

It’s taken me places around the world that I never would have gone to. I’ve played in every U.S. state and a handful of other countries, too. That feeling of connection I had first with Homer I now get all the time through these performances…It’s just this amalgam of all the things I’ve ever been interested in in life, and I don’t think many people get to do that. I feel really lucky to do it.

In your “Antigone” piece, you mentioned that “many of the impulses that lead to the most horrific and brutal aspects of war come from a place of love.” What would you say is the nature of love and war, and how should we go about reconciling the two today?

What I came to understand is that war is a machine that turns love into grief — and I’m using love very broadly to include all sorts of love. That’s the darkest part about war to me; it takes the best human impulses and turns it into grief. The first step towards [reconciling] it is for human beings to not try to see war as something separate from our humanity. I think we see it as an aberration when, in fact, it’s part of human nature. It can tell us things about ourselves. That would be the first step towards getting a handle on it.