Sally Bayley, Andrew Smith
A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally BayleyEpisodes
Episodes of A Reading Life, A Writing Life,
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“She glanced up at the great broken tower-columns of the vanished nave of the Abbey Church….” This week, Sally continues to read John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel A Glastonbury Romance, dwelling on the character of Mary Crow, whose form gives shap
“On this particular day the weather conditions had assumed a cloud-pattern…”This week, Sally continues to read John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel, A Glastonbury Romance, asking: how does writing produce depth and dimension? And what role do images
‘There’s no life that frees anyone so completely from unhappiness as does the mystic life…’This week, Sally has been reading John Cowper Powys’ 1932 novel, A Glastonbury Romance. Join her for a meditation on attachment, possession, desire, and
"What is it this material life we find ourselves captured by?" This week Sally is developing her character, Pond Man as she considers the opening line of James Joyce's experimental epic, Ulysses, and the tradition of ritual - secular and relig
‘You see, I go and live with Pond Man when the pain becomes too much…’This week, we join Sally at home, as she tries to live with a pain that has become familiar with the help of imagination, community and her young neighbour Maeve. Follow her
‘We have forgotten what it is to look at one another and to notice.’What does it mean to really see? This week, Sally is meditating on the power of images to connect us in a busy world. Join her as she reflects on José Saramago’s novel Blind
A special episode this week, as we join Sally at Brasenose College in a conversation titled ‘A Reading Life, A Writing Life’, with fellow writers Aida Edemariam and Joanna Kavenna. Join them for a discussion on memory, storytelling, and the por
‘If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one…’This week, Sally has been reading José Saramago’s Blindness, and thinking about the ways we see, or don’t see, the world around us. Drawing on J.M. Barrie, join her for a reflection on seeing and wri
‘Where do images come from?’This week, Sally is thinking about the importance of sound and rhythm to writing. Join her for a discussion of George Orwell’s Coming Up for Air (1939) and a reflection on how to find your writing voice. Guitar mus
‘Let words pass through you in a small contained space’This week, we join Sally for a meditation on creating and inhabiting a space in which to write, and to be held, via the work of the novelist V.S. Pritchett. Follow her as she begins to lay
‘Perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.’This week, Sally is reading Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Insomnia’, a poem full of shifting, uncertain geographies and marvellous depths. How do we navigate the strange land of sleeplessness? Join Sally as she medita
‘I shall be late!’Sally has been following the White Rabbit this week, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and reflecting on the ever-increasing demands on the writer’s time. Follow her down the rabbit hole on a journey through time, latene
‘How do you remember people first?’We join Sally on New Year’s Night, staying with a relative in Chichester, a familiar city from her childhood. Join her for a meditation on embodiment, memory, and authority, via a vision of John Milton’s hell
This week, we join Sally in the middle of a winter night. Follow her reflections on festive traditions, via Christina Rossetti, and on seeing the world through illness, with Emily Brontë, and John Milton.Rossetti’s poem can be read here: https
For Demi.‘And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating / Of dark habits, / keeping their difficult balance.’This week, Sally has been living with Richard Wilbur’s ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of the World’, and reflecting on living with pain
For Keyang.‘Where can we live but days?’This week, Sally has been reading and living with Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Days’, from The Whitsun Weddings. Join her for a meditation on how we spend our days, drawing on prayer, hope, hymns, and reading.
‘This is how I prefer to live…inside a narrow passage…’Sally is still living with Wuthering Heights this week, as she meditates on the nature of life in confined spaces, both in fiction and on her narrowboat. Join her as she muses on the narro
‘I can’t live without story now…it feels like breathing.’This week, Sally is travelling to Sicily, for a conversation with Marina Warner on ‘Life Writing, Memory and Fiction.’ Before leaving, she offers a brief meditation on the local artist G
‘Are you brave enough to follow me there?’This week, Sally has been reading Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. Fixated on the dreams of its narrator, join her for her reflections on rage, the histories of homes and places, and the d
For Alice Colquhoun.In this episode, Sally muses on J.M.W. Turner’s famous 1830 painting, Shoreham. Join her for reflections on art, life, and on writing from the faint lines of existence.Turner’s work makes frequent appearances in Sally’s la
‘A writer’s notebook is full of the sound of atmosphere…’This week, Sally is teaching a course on detective fiction. Emerging from her meditations on Wilkie Collins’ novel The Moonstone, follow her on a journey through the light and the dark p
Continuing this week’s Shakespearean theme, Sally describes a recent trip to a screening of a new cinematic adaptation of Kenneth Macmillan’s 1988 balletic interpretation of Hamlet, Sea of Troubles. Join her for a meditation on choreography, in
‘All the world’s a stage…’Sally is thinking this week about a photograph of her foster grandmother in Shakespearean costume. Who is she? How did she find her part? Did she have her experience, like Jacques, the man of the world? Listen to her
‘Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me.’In this special episode, Sally reflects on the work of the late poet Louise Glück as she travels around Oxford. Join her as she muses on feeling, poetry, family, and names.The poem, ‘The Red Poppy’
"In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls."Sally and her neighbour discuss tree spirits and magical bracelets on her narrowboat. As the rains draw in, Sally settles down to read J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. She t
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