A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally Bayley – Details, episodes & analysis

‘A gift, a love gift / Utterly unasked for / By a sky’

This week, Sally has been reading Sylvia Plath’s ‘Poppies in October’ (1963). Join her for this brief mediation on living generously and the restorative powers of reading poetry.

The text of the poem can be found here.

This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen.

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘There’s always hope where there’s poetry…’

This week, Sally is preparing for her narrowboat, Cerian, to journey upriver for maintenance. Join her in her engine room for a discussion of Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil, meditations on kindness, and reflections on how poetry helps us to create our own rhythms in a noisy world. 

More information on The Painted Veil (1925) can be found here. 

The poems read from in this episode are ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake, ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’ by Emily Dickinson, and ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S. Eliot. 

The original piano music is ‘Doubt’ and ‘Sunday’ by Paul Sebastian. The original guitar music is by Dylan Gwalia. 

This episode was edited and produced by Lucie Richter-Mahr. 

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus. 

"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 religious - in everyday life. In the tradition of Joyce, we observe Pond Man across the length and breadth of his day as he prepares to sleep. 

This episode was edited and produced by D. Gwalia.

The guitar music is by D. Gwalia. 

The opening and exiting voice is Emma Fielding. 

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, James Bowen, Lucie Richter-Mahr, Kris Dyer, Violet Henderson, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 as she escapes the everyday through the figure of Pond Man, an inhabitant of her latest work, seeking solace in the world of her forthcoming novel (2025), Pond Life.

The wonderful piano music in the opening section is by Paul Sebastian.

This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen.

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 Blindness, on empathy and attention, and how literature offers us ways of tuning in to our surroundings. 

Guitar music by D. Gwalia, piano music by Paul Sebastian. 

This episode was produced by Lucie Richter-Mahr. 

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Kris Dyer, Violet Henderson, and Maeve Magnus. 

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 porous boundaries between reality and fiction.

Aida is a writer and journalist whose debut book The Wife’s Tale received the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Award. More information on her and her work can be found here: https://www.rcwlitagency.com/authors/edemariam-aida/

Joanna, whose 2016 novel A Field Guide to Reality has appeared in a previous episode, is a novelist, essayist and current Frankland Visitor at Brasenose College, Oxford. More information can be found on her website: http://www.joannakavenna.com/

This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen.

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 writing through the dark places of the world.

The wonderful piano music in the opening section is by Paul Sebastian, and the guitar music was written and performed by D. Gwalia.

This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen.

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Kris Dyer, Violet Henderson, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 music composed and performed by Dylan Gwalia.

This episode was produced by Lucie Richter-Mahr. 

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 out her meditative practice of reading and writing, drawing on the restorative power of words on the page.

An account of Pritchett and his work can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/feb/22/vspritchett

This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen.

Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘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 meditates on the power of reading closely and the solace of poetry as a place of rest.  

‘Insomnia’ is available to read here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8493531-Insomnia-by-Elizabeth-Bishop

This episode was produced by Lucie Richter-Mahr. 

For Summer and Dylan, both students. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.