A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally Bayley

‘I am trying to draw succour and strength from their song, because I need to sing too…’ This week, we join Sally, amidst distractions both natural and otherwise, reflecting on her latest work, Worm in the Bud. Listen for a meditation on the need for solace, character, and the narrative significance of suspense. Worm in the Bud is published by The New Menard Press, and is available from all good bo...

‘Hölderlin’s lovely blueness you hold to you, it is tensile   through the smeared glass’   This week, we join Sally in conversation with poet, critic, and translator Stephen Romer, following the recent publication of his latest poetry pamphlet, Night Contradicts the Day. Listen for reflections on the intimacies - or otherwise - of care, empathy and its absence, and the challenge laid down by the n...

‘To find a way in, through the door, beyond the doubt…’ This week, we join Sally wrestling with the problem of doubt, having just sent her latest novel, Pond Life, to the printers. Listen for a reflection on writing, the body, and the generative possibilities of doubt, via Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Pond Life will be published in September 2026 by The New Menard Press, and can be pre-ord...

‘Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.’ This week, Sally returns to Sylvia Plath’s ‘Poppies in October.’ Listen for a mediation on the mouth, sound, and their essential role in approaching the lyric. The wonderful piano music in the closing section is ‘Sirens’ by Paul Seba. More information on Paul and his work can be found here . This episode was edited and produced by James...

‘Enter Lillian…’ This week, we join Sally once again in conversation with the producer, James Bowen, on the subject of Sally’s latest work, Worm in the Bud: A Fable. Listen for a conversation on interpretation, ambiguity, and the instructive value of narrative. Worm in the Bud is published by the New Menard Press, and is available from all good booksellers. The wonderful piano accompanying Sally's...

‘A paragraph made up of waiting…’ We join Sally this week in the process of editing her forthcoming work, Mrs Parnell, focusing in particular on a single paragraph. Listen for a meditation on the creation of space and time in writing, and how a text can carve out a space to pause. The wonderful piano music in the opening section is ‘Doubt’, by Paul Seba. More on Paul and his work can be found here...

For “Husband Ron” and Christopher Robin — may he come by again soon. This week, we join Sally at home, seeing in the New Year in the company of the residents of A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood. Listen for a reflection on domesticity, hospitality, and the physics of intimacy. This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve M...

‘Writing for me is always an embodied experience of flow…’ This week we join Sally at home, as she prepares to start her day, thinking in particular about her morning swim. Listen for a meditation on writing and reflecting on one’s environment, embodiment, and the interaction between thought and space, featuring James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The wonderful piano music in the opening section is ‘Tue...

‘A kind of choreography of intimacy, which I return to again and again…’ This week, we join Sally on a cold winter’s morning, as she tries to settle into the rhythm of the day and develop an image from her forthcoming work, Mrs Parnell. Listen for reflections on the writing life, and the development of character from everyday scenes, via the life and work of Katherine Mansfield and Arundhati Roy....

‘She brought so little personality with her that she seemed scarcely to disturb the air…’ This week, marking the arrival of Autumn, Sally has been thinking about literary arrivals, in particular those in L.P. Hartley’s 1957 novel, The Hireling. Listen for a meditation on the choreography of writing and the arrangement of characters, including those featured in Sally’s forthcoming work, Mrs Parnell...

‘From Waterloo Station to the small country town of Ramsgard in Dorset is a journey of not more than three or four hours, but having by good luck found a compartment to himself, Wolf Solent was able to indulge in such an orgy of concentrated thought, that these three or four hours lengthened themselves out into something beyond all human measurement.’ We rejoin Sally this week in conversation with...

‘The fate of the writer is to dwell in that realm of shadows and apparitions and half-seen thoughts…’ This week, we join Sally sketching a scene for her new novel, Mrs Parnell, in which the stern housekeeper Mrs Parsons encounters a figure on the stairs. But who is this figure? An intruder? A suitor? Or even, perhaps, a reimagining of Gabriel Conroy, from Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’ (1914)? Lis...

‘He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something.’ A special episode this week, as we join Sally in conversation with James Bowen, the podcast’s producer and a fellow teacher of literature. Listen for a conversation on the role of objects in narrat...

For Gabriella Kelly Davies. ‘On the last day of summer Mrs Bohannon fell in love. The poplars, fallaciously pathetic, looked horrified, their branches rising on the wind like startled hair, and a pilgrim cloud wept a few chill tears.’ This week, Sally is once again in the world of Alice Thomas Ellis. Listen for a close reading of the opening of Ellis’ fourth novel, The Other Side of the Fire (1983...

‘Mrs Mason looked now through Aunt Irene’s rich windows, sparking like spring water and framing fat pink shrubs that grew with child-like health in the tiny London garden.’ This week, we join Sally navigating the world of Alice Thomas Ellis’ absurdist novel, The 27th Kingdom (1982), exploring the parallel lives of its two central women. Listen for a meditation on building character, society, and o...

For Miss Braithwaite, who gave me eloquence. ‘I need to summon the spirits of place…’ This week, we join Sally in rehearsal for a performance, given last week at Somerville College as part of Oxfordshire Mind’s evening of ‘Connections.’ Listen for an invocation of character, both in fiction and of those figures in our own lives that become part of our stories. Both Gladys and J.M.W. Turner feature...

‘Enid’s hands are always kept busy caring for other people…’ This week, Sally continues her theme of developing characters from objects by presenting a portrait of Enid Bagot, a young woman used to working with her hands, who will feature in Sally’s forthcoming imagined biography, provisionally titled Mrs Parnell. Listen for a reflection on the routines and rhythms of life and work, interspersed w...

‘His straw hat hurt him, it pinched his forehead and started a dull ache in the two bones just over the temples…’ This week, Sally has been reading and teaching Katherine Mansfield, focusing on characters in her short fiction. Listen for a masterclass on openings, writing characters through objects, and making connections between and through them. The full text of the stories Sally reads can be fo...

For Emilie: may you always sing. We return this week, for a special micro-episode, to Mrs Dalloway’s London. Listen for a brief meditation on the fragmentation of life, interruption, and finding meaning in art. This episode was edited and produced by James Bowen. Special thanks to Andrew Smith, Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.

‘Now it was time to move, and, as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera-glasses, and gets up to out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter…’ This week, we join Sally reflecting on the arrangement of character. Listen for a journey, via Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) through perspectives, cityscapes, and the means by which we n...

‘Sightlines produce a story, an avenue, a walkway, a space to move through…’ This week, we join Sally reflecting on the idea of the sightline, and the stories they structure. Listen for a meditation on narrative, childhood, and a unique perspective of and from The Dreaming Spires… The text of the Sylvia Plath poem Sally references can be found here .  This episode was edited and produced by James...

‘I try to live my life as though I were stitching together a book of songs.’ This week, Sally offers us a tour through the stitched-together songs of her life, reflecting on the form of rhapsody. Join her for a series of vignettes on art, education, memory, and connection. This text of this episode is based on an address Sally gave at Wadham College Chapel, part of an evening of ‘Taking Heart in P...

‘I see that she is thinking most of her canvas, and how she will get there…’ This week, we join Sally after visiting her friend, the artist Emma Neuberg. Listen for a reflection of friendship, travel, and the connections art offers us. More information on Emma and her work can be found here . She can also be found on Instagram @emmaneuberg. The beautiful piano music in the closing section is ‘Tues...

‘Blithe came to me, not in flashing red or pink neon, but in pastels… in soft, painterly tones…’ This week, Sally has been inspired by a dream of the word ‘blithe.’ Listen for a meditation on the relationship between words, language, and the memories they ignite. The Muir poem Sally reads can be found here . The music used in the opening and closing section is, respectively, ‘Sunday’ and ‘Thursday...

‘Rhythm seems to be the first or formal relation of part to part in any whole…’ This week, Sally has been thinking about rhythms, in her life, writing, and the works of others. Listen for a meditation, via James Joyce, Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight (1939), and Sally’s work in progress, on the suturing of experience, and the spaces between moments of being. Joyce’s reflection on rhythm, among o...