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On Nature with Helen Macdonald and Melissa Harrison

Episode 3 of 3

Can books help us navigate the messy business of living? Damian Barr is joined by Helen Macdonald and Melissa Harrison to discuss books to deepen our engagement with nature.

A new series about how books might help us navigate everyday life, presented by writer and broadcaster Damian Barr.

Each episode takes a life experience - such as grief - and talks to writers about they handle it through their own reading, writing and lived experience. We explore the fiction, non-fiction, memoir and poetry that might help us better understand our own stories.

This week - how can we deepen our engagement with the natural world around us? Many of us experienced a shift in our relationship with nature during the pandemic; how can we stay tuned in to nature, and keep looking with fresh eyes, as the world grows busier once more? Damian is joined by Helen Macdonald (Vesper Flights; H is for Hawk) and Melissa Harrison (The Stubborn Light of Things; By Ash, Oak and Thorn; All Among the Barley) to talk about the poetry, field guides and fiction that have guided them.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for 大象传媒 Audio in Bristol

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 24 Apr 2022 16:30

Books Discussed in the Programme

By Oak, Ash and Thorn by Melissa Harrison (Chicken House)

The Stubborn Light of Things by Melissa Harrison (Faber)

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Vintage)

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Jonathan Cape)

A Black Fox Running by Brian Carter (Bloomsbury)

Brendon Chase by BB (Puffin)

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (Penguin)

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (Sort Of Books)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (Oxford University Press)

What Is It Like to Be a Bat by Thomas Nagel (Reclam Philipp Jun)

The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet edited by Alice Oswald (Faber)

The Complete Poems of R.F. Langley (Carcanet)

The Journals of R.F. Langley (Shearsman)

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake (Bodley Head)

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Penguin)

Broadcasts

  • Tue 29 Jun 2021 11:30
  • Sun 24 Apr 2022 16:30