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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 ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ 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)

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Broadcasts

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