Heather Clark, whose 1,100-page biography of Sylvia Plath was published by Alfred A. Knopf and Jonathan Cape in October 2020, talks about her experience writing the life of an iconic figure who has been mythologized and pathologized for half a century. Clark spent eight years researching and writing her biography. Her book draws upon a wealth of new material—including key letters, interviews, manuscripts, and psychiatric information—to give a fuller portrait of Plath’s early life, college years, marriage to Ted Hughes, and literary career. Clark will discuss the fraught history of Plath biography, her own decision to write a new life of Plath, and some of the challenges she encountered along the way. She will also talk about the merits of “slow” biography in the age of the soundbite, and why we need more big biographies of women.

Life-Writing Beyond Words is a research network and termly series of public events, hosted by Felix Appelbe, the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and Ocean Ambassadors, that explores how we move between words and the non-verbal.

Life-writing is the study of lives, through letters, diaries, performance, memoir, autobiography and biography. But it frequently has to negotiate the non-verbal, for instance when describing the creative minds of composers, choreographers or artists, capturing the sound and light of childhood, or eavesdropping on the world of animal experience. How can these worlds be captured in words?

We are addressing this challenge by convening a network that spans many disciplines, bringing together academics, practitioners and performers who would otherwise not meet. Free-thinking lectures and laboratories will forge new pathways between the verbal and the non-verbal, journeying towards innovative experimental and performative methodologies.

This is the second in a termly series exploring the non-verbal in life-writing, with contributions from Martin Bencsik, Katherine Collins, Eleanor Morgan, Olivier Adam and Aline Penitot.

What can life-writing learn from the expressive forms of the animal kingdom? An interdisciplinary panel of artists and scientists convene to ask: what is the sound of a spider web? How do the vibrations of bees spread news? What do humpback whales make of human music, and how might human poetry learn from birdsong?

*The pre-recorded talk will be released on the OCLW website a week before the event - please watch the video before joining us on zoom at 6pm for the Q&A session.*



Poetry was the most affordable art form in the Roman world: all it required were words, and someone with a talent to arrange them in a meaningful, aesthetically convincing way. It offers a unique insight into Roman life; it also served as a form of life-writing. The verse inscriptions as evidence for poetry are ubiquitous, and attest to inclusive cultural practice of the people of ancient Rome beyond the palaces of its urban aristocracy. How is the empire’s considerable regional and ethnic diversity reflected in the engagement with inscribed verse?

A series of papers discussing life-writing in the form of the essay, and applying this form to life-writing on the subject of health and sickness. Please click through for further information on the OCLW website.



The event takes the form of 6 pre-recorded videos, all of which will be released online at 1pm. The total duration is just under 2 hours, but they can be watched in any order, and will remain online indefinitely.

Dr Bob Bewley has worked in Britain, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on aerial and field surveys, excavations and aerial archaeology training workshops, and is the Co-founder and Project Director of the EAMENA project (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East & North Africa). He will be talking about his recent work in the Middle East.

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