The comedy of corporate language, why a 16th century 'dark night of the soul' poem could help you through your own dark night, the experiments of J.H.Prynne, and the tenderness of boys' friendships - with Ian McMillan and guests Brian Bilston, Martha Sprackland, Daljit Nagra and Ira Lightman. Brian Bilston's very funny books include 'You Took the Last Bus Home', and 'Alexa, what is there to know about love'? He reads from his new guide to reading and writing poetry: 'How to Lay an Egg with a Hor...
May 24, 2026•42 min
Michael Laskey has produced six collections of poetry since his first pamphlet in 1988. That was also the year he co-founded the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. His career in poetry which has seen him teach, edit, and publish and has resulted in him becoming this year's recipient of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. As his Collected Poems is published, he looks back on charting his life in poetry. When Michael Schmidt met Elizabeth Jennings, he was a student and she was a celebrated poet. As managing...
Mar 08, 2026•42 min
Ian McMillan is joined by Blake Morrison with the poetry of sibling relationships, Natalie Shapero - who reports poetically from the world of cinema in L.A., and Tara Bergin, who looks at how to escape from a poem, as well as sharing a 'Neon Line' with us. We also have our cartoon for the ear - an 'eartoon' exploring the origins of confusing words in the English language - written and performed by Stagedoor Johnny (Richard Poynton). Blake Morrison's new poetry collection is 'Afterburn' (Chatto a...
Mar 01, 2026•42 min
George Szirtes, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize and the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, is the most recent poet to join the small selection panel for arguably the UK's most public celebration of poetry - Poems on the Underground. As the London Tube initiative reaches its 40th birthday, George discusses how poems are chosen and shares some poetry that he feels speaks to the strength of the scheme. Depending on how you count it, this month marks the 4th or the 12th anniversary of the conflict betwee...
Feb 22, 2026•42 min
Ian McMillan's guests this week are the singer and songwriter Richard Dawson, T.S. Eliot prize winning poets Jacob Polley and Sarah Howe and Children's Laureate Frank Cottrell Boyce - who celebrates Professor John Carey and the art of poetry criticism. Richard Dawson and Jacob Polley light up the past and make the future of energy and community life seem more real - by bringing their different sensibilities to 'Ancestral Reverb' - an album created by north east organisation 'Threads in the Groun...
Feb 15, 2026•42 min
Ian MacMillan has love in mind as he is joined by a swoon of poets all interested in the subject of love in lyric form. Kim Moore’s poetry collections include The Art of Falling and All The Men I Never Married. She's chosen this week's Neon Line, The Verb's feature on lines that shine out from their poems, from a love poem that has long moved her. She also shares a new love poem from her forthcoming collection, The House of Broken Things, Deborah Alma, poet, editor, and co-founder of The Poetry ...
Feb 08, 2026•42 min
Ian McMillan explores Rainer Maria Rilke's life advice, and is joined by Paul Farley, Griot Gabriel, Kate Fox and Ulrich Baer Paul Farley brings us the sound of planes, and the world of the usher - as well as a life-long connection to Robert Louis Stevenson's 'A Child's Garden of Verses'. Paul's latest collection 'When it Rained for a Million Years' was shortlisted for this year's T.S.Eliot Prize. 'Can poetry change your life'? - poet and Verb regular Kate Fox - and writer and scholar Ulrich Bae...
Feb 01, 2026•42 min
Join Ian McMillan for a celebration of remarkable poets and poetry as he presents highlights of the annual T.S. Eliot Prize readings, recorded in front of an audience at London's Southbank. Ian was the host for the TS Eliot Prize readings at the Royal Festival Hall - where shortlisted poets read from their shortlisted collections in front of a packed audience. For this edition of The Verb Ian has selected poems featuring infinity pools, slush, shopping malls, family inheritances, the beaver, and...
Jan 25, 2026•41 min
Testament, beatboxer, rapper and writer - presents a festive Adverb (complete with a yuletide salad battle), with his guests the former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, poetic legend John Hegley, Mercury prize nominated folk singer Sam Lee, as well as satirical supremo Brian Bilston. They bring iconic robins, soul stirring music, poetic Christmas questions, and quirky Yule traditions to an audience in the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Hall in Salford. Brian Bilston's very funny books include 'You Took th...
Dec 19, 2025•57 min
Ian McMillan's guests include the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage with poetry from his latest collection 'New Cemetery', impressionist and poet Alistair McGowan and Joelle Taylor with her new book 'Maryville'. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage shares poems from his recent collection 'New Cemetery' - inspired by a cemetery that was being built near his house during lockdown. The poems incorporate a litany of moth species' names, meditations on writing, the dead as an audience for nature - and include res...
Nov 16, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan enjoys the language of the iconic 'Night Mail' poem by W.H. Auden, invites us into signal boxes, imagines train station bars, and evokes the empty platforms that inspire songs - as he celebrates 200 years of railway inspired poetry with his guests Don Paterson, Carmen Marcus, Bella Hardy and Patrick McGuinness. Don Paterson is a poet and musician. He's the editor of an anthology of train poems called 'Train Songs' (with Sean O'Brien) and described the chapters of his memoir 'Toy Fig...
Nov 09, 2025•43 min
Shaun Usher's Letters of Note project became a cultural empire spanning multiple books, stage shows, and an online archive. He's now produced Diaries of Note - a collection of diary entries that span centuries from the great and the good . He discusses the relationship between a diary entry and a poem. Katrina Naomi on her latest pamphlet of poems, Dance As If, in which she reconnects with her body, as a woman of a certain age, through the medium of dance. Amani Saeed on the culmination of the L...
Oct 26, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan celebrates an iconic poem that inspired a generation of poets and readers - Tony Harrison's 'Them and Uz'. His guests include the new US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, the former Poet Laureate of Belfast Sinéad Morrissey who brings us an autumnal 'Neon Line', zoologist and poet David Morley on his new book 'Passion', and Daniel Sluman on a landmark anthology 'Versus Versus - 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets' - edited by Rachael Boast, with the help of an Advocacy an...
Oct 19, 2025•42 min
Writer and poet Maria Popova on taking inspiration from 19th century ornithological studies for her new publication, An Almanac of Birds – 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days. Slam poet Aditya Narayan has had an impressive winning streak this year – winning the Roundhouse Poetry Slam in April and the Loud Poets Grand Slam final in August. He discusses writing poetry for performance and rhyming English, Hindi, and Urdu. Kimberly Campanello and D.M. Black are members of a distinguished group - poet...
Oct 12, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan presents The Verb from Contains Strong Language in Bradford - with poets Imtiaz Dharker, Kieron Higgins, Nabeela Ahmed, and Katrina Porteous (reading poems from her Laurel Prize winning collection Rhizodont). Rock, stone and sediments are everywhere in this celebration of poetry and poetry in Bradford. We have millstone grit and the story of stone in a specially commissioned poem from Queen's Gold Medal winner Imtiaz Dharker, the influence of ska on the sediments of language that tu...
Oct 05, 2025•42 min
Testament presents poetry in performance from Daljit Nagra, Kate Fox, Andrew McMillan and Kirsty Taylor The Adverb is recorded in front of a studio audience in St George's Hall, Bradford at the Contains Strong Language festival. Part of the Bradford 2025 City of Culture celebrations. Testament is a writer, rapper, educator and world-record breaking beatboxer. Daljt Nagra won the Forward Poetry Prize for best single poem in 2004 for "Look We Have Coming to Dover!" Verb regular Kate Fox's recent b...
Sep 19, 2025•57 min
Ian McMillan presents poetry in performance with Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen in this recording of The Adverb at the Ledbury Festival. They share poems of friendship, childhood, and of love in its many forms - from the love of a child for a parent, to the love of balconies. Jackie Kay is the former Makar (Poet Laureate) of Scotland - she shares poems of great tenderness from her latest collection May Day and from earlier collections too. Hollie McNish is one of our best-loved p...
Sep 12, 2025•56 min
Pulitzer prize-winning poet Forrest Gander discusses the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships. An initiative which awards $50,000 to poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions to enable them to create projects that enrich the lives of their neighbours, through responsive and interactive poetry activities. In awarding Laurie Bolger The Moth Poetry prize, Nobel Laureate Louise Glück said, "I respond to poems that surprise me". Laurie reflects on the impact of this asse...
Jun 29, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan is joined by actor and writer Harriet Walter, sound artist Jason Singh, poet Gillian Allnutt - and hears ritual language for glaciers - from writers Andri Snaer Magnason and Manjushree Thapa. Dame Harriet Walter is one of our best loved actresses. She's absorbed the rhythms of Shakespeare's writing over decades of her award-winning work on the stage. For 'The Verb' Harriet performs new poems she's written for her book 'She Speaks', an anthology which gives the women characters from ...
Jun 22, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan welcomes poetry about fathers, songs celebrating the things that fall out of books, and a poetic investigation into the women who were labelled witches, with guests Alison Binney, Boo Hewerdine, Yvonne Lyon, and Fiona Benson. Ian also presents a new Eartoon (our cartoon for the ear ) which celebrates the quirks of phrasal Verbs written by Stagedoor Johnny (aka Richard Poynton). Alison Binney explores what it means to have a parent with dementia in a new collection called 'The Opposi...
Jun 15, 2025•42 min
On this week’s edition of The Verb: Ian McMillan basks in the glow of a Neon Line explained by the celebrated Faroese poet and novelist Carl Jóhan Jensen; Karen Downs-Barton shares poems from her debut collection, Minx, which reflects on her Romani childhood; Cristóbal Bianchi, cofounder of the Casagrande Collective, on their Bombing Of Poems project; and Naz Knight, poet-in-residence at Luton Town FC, on drawing poetic inspiration from the terraces. Presenter Ian McMillan Producer: Ekene Akalaw...
Jun 08, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan's guests celebrate hedges, with poetry from Alison Brackenbury and Testament, singing from Sam Lee, Michael Symmons Roberts explores a poem with a nightingale at its centre, and hedgelayer Paul Lamb records himself walking a hedgerow that's rich in wildlife. This hedge-themed special features a haunted hedge from poet Alison Brackenbury, part of the anthology 'Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined' (ed, Anna Milon and Rory Waterman). Alison's hedge started off life as a talking hedge i...
Jun 01, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan's guests are the Scottish Makar Peter Mackay, Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, as well as Indian dancer and poet Tishani Doshi, and the musician Scanner. Scanner lets us into the baffling and mysterious 'poetry' of album titles by Autechre, Aphex Twin and other electronic music artists. Scanner has worked with Laurie Anderson, and Pauline Oliveros amongst other artists, as well as creating sound design for installations at museums, at an airport and for dancers at the London Olympics. ...
May 25, 2025•42 min
Rebecca Watts has just published her third poetry collection - The Face In The Well. She discusses writing poems that engage with the work of an earlier generation of poets, turning a cherished childhood memory into poetry, and Emily Brontë's love of ironing. Poet and writer Brian Bilston is as much a fan of the American writer, artist, and designer Edward Gorey as The Verb. He accepted our commission to create an updated version of one of Gorey's most celebrated poems - The Gashlycrumb Tinies. ...
Feb 23, 2025•41 min
Flames and poetry - what poetry tell us about the Los Angeles fires, the pleasure the poet John Keats took in reading - a poem-letter to an imaginary estate agent, and magical language. To explore all this McMillan is joined by poetry writers and poetry lovers. Ian's guests: BBC newsreader and journalist Reeta Chakrabarti is a trustee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. She shares her passion for John Keats' poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' - with its 'realms of gold' and a pl...
Feb 02, 2025•42 min
How does it feel to be adopted? How does naming things affect experience? Why does a mysterious sound make Ian want to get out of the studio in Salford? Is it ever a good idea to pretend to have a particular accent? Poems, questions and much more - on this week's Verb. Ian McMillan is joined by poets Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, Luke Wright, and sociolinguist Rob Drummond. Joelle Taylor brings us a brand new commission inspired by the 50th anniversary of the BBC television series 'The Changes'...
Jan 26, 2025•42 min
Ian McMillan presents highlights from the TS Eliot Prize Readings - extraordinary poetry from 2024. Poetry books featured : Raymond Antrobus 'Signs, Music' (Picador Poetry) Hannah Copley 'Lapwing' (Pavilion Poetry) Helen Farish 'The Penny Dropping' (Bloodaxe Books) Peter Gizzi 'Fierce Elegy' (Penguin Poetry) Gustav Parker Hibbett 'High Jump as Icarus Story' (Banshee Press) Rachel Mann 'Eleanor Among the Saints' (Carcanet Press) Gboyega Odubanjo 'Adam' (Faber & Faber) Carl Phillips 'Scattered...
Jan 19, 2025•41 min
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins tells Ian McMillan about the influence of poetry on his writing, and shares poems written by his own mother. Ian also explores the influence of a very competitive mother on the life and poetry of former National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis. And as it's the first Verb of the year, stand-up poet Kate Fox suggests new names for all the calendar months, whilst Stagedoor Johnny brings a new 'eartoon' (which explains why the names of baby animals can be so confus...
Jan 12, 2025•42 min
The Morecambe Poetry festival hosts Ian McMillan and the Verb at the Morecambe Winter Gardens, for a special recording with poets Pam Ayres, Raymond Antrobus and Henry Normal, three performers much- loved by audiences. Pam Ayres takes us back to the beginning of her career with the first poem she ever performed live whilst working for the Royal Air Force. This preceded her memorable winning appearance on the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks. Raymond Antrobus reads from a long sequence of poems ...
Jan 03, 2025•57 min
A special recording of The AdVerb at The Hackney Empire . Ian McMillan introduces six unique collaborations - new commissions between poets composers and musicians in collaboration with BBC Contains Strong Language and the BBC Symphony Orchestra Poets from the East End of London team up with composers to make new pieces that tell stories of this part of the capital city in all its astonishing diversity . 1. Keith Jarrett with his new poem 'E Note' set to music by Iain Farrington 2. Hannah Silva ...
Dec 27, 2024•1 hr 2 min
