Ian McMillan explores and delights in pretentiousness - in language and in writers. What do we mean when we say a piece of writing or a performer is pretentious? Ian's guests include the poet Luke Wright who shares a tour de force poem in defence of pretentiousness and pretentious things (eg children called 'Hopscotch and Entwhistle', 'carpaccio of stoat' smeared across a brick, 'tweedy too-short trousers' ). Also on the programme, the spoken word poet Jenny Lindsay delves deep into the art of t...
Nov 19, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan meets Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo to explore her poetry, her essays and her fiction - to find out about her writing process and how it has evolved, her sources of inspiration and her influences.
Nov 12, 2021•44 min
As energy prices rise, electric cars charge, and the COP summit in Glasgow burns the midnight, er, electricity, we turn up the voltage on the language generated by that invisible force and think about our relationship with it. Ian's guests are the novelist and poet Ben Okri, the lexicographer Susie Dent, the futures ethnographer Laura Watts, and the actor and podcaster Kerry Shale, as Bob Dylan...
Nov 05, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan on the language and poetry of puddings - with Lorraine Bowen, Joseph Coelho, Kate Fox, Frances Atkins and Fariha Shaikh. Singer, comedian and songwriter Lorraine Bowen is known to many as the 'Crumble Lady' - her song about cooking crumble won her huge audiences on 'Britain's Got Talent', and went viral on social media. We find out about how the word 'crumble' translates into other languages and Ian offers a Yorkshire dialect interpretation of the 'Crumble Song'. Joseph Coelho share...
Oct 22, 2021•44 min
The Verb celebrates Orkney and the work of George Mackay Brown in his centenary year. One of Scotland's greatest 20th century writers, George Mackay Brown was a poet, novelist, columnist and chronicler of Orcadian life. Ian McMillan is joined this week by the novelist James Robertson who is fascinated by 'time' in George Mackay Brown's work and has said his writing is 'full of beautiful sentences, big ideas, mischievous comedy, powerful tragedy and, again and again, simple observations that make...
Oct 15, 2021•44 min
For the last of our programmes recorded at the Belgrade Theatre for the Contains Strong Language Festival of poetry and performance, Ian McMillan is joined by Simon Armitage & LYR, Theresa Lola, Romalyn Ante and Andrea Mbarushimana for a programme that celebrates the relationship between mentor and mentee, the importance of cultural exchange and work that pushes at the boundaries. Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage has been working with the musicians Richard Walters and Patrick Pearson to set his...
Oct 08, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan is joined by an audience at the Belgrade Theatre as he explores Coventry's green places and the river that ghosts through the city with poets David Morley, John Bernard, Sujana Crawford and Olga Dermott-Bond. He is also joined by musicians from the City of Coventry Brass Band. Poet David Morley unpacks the meaning of the River Sherbourne, which flows through and under Coventry. David is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and his latest collection is 'Fury' (C...
Oct 01, 2021•44 min
The Verb is Live at the Contains Strong Language festival of poetry and performance at the 2021 City of Culture, Coventry. Ian McMillan is in front of a studio audience at the Belgrade Theare and will be joined by just a few of the festival guests; the Mercury-prize nominated musician Loyle Carner and poets John Agard, Siana Bangura and Roy Mcfarlane. Loyle Carner is a hip-hop artist with a love of poetry that began when he was a child. His debut album, 'Yesterday's Gone' was nominated for the M...
Sep 25, 2021•44 min
We reveal our new 'Rules for Writing' - six ideas to inspire, excite, and to break! The musician and songwriter Damon Albarn - and award-winning poets Don Paterson and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett - all join Ian McMillan to illustrate these provocations, which are designed to help launch a new era of poetry, story-writing and performance. The composer and producer Gerry Diver has also contributed a piece of sound art inspired by the cadences of the human voice called 'You May be Mistaken'. Across our ...
Sep 17, 2021•46 min
Ian McMillan is joined by Anita Sethi, Kate Fox, Ira Lightman, and Tom Chatfield to explore the language of time, listening and uncertainty and to celebrate the most compelling ideas that have been gathered into the Verb's 'keepnet' over the last year. This is the final summit of our 'Experiments in Living' season, before we reveal our writing manifesto in the autumn. Writer and journalist Anita Sethi reads from her book 'I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain' , the story of how...
Jul 30, 2021•44 min
What makes a good manifesto? Are they better if they are sloganeering or questioning? Radio 1's Greg James and co-writer Chris Smith's new book is like a manifesto for the imagination, Malika Booker co-founded a poetry workshop that has transformed the literary landscape, and Kathryn Williams' songs always chart new territory - they join Ian McMillan to help him shape The Verb Manifesto which will be launched in the autumn. Malika Booker founded the poetry workshop 'Malika's Poetry Kitchen' alon...
Jul 23, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan is joined by the Labour Party politician Ed Miliband, by ambassador for ‘Compassion in Politics’ Jackie Weaver ( Jackie recently shot to fame after a parish council meeting went viral), by writer Emilie Robson with a 'Verb Drama' featuring an existentialist cat, and by our regular guest, stand-up poet Kate Fox. How do they think the language of politics could change to become more compassionate? And what about their perception of the word ‘authority’? Can writers help us see it diff...
Jun 25, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan on the language we use to think and write about trees and the kind of thinking we do alongside them - with forester and environmentalist Peter Wohlleben whose books include 'The Hidden Life of Trees', poet and academic Jason Allen-Paisant, bestselling novelist Sarah Moss, and Scots language specialist and Makar of the North East, Sheena Blackhall. Producer: Ruth Thomson
Jun 11, 2021•43 min
Ian McMillan on how language and poetry affect our perception of time. In this Verb he explores the language of slowness with Oxford University geographer Professor Danny Dorling, asks poet Rachael Boast to read time-bending poetry from her new collection 'Hotel Raphael' (and also to take us deep into the different time-modes and time-zones inhabited by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Philosopher Roman Krznaric explains how to write about future time and how to be a good ancestor, and Verb re...
Jun 04, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan is joined by some of the most dynamic writers taking part in the Hay Festival: Michael Morpurgo, one of the nation’s best-loved children’s authors and author of ‘War Horse’, columnist and best-selling feminist chronicler Caitlin Moran, and the award-winning Cameroonian American novelist Imbolo Mbue. They’ll be discussing the stories that change us, and offer hope of change - and explore how we tell stories about ‘change’, be it ecological, emotional or physical.
May 28, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the dream like experience of 'reverie' - with Terrance Hayes, Bea Roberts, Rachel Genn and Ira Lightman. What does reverie mean to writers in 2021? Is it simply a waste of time and a state of procrastination? Novelist and neuroscientist Rachel Genn argues that a reverie can be a creative state, a propping open of the self, which lets the world 'sniff around'. The state of reverie was important to Wanda Coleman, the American poet known as 'the unofficial poet laureate of Los...
May 21, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the language of ancestry and the impact our families have on us across the generations and through the passing of time. With poets Hollie McNish whose grannies feature prominently in her latest collection 'Slug...and other things I've been told to hate', and Gillian Clarke whose new bilingual edition of The Gododdin - written by the 13th-century Welsh bard Aneirin - acknowledges what we inherit from the past. And columnist and author of 'House of Glass' Hadley Freeman, who ...
May 14, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the skill of collaboration - joined by guests Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write best-selling thrillers under the pseudonym Nicci French, and by Britain's finest, if only, comedy-jazz-rap duo 'Harry and Chris' (poet Harry Baker is a Poetry Slam Champion, and Chris Read is an award winning songwriter); they talk - and sing - about the ups and downs of creative collaboration. Nicci French's latest book is 'The House of Correction'. 'Harry and Chris' are performing with ...
May 07, 2021•44 min
What kind of writing keeps us thinking about technology and social media platforms, and their place in our lives - especially when they're seamlessly woven into our days? Ian McMillan is joined by comedian and actress Isy Suttie, political analyst Nanjala Nyabola, the poet Jack Underwood, and communications lecturer Dr Paul Taylor. Isy Suttie writes and performs a brand new song for The Verb about disappearing into the wormhole of the smartphone, and considers throwing her devices into the sea. ...
Apr 30, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan celebrates pauses and punctuation with guests Kei Miller, Eley Williams, Kate Fox and Angela Leighton. They explore the different emotions, listening and reading experiences prompted by brackets, full stops, em dashes, blank spaces, and other writerly ways of building obstacles, time and listening into poetry and prose. Eley Williams reads a brand new commission for The Verb, a very short story, which delights in the longest dash of all - the em dash, putting it at the heart of a ro...
Apr 23, 2021•44 min
How determined do you have to be to become a writer? How do you return to the page every day when inspiration runs dry, or you receive a rejection? And how do you know when to step away in case your writing becomes over-determined. To answer these questions Ian McMillan is joined by guests including Paula Byrne who has just written a new biography of the British novelist Barbara Pym, who wrote for many years before being published, and was unceremoniously dropped by her publisher when her work b...
Apr 16, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan and guests delight in the writing and naming of planets (Ian loves Neptune best), exploring how we as writers influence the perception of them, and how our perception may influence how humans treat them. Bettany Hughes is a historian, author and broadcaster. She shares her passion for Venus (planet and goddess) and looks at the first poem where the moon is depicted as 'silvery'. Bettany is exploring the big questions of the universe in films called 'Tea with B', and in her interview...
Apr 02, 2021•45 min
Ian McMillan on how 'writing at home' inspires, constrains and infuses language and storytelling - with guests Maggie O'Farrell, whose award-winning novel 'Hamnet' takes us inside Shakespeare's home, the unofficial Poet Laureate of Twitter Brian Bilston, Berlin-based writer and football pundit Musa Okwonga, and poet Holly Peste, who has written a specially commissioned piece inspired by the sound of writing at home. Producer: Ruth Thomson
Mar 19, 2021•44 min
This year, F Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby enters the public domain. What will this mean for one of America's best loved novels? Ian McMillan is joined by the academic and writer Sarah Churchwell, author of 'Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the invention of The Great Gatsby', to discuss why the language of the book is still so resonant to us today. And poet and playwright Inua Ellams considers the quality of 'emptiness' in the text and how Fitzgerald's writing made this glitteri...
Mar 12, 2021•44 min
In a world of daily pleases and thank yous, obligatory thank-you notes, and polite appreciation how can we express authentic gratitude with sincerity? Has lockdown made us more grateful? Can the expectation of gratitude be a burden? Poet Kate Fox assesses the etiquette of writers’ acknowledgements – who to thank? How much is too much? Is there such a thing as oversharing? Comedy writer Jack Bernhardt imagines how grateful you’d have to be – forever - if Superman saved your life. Sound artist Lea...
Mar 05, 2021•44 min
Guilty pleasure. Airport novel. Holiday reading. The language used to describe crime fiction often suggests that there's something throwaway in the ability to craft a gripping story that keeps the reader guessing. There's a suggestion that creating "a page-turner" is something of a lesser skill when it comes to writing. Creeping up on that idea from behind and leaving its body in the library, we have three women who know a thing or two about the literature of crime. Val McDermid is a powerhouse ...
Feb 19, 2021•44 min
You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk? At The Verb, we do both, as Ian McMillan is joined by guests who consider the deep connection between writing and walking. From the strut to the swagger, the amble to the lope, English has many words to get from A to B - all conveying a slightly different meaning. So where does writing and the physical journey meet? Jini Reddy talks about the quest for magic in the great outdoors, which is the subject of her Wainwright shortlisted book Wanderland....
Feb 05, 2021•44 min
Join Ian McMillan for a celebration of remarkable poets and poetry as he presents readings from all the collections shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. The prize is awarded annually by the T.S. Eliot Foundation for the best collection of the year - and the winner receives £25,000. Bhanu Kapil was declared this year's winner by the judges, for her 'invigorating' collection 'How to Wash a Heart'. Alongside readings from the poets themselves, Ian reflects on the resonance of their poems during th...
Jan 29, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan and guests including Jenny Offill, Alice Oswald and Wayne Binitie discuss weather writing. Alice Oswald The Oxford Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald is a great listener to the weather, something she has written about as being part of her experiences as a gardener. She has shown great attentiveness to water in all forms – with books like ‘Dart’ her long river poem and with her writing on rain for Radio 3. Along with her co-editor Paul Keegan, Alice has put together an anthology of we...
Jan 22, 2021•44 min
How do you give hope to children when you're not feeling hopeful? What's the difference between optimism and hope? How do children's writers balance light and dark, joy and sadness? And what kind of language sustains and nurtures us through difficult times when we're young? Smriti Halls, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kate Fox and Gaia Vince join Ian McMillan for a 'hope-ist' Verb. Smriti Halls Smriti’s books often seek to acknowledge loss and sadness whilst suggesting through image, rhythm and story tha...
Jan 08, 2021•44 min
