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
Ian McMillan and his guests explore the ‘language’ of light this Christmas. He’s joined by Baroness Floella Benjamin, who tells the story of leaving Trinidadian sunshine for the very different light in the south of England; one of our best-loved lexicographers, Susie Dent lets us into the vocabulary of light; poetry legend John Cooper Clarke talks about the leading lights of his childhood, and the glow of an extraordinary cocktail cabinet; and Ian rejoices in the glow of the screens that have co...
Dec 18, 2020•47 min
This week Ian McMillan dives into the word 'Brazil' and 'Brazilian', discovering irony, fusion and confusion, and the astonishing ability of one of its most famous novelists, Clarice Lispector, to dilate time. He also translates a Brazilian poem into Yorkshire dialect to see what happens to the tone. Toby Litt The novelist Toby Litt has become fascinated by the novels of Clarice Lispector, and responds with his own fiction in this, her centenary year. Lispector was born in Ukraine but spent much...
Dec 11, 2020•44 min
What might a zero-growth world mean for writers? The Verb offers this provocation to this week's guests, and asks how poets in particular can adjust to a world economy that's changing rapidly under long-down. Is there such a thing as a sustainable poem? Ian McMillan is joined by: Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and member of the Greek Parliament, Dr Seren Griffiths, an archaeologist and Radio 3 New Generation Thinker (fascinated by time and the taxonomy of soil), by novelist and poet Patrick...
Nov 27, 2020•44 min
In a special extended conversation with Ian McMillan, the travel writer Jan Morris looks back over a career in writing that has spanned seven decades and explains what it is that keeps her returning to her writing desk every day at the age of 91. Jan Morris has just published 'Battleship Yamato: Of War, Beauty and Irony' (Pallas Athene) - it's the story of a ship that has always fascinated her, but, as she tells Ian, more importantly it is a portrait of the ship as an allegory for war itself. Ja...
Nov 20, 2020•44 min
The Verb on 'green' memoir - with the actor and writer Gabriel Byrne, and the poets Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Pascale Petit. What would our stories sound like if we told them through our relationships with the plants, animals and landscapes that are most dear to us? What happens when we start to see the natural world as an integral part of our own histories? Gabriel Byrne is an award-winning actor and writer. His new memoir 'Walking with Ghosts' starts emphatically and lyrically with the landsc...
Nov 13, 2020•44 min
Are you what you eat? The way we talk and think about food has changed a lot in recent years, particularly when it comes to the idea of eating ethically and the concept of veganism. Once a punchline, it's now a multi-million pound industry. What do the words we use to talk about food tell us about the underlying moral issues? Why is food so tied up with shame? Can we find the language to become 'good enough' eaters? Joining Ian to talk about the language of food from 'clean' to 'dirty' are Benja...
Nov 06, 2020•45 min
This week Ian McMillan and guests are turning to humour to help us get through difficult times. If 'comedy equals tragedy plus time' - how much time do we need to make something funny? Or is it more dangerous to leave a topic too long, and risk your audience moving on? Because in comedy, timing is everything... Joining Ian are Ben Schott, the author of two novels set in the Jeeves and Wooster universe on why so many people have turned to P.G Wodehouse during lockdown, comedian Grainne Maguire on...
Oct 30, 2020•44 min
Ian McMillan introduces new poetry that takes its cue from the limestone, fossils and concrete of the walls of London's Southbank Centre, in a celebration of all kinds of poetry walls, real and digital. His guests are the poets Chris McCabe, Anthony Anaxagorou, Joelle Taylor and Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa. Chris McCabe is a poet and the joint librarian of the National Poetry Library (based at the Southbank Centre). He performs a new commission for The Verb - inspired by the fossils ('scavengers and...
Oct 23, 2020•44 min
Ian McMillan and guests look at the way poets have written about oil and the oil industry.
Oct 16, 2020•48 min
