Ian McMillan's guests Emma Smith, Naush Sabah and Gerry Cambridge celebrate books and pens - and we hear a new BBC centenary commission from Imtiaz Dharker. Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, and her new book is called 'Portable Magic - A History of Books and their Readers'. Emma explains why books are like bodies, and explores the power of the inscription. Gerry Cambridge is a poet and essayist, editor of The Dark Horse transatlantic journal - and a love...
May 13, 2022•47 min
Ian McMillan welcomes the Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, who joins The Verb from wild woods north of Toronto, to share poems from her new collection ‘Dearly’ and to explore the preoccupations that link her poetry and fiction: what it means to have a body, our increasingly precarious relationship with the natural world, the Canadian sensibility, and the way we are caught in time like ‘mice in molasses’. Margaret reads from her iconic novel ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ and takes us back thro...
May 06, 2022•44 min
Ian talks to Maggie Gee about her new novel The Red Children. It's a fascinating take on migration which mixes humour with magic - and she tells us why she sought to avoid simplistic villains in a story that so often makes the headlines. Carmen Marcus tells us about her poetry collection and podcast the Catch and its distinctly personal link to the sea. She explains how the discovery of a letter from her father set her on a course to understand the changing fishing communities of her childhood h...
Apr 29, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan is joined by poet Lucy Mercer whose latest collection is inspired by 16th-century emblems, behavioural scientist Nick Chater whose book The Language Game explores the development of language and conversation, debut novelist Tice Cin whose book Keeping the House tells the story of a Turkish Cypriot family in north London, and poet Glyn Maxwell with a newly commissioned work.
Apr 22, 2022•43 min
Ian McMillan's cabaret of the word, featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance
Apr 15, 2022•44 min
In 2002 a new radio programme was born. It was almost called 'Saturday Speakeasy', but Radio 3 finally settled on 'The Verb'. This is our twentieth anniversary programme, so as you might expect it's packed with energetic language-play, poetry, and prose, and with five new commissions, as we reflect on the ways in which writing and performance have changed in the last two decades, and ask what might happen over the next twenty years. Ian's guests are poets Kate Fox, Malika Booker, Ira Lightman, L...
Apr 08, 2022•44 min
The Verb, Ian McMillan's weekly foray into writing and language examines the appeal of risk and chance. Risk is inherent to writing every time you put words on paper; whether it's risk in the use of form, or language, or subject matter. It's the risk a writer takes when they expose their own lives or the lives of others in their writing. Booker prize winning author DBC Pierre talks about his latest book 'Big Snake, Little Snake: An Inquiry into Gambling and Life'; Hannah Silva on the unpredictab...
Apr 01, 2022•44 min
The Equinox is a time of change, and at a special recording for Radio 3's After Dark Festival, The Verb's master of metamorphosis Ian McMillan presents a plethora of poets from Sage Gateshead. Our contribution to this major new live music festival, it's a feast of contemporary, classical and experimental music too and you can find out more searching "After Dark Festival" in BBC Sounds. We'll have live performances from Mike Garry bringing a flavour of Manchester to the North East and we'll also ...
Mar 25, 2022•44 min
The special bond of the mother and daughter - and its complexities - are up for discussion this week. Radio 3's regular writing programme hears about the concept of being "parentified" from Warsan Shire in her new collection examining the experience of displacement endured by her family. And Ruth Padel joins us to talk about Daughters of the Labyrinth, a novel which sees central character Ri investigate a secret history. Ruth also takes us through the Cretan performance poem the Mantinades, and ...
Mar 11, 2022•44 min
On The Verb this week Ian McMillan is up for a fight. We're delving into the world of the adversary. He'll be talking to Man Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James about Moon Witch, Spider King the second book in his Dark Star Trilogy, asking why the sequel explores the psychology of a witch - a character more generally associated with evil deeds than inner motivations. Hannah Lowe, fresh from a Costa Book of the Year win for her collection The Kids, will be exploring the adversarial side of t...
Mar 04, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan goes to the extremes this week to explore writing from the edges of time and place with Shetland based poet Jen Hadfield, John Henry Falle aka The Story Beast, Penelope Shuttle who's latest poetry collection explores Lyonesse, a lost and mythical land that once formed the land's end of Cornwall and Jon Ransom who's debut novel is a visceral and poetic story set in the wide expanses of Norfolk.
Feb 25, 2022•44 min
The Verb, Ian McMillan's regular foray into the world of language and literature, explores how travel writing, poetry and translation can ferry the reader across language, culture and time with Colm Tóibín on his first poetry collection Vinegar Hill; travel writer Sara Wheeler; Nandini Das, whose special interest is cross-cultural encounters and poet and translator Peter Robinson.
Feb 18, 2022•44 min
This week on The Verb, Ian McMillan and his guests are searching their hearts to explore writing about couples and relationships and the secrets its language might reveal. With Tessa Hadley on her new novel 'Free Love', poet Rommi Smith on writing the stories of people and places across time, inspired by images found in an overlooked photo archive, comedian Isy Suttie and Alex Hyde, whose debut novel follows the overlapping lives of two women called Violet.
Feb 11, 2022•44 min
‘What Kind of Times Are These?’ is the title of a poem by the brilliant American poet Adrienne Rich whose work covered many turbulent years. What kind of times indeed? Ian McMillan is asking his guests this week to provide their poetic answer to this question. With specially commissioned work from both the winner of this year's TS Eliot poetry prize, Joelle Taylor, and the writer, actor and Twitter Queen Miranda Keeling. Kiri Pritchard-McLean brings her comedic response to our question and award...
Jan 28, 2022•44 min
Poet Fiona Sampson, conductor Alice Farnham, and broadcaster Tom Service join Ian McMillan to explore the maths, metaphors and musical terms that make up the language of conducting. Plus comedy writer Jack Bernhardt takes a sideways look at Hollywood's take on the tortured genius.
Jan 21, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan presents poets reading from all the collections shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, awarded by the T.S. Eliot Foundation for the best collection of the past year, and gives his take on the year in poetry. This is a special edition of the show recorded at the annual prize reading at the Royal Festival Hall in London (hosted by Ian) a day before the announcement of the winner - Joelle Taylor. Ian celebrates the impact and achievement of Joelle's collection 'C+nto' and of the other sho...
Jan 14, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the language and imagery of sea myths and folklore from Mermaids and Selkies to Shapeshifters and other mysterious sea creatures, both real and imagined. Ian's guests include the poet Steve Ely whose book The European Eel is an epic poetic odyssey following the imagined journey of a single eel from the Sargasso Sea to the rivers of Europe, and back to its birthplace, to mate and die, Robin Robertson whose new collection Grimoire is a series of retellings and imaginings of S...
Jan 07, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan's guests, John Hegley, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathryn Williams, and Jay Rayner join our virtual audience in a literary Christmas dinner - revelling in the poetry, prose and linguistic satisfaction of Christmas food, in lyrics, recipes and in poetry. John Hegley gives us the taste of a French Christmas and of thick skinned roast potatoes, Kathryn Williams and Carol Ann Duffy present brand new Christmas songs from their new album 'Midnight Chorus', Jay Rayner gives us Yule commandments (inc...
Dec 17, 2021•45 min
Ian McMillan explores space in language and writing. Space can be explicit or implied through the space between words, between lines, at the margins of a page, or with pauses and gaps and silence. Ian's guests include the poet Raymond Antrobus whose new collection All the Names Given explores different kinds of space: physical, philosophical and cultural; the architectural critic, Jonathan Glancey, who understands more than most people how human beings relate to space; the poet and Britain’s fir...
Dec 10, 2021•44 min
This week on The Verb we're thinking about the language of repair. Ian McMillan and guests discuss poetry's ability to heal, putting literary puzzles back together again, finding what was once lost, and the often impenetrable vocabularies of 'getting stuff fixed'. Ian is joined by Chris McCabe, poet and National Poetry Librarian. During lockdown the Southbank Centre's National Poetry Library ran the 'lost quotes' service, reuniting remembered fragments of poems with the rest of the text. His lat...
Dec 03, 2021•44 min
Ian McMillan explores diaries and writing inspired by day-to-day life with Michael Rosen, whose book 'Many Different Kinds of Love' recounts his experiences in hospital with coronavirus and features extracts from the diaries of his nurses, doctors and wife, Lauren Elkin, whose book 'No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute' consists entirely of notes made in her smartphone, and Christopher Green, whose immersive digital project The Home evokes day-to-day life in care homes in the UK and Japan. Plu...
Nov 26, 2021•44 min
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
