The Verb this week is abundant with the language of Autumn and fruitfulness as Ian Mcmillan and his guests explore writing about the season and harvest festivals; past, present and future. Rebecca May Johnson is the author of 'Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen'. In this playful memoir she rewrites the kitchen as a vital source of knowledge and revelation. A novelist and nature writer, everything Melissa Harrison writes is attuned to the seasons and for Melissa, autumn is a particularly poignan...
Oct 07, 2022•44 min
This week on The Verb we're celebrating the birthday of Apples and Snakes, who've been pioneering spoken word poetry for 40 years. Ian McMillan is joined onstage at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham by six poets who've been involved with Apples and Snakes over the years; Casey Bailey, the current Poet Laureate of Birmingham, award-winning poet Kayo Chingonyi, Roy McFarlane, Muneera Pilgrim and Malika Booker, co-founder of the writer's collective Malika's Kitchen. Presented ...
Sep 30, 2022•44 min
Recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham, Ian showcases verse that has arisen from two collaborative projects: Across Borders and Language Is a Queer Thing. Dzifa Benson's explores the phenomenon of the Ghanaian drinking name which is part of her Ewe heritage, and we ask our poets to come up with their own. Alvin Pang gives us his insight into a location which was formative in the development of poetry in Singapore in the poem Boat Quay, and Fred D'Aguiar offers us t...
Sep 23, 2022•44 min
The first Verb of a new season, recorded in front of an audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival of poetry and performance at the Hippodrome in Birmingham. We have brand new work from the legendary dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and we're also joined by two of this year's CSL poets; Romalyn Ante, author of 'Anti-Emetic for Homesickness', and Isabelle Baafi, who won a Somerset Maugham award for her debut pamplet Ripe. Linda France is one of the shortlisted poets for this year's Laurel Pri...
Sep 16, 2022•44 min
It's the last Verb before we break up for the summer term, so we're having an end of term games day. Games Writer Rhianna Pratchett has worked across many games in a 20 year career. Some are big studio titles like Tomb Raider, where she was brought in to update the character of Lara Croft for a new generation, and others are indie games like Sketchbook Games’ ‘The Lost Words’, a game that Rhianna was involved in from early development and which was inspired by her own personal experiences of gri...
Jul 15, 2022•44 min
Michael Longley is one of Northern Ireland's foremost contemporary poets. His debut collection, 'No Continuing City', was published to acclaim in 1969 and since then he has published many more collections of verse, including 'Gorse Fires', which won the Whitbread Prize, and 'The Weather in Japan', which won the T.S. Eliot prize and the Hawthornden Prize. His major themes are war, nature and love. Perhaps his best-known poem is 'Ceasefire', which, like many of his poems, was inspired by The Iliad...
Jul 08, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the language, poetry and perceptions of old age with Fleur Adcock who has been writing poetry for seven decades, comedian Pope Lonergan who has written a memoir of his ten years working in a care home, and psychotherapist Jane Campbell who at the age of 80 is publishing her debut collection of short stories this month. And in our Something Old Something New series celebrating 100 years of poetry on the BBC we hear an archive poem from Michael Longley, and a new commission f...
Jul 01, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the language and complexities of male friendship with poet Michael Pederson whose book Boy Friends is 'a paean to all the gorgeous male friendships that have transformed his life', comedian Max Dickins who proposed to his girlfriend then realised he had no-one to be his best man, and film expert Adam Scovell who explores on-screen relationships from the buddy movie to the bromance. And poet Daljit Nagra reads his specially commissioned work Air for our Something Old Somethi...
Jun 24, 2022•44 min
Adelle Stripe's Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure charts the gripping chaos and self-sabotage of a classic " drug band with a rock problem". She shares something in common with all our guests this week, who all stand at the crossroads of words and music. Her book describes a band who while plumbing the depths of personal behaviour and let's be honest - personal hygiene - maintain a strangely pure artistic vision. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon has also...
Jun 17, 2022•44 min
In the second of two programmes recorded in front of an audience at this year's Hay Festival, Ian McMillan is joined by Jennifer Egan, Gurnaik Johal and Allie Esiri. Jennifer Egan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for her novel 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', she has just published a companion novel, 'The Candy House'. Gurnaik Johal's debut short story collection is 'We Move', a group of tales that chart multiple generations of immigrants in West London. Allie Esiri is an award-winning anthologist and ...
Jun 10, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan is always at home in front of a crowd, and in this programme, recorded at Hay Festival, he is joined by some of our most exciting writers, performers and poets to explore the idea of homeliness - literal or metaphorical and to ask if writing can be a kind of home. His guests are: the poet Lemn Sissay, whose latest book, for children, is a celebration of curiosity and belonging; by Monica Ali, who casts her eye across family matters in her new novel 'Love Marriage'; by Daniel Morden ...
Jun 03, 2022•44 min
Presented by Ian McMillan, The Verb, Radio 3’s showcase for the best in new poetry, writing and performance, hosts a special programme recorded in The Queen’s Library at Windsor Castle. The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will perform a new work for the occasion, and we’ll explore rare poetic gems from the collection – annotated editions gifted to the library by his Laureate predecessors Wordsworth and Tennyson. Ian will discuss the collection with the Royal Librarian, Stella Panayotova We are also...
May 27, 2022•44 min
This week Ian McMillan and his guests write to uncover previously hidden worlds and consider how to use language to hide in plain sight... Mick Herron is the author of the 'Slough House; series of spy thrillers about a group of discarded and overlooked M15 agents. The first book in the series, Slow Horses has been adapted for TV starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, and he has just published the eighth instalment, Bad Actors. Kayo Chingonyi discusses the Black British poetry anthology he has edi...
May 20, 2022•44 min
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
