Ian McMillan celebrates spectral spaces, the pulse of the body, and the power of repetition, in a Verb which showcases emerging talent - new sound designers from the Sound First scheme (a collaboration between BBC Contains Strong Language and Radio 3). Ian is joined by the songwriter, producer and sound designer Benbrick, the poet, playwright and performer Hannah Silva, and Sound First participant Noah Lawson, to explore what sound design can bring to poems, and what sounds are buried in poems t...
May 05, 2023•44 min
This Verb could change the way you think about dreams, it might change your perception of your own doctor, or your perception of those who become extremists. That's because the writers who join Ian McMillan this week all interviewed people to enrich the texture of their work, and the concepts at the heart of it. Steven Moffat is a writer and television producer - celebrated for his writing on Doctor Who. He is joined on the programme by Dr Peter Dong (Peter runs a research programme in particle ...
Apr 28, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan explores funny fiction by women with Helen Lederer, the writer and comedian (and now creator of the 'Comedy Women In Print: Book Prize'), author of Big Girl, Small Town and The Factory Girls, researcher and performer Dr Naomi Paxton who has written about the use of comedy as a political took in the Women's Suffrage movement and comedian Joanna Neary, who's Brief Encounters-inspired character Celia Jesson tries her hand at comedy. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Cecile Wright...
Apr 21, 2023•44 min
For our watery and wild Verb - which flows though the water of chalk streams, the ocean, a baby's bath water, and birth waters - Ian McMillan is joined by Ruth Padel, Vik Sharma, Caroline Bergvall and Will Burns. Ruth and Vik share their collaboration '24 Splashes of Denial' which combines an apprehension of loss with vast and delicate beauty, Will Burns reads a new commission for The Verb on his experience of chalk streams (a globally rare and 'gin-clear' habitat) in Buckinghamshire, and Caroli...
Apr 14, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan is joined by poets Michael Symmons Roberts, Kate Fox, Jacob Polley and sound designer Amanda Priestley to celebrate the rich variety of new poetry commissions written for the BBC's centenary year. The show includes work from the Sound First scheme (Radio 3 and BBC Contains Strong Language working together to find the best emerging sound design talent in the UK) - three poems with evocative sound design. Also, we share the very last commission in our Something New series, by Sinéad M...
Apr 07, 2023•44 min
This week Testament - poet, theatre-maker and world-record-breaking human beatboxer, explores the meaning and power of the sounds we make between words, including sighing and laughing - with spoken word artist and writer Polar Bear (Steven Camden) , 'Wild' author Jay Griffiths, and poets Shirley May and John McAuliffe. Polar Bear presents a brand new commission for our series celebrating the BBC's centenary ('Something Old, Something New') which includes the sounds of his childhood home, John Mc...
Mar 24, 2023•44 min
As a new season arrives, Ian McMillan and guests consider ambivalence and beauty in writing about spring. This week Ian peers into the yellow heart of the daffodil to find out what makes a great spring poem, and shares poetry by some of the most remarkable poets of our moment, as well as those inspired by the colours of crocuses past. Spring is always beautiful, but there is earthiness and grief in the language of the season too. His guests will include writers and those who work with and study ...
Mar 17, 2023•44 min
What's stopping us telling the stories of women's inner lives, or listening to them, especially once they become mothers, or are over forty? Actresses discover there are far fewer roles once they're no longer seen as young; whilst middle-aged and older women's lives are conflated, as if they are having exactly the same experiences. Ian McMillan is joined by Victoria Smith, author of 'Hags: the demonisation of middle-aged women' , by poet Patrick McGuinness (sharing poems from his forthcoming col...
Mar 10, 2023•44 min
Secret names, original names, nicknames, invented names for characters - this Verb explores the intimacy of naming, the sound of names, and the way they can influence character. Ian is joined by the former Makar (National Poet of Scotland) Jackie Kay, with a brand new commission for The Verb - by Liz Berry, who shares poems about an ancestor called Eliza from her new collection 'Home Child' - and by Christopher Reid with explorations of childhood (and an imaginary character called Theodore Faddl...
Mar 03, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan celebrates 100 years of BBC Radio Drama with brand new commissions - from writers Alex Riddle, Georgia Affonso. Tim Barrow, and the poet Michael Symmons Roberts. This is a homage to what Ian describes as a form which feels 'as new as cinema and as old as a whispered story in a dark cave in winter', with tales of mysterious islands and time travel, the intimacy of the optometrist's gaze, and the power of friendship. Michael Symmons Roberts's poem is a commission for our 'Something Ol...
Feb 24, 2023•44 min
The Verb is lured this week into seductive places: poet Luke Wright presents a show full of light, cool water, shadows on stone, and the over-reliance on place-names (by lyricists). His guests are the poet Helen Mort (who shares poems of swimming and Lincolnshire from her collection 'The Illustrated Woman'), by the cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson who tries to persuade Luke that his passion for the Evelyn Waugh novel 'Brideshead Revisited' is misplaced - by Kate Fox (Verb regular and stand-up...
Feb 10, 2023•44 min
What do we remember about childhood? And how do we write about it, without feeling trapped in the past? Ian McMillan talks to poet Don Paterson about music as a mnemonic tool, his youthful attraction to the art of origami, and the perils of confectionary. He talks to writer Sally Bayley about her sequence of books that capture the language fragments and stories from a childhood where facts were 'thin on the ground' - and about the part Shakespeare and his characters play in her latest book 'No B...
Feb 03, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan and his guests explore writing and cityscapes - asking how does architecture make us think about the writing process, and how do language and cities refresh each other – or use each other? Joining Ian are the novelist Jenny Colgan on the 'City of Invention' (which the late novelist Fay Weldon uses to describe literature in her book 'Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen'), by skateboarder and poet Olly Todd on his new collection 'Out for Air', by the writer and novelist Rei...
Jan 27, 2023•44 min
On The Verb this week 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. Anthony Joseph was declared this year's winner by the judges for his 'luminous' collection Sonnets for Albert. Alongside readings from the poets themselves, Ian reflects how their work reverberate...
Jan 23, 2023•44 min
This week on the Verb we're taking in the air, and letting it out again as we explore how breath shapes and moulds the poetic line and stanza, how it can breathe life into a story and how breathing itself can be a kind of narrative. Ian McMillan is joined by the poet Stephen Watts whose poems pulse and flow with the rhythm of breath, novelist Emma Carroll whose book The Tale of Truthwater Lake breathes life into the future and revives the past, James Nestor a journalist and free diver who teache...
Jan 13, 2023•44 min
This edition of The Verb is another chance to hear an extended interview with the prize winning novelist Hilary Mantel who died last year. The programme looks at her life in writing, from her struggle to publish the first book she ever wrote, the historical epic A Place of Greater Safety to the phenomenal success of her Thomas Cromwell books Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, both of which won the Booker Prize. We learn about the themes which run through all her work: the pursuit of power, fame ...
Jan 06, 2023•44 min
Join Ian McMillan for a festive recording of The Verb, in which we'll encounter a parade of imaginary creatures conjured through poems and songs and stories brought by his guests. The poet and performer John Hegley has written us a brand new poem, YA superstar Melvin Burgess tells us about his debut adult novel ‘Loki’, poet and playwright Testament will be performing a piece from his show ‘Blake Remixed’ fusing hip-hop with the iconic poetry of William Blake and folk singer Bella Hardy who'll be...
Dec 16, 2022•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the ghostly presences and phantoms of predecessors, literary or not, which hover in and around all writing. In poetry and stories how do we seek through the spectres of time and memory to conjure invocations of people lost to us, and to understand the importance of human connections through time and space? With David Constantine, Denise Riley, Andrew Taylor and Clare Shaw. David Constantine's new book Rivers of the Unspoilt World interweaves fictional characters and events ...
Dec 09, 2022•44 min
The Verb this week is another chance to hear Ian McMillan's interview with the great Scottish poet Douglas Dunn, in front of our Poetry Book Club audience. Douglas Dunn is the author of over ten poetry collections. He published his debut in 1969, whilst working in the Brynmor Jones Library at Hull under Philip Larkin. The book, Terry Street, won the Somerset Maugham Award. Since then Douglas has continued to write poems that shine a light on the human condition - on our foibles, our desires, our...
Dec 02, 2022•44 min
This week we examine the sometimes painful process of drafting and redrafting. We're joined by Denise Mina, who appeared on the Verb in 2019 to share her feelings towards a book she had only just started. What became of it? Listen to find out. Toby Litt's current novel is 'A Writer's Diary'. Initially published in the form of daily emails to subscribers, the lines between fact and fiction appear to blur with every email. How is a work like this drafted? Paul Tran says redrafting of his poems is ...
Nov 25, 2022•44 min
On The Verb this week we're raising the curtain on playwriting. Ian McMillan is joined by four playwrights; Winsome Pinnock whose recent work includes The Principles of Cartography and Rockets and Blue Lights; by Liz Lochhead, whose writing ranges widely over playwriting and poetry and who has written for the National Theatre of Scotland, Steve Waters who works for stage, radio and screen and Keisha Thompson Director and CEO of Contact Theatre in Manchester. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Cec...
Nov 18, 2022•44 min
Celebrate 100 years of poetry on the BBC with Ian McMillan's cabaret of the word. The Verb presents brand new poetry especially commissioned for the centenary, and explores the corporation's relationship with poetry - including highlights from the archive. With poets Paul Farley and Hannah Silva and the Director of The Poetry Society Judith Palmer.
Nov 11, 2022•44 min
How or what is the voice of the narrator, and what happens in a story when the narrator proves to be unreliable? Booker Prize winner Damon Glagut's novel The Promise toys with the idea of the narrator as different people at different times disorientating the reader and exposing the duplicity of the novel, poet Daniel's latest collection Single Window explores the 'I' in the poem and the poet, Sheen Patel's debut novel I Am A Fan is about an obsessed young woman and the unreliability of the inter...
Nov 04, 2022•44 min
This week The Verb is doing some straight talking and celebrating verbatim and everyday speech with the novelist Will Ashon whose book The Passengers is a collection of voices telling their own stories; the performance artist Scottee whose new podcast After The Tone listens to so-called ordinary people in all their extraordinary glory; the poet Anna Robinson whose work always listens hard to the way people sound; and Verb regular the poet and performer Kate Fox brings some drama to how we speak....
Oct 28, 2022•44 min
When we think of Liberation Narratives we perhaps most often mean slave or revolution narratives but they can be profoundly personal expressions of freedom as well as stories of huge geopolitical or historical changes. Ian McMillan considers Liberation Narratives with American poet Carl Philips, poet, performer and singer Rommi Smith, poet Yomi Sode and folk singer-songwriter and activist Grace Petrie. Carl Philips' latest book 'Then the War', a collection of new and selected poems is an explora...
Oct 21, 2022•44 min
This week in tribute to the poet, performer, playwright and activist Benjamin Zephaniah who has died aged 65, Ian McMillan presents another chance to hear a special extended interview with him. Benjamin began publishing and performing his work for adults and children in the early 1980s, and had recently committed his life to print in his autobiography The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah. The programme was recorded last year in front of a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language ...
Oct 14, 2022•44 min
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
