Ian McMillan ho ho hosts a special Christmas edition of The Verb from the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, recorded in front of a live audience. With stories and verse and song to bring comfort and joy, from poet Jackie Kay, singer-songwriter Amelia Coburn, international storyteller Danyah Miller and doorstep poet Rowan McCabe who's been knocking on stranger's doors and offering to write them a poem especially for The Verb. So pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. Are you ready? Then we'll...
Dec 22, 2023•44 min
What does a good life mean in 2023 and beyond? The Verb returns to the future for a look at stories for a fast-changing planet. This week we hear from some of the most talented storytellers in the world - who have looked at (both literally and metaphorically) the retreat of the glaciers and asked themselves “what can I do now as a writer to help make a good future?'. Ian McMillan is joined by Ben Rawlence, author of 'The Treeline: the last forest and the future of life on earth' (and co-founder ...
Dec 15, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents a special extended interview with Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific and pre-eminent American writers of the 20th century. Now 85, Oates is the author of 62 novels, 47 short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism. Her latest book is the unsettling short-story collection 'Zero-Sum'. Producer: Cecile Wright
Dec 01, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents a special extended interview with acclaimed Irish novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet Colm Tóibín, who's been described as one of Ireland's finest writers. Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels including Brooklyn, which won the 2009 Costa novel award, and The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; as well as two short story collections. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize Tóibín was made the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024. In 2022, he pu...
Nov 17, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan celebrates what Shakespeare can tell future generations - about animals, sound, performance and language. With actor Paterson Joseph, grime poet and writer Debris Stevenson, Verb regular Kate Fox and Prof Todd Borlick from the University of Huddersfield.
Nov 10, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents some of the most exciting international poetry and poets - recorded in Leeds at the Contains Strong Language festival 2023. He's joined by Andre Bagoo from Trinidad, Ramya Jirasinghe from Sri Lanka, and by poets from the 'Language is a Queer Thing' project - an international poetry development programme from The Queer Muslim Project and the British Council - including Jay Mitra, Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Mukahang Limbu, Rachit Sharma, Anureet Watta, and Hafsa Bukhary....
Nov 03, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan discusses the act of looking, what it means to write about art and to translate what you see into language, and the relationship between art and life; with American poet Terrance Hayes, Christine Coulson, whose novel One Woman Show is told through museum wall labels, author and art critic Laura Cumming, and Jason Allen-Paisant whose Forward Prize winning collection, Self-Portrait As Othello, explores self-examination through the depiction of the other.
Oct 20, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents The Verb recorded in front of a live audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Leeds with Ian Duhig, Jacob Polley, South African writer and performance poet, Lebogang Mashile, and Kenyan poet, writer and filmmaker Ngwatilo Mawiyoo.
Oct 06, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan hosts a special performance edition of The Verb recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Contains Strong Language Festival in Leeds. Featuring poetry from Hannah Silva, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker, Cecilia Knapp, Toria Garbutt and Testament.
Sep 29, 2023•44 min
Live from the ‘Contains Strong Language’ Festival in Leeds, Ian McMillan introduces public poets from around the world, including Simon Armitage, Hanan Issa (the National Poet of Wales), Chris Tse (Poet Laureate of New Zealand) and Titilope Sonuga - Nigerian-Canadian poet and former Laureate of Edmonton. Ian will also hear from the winner of the 2023 Laurel Prize - the international award for nature poetry, set up to recognise and encourage the resurgence of environmental writing – one of Simon ...
Sep 22, 2023•45 min
Novels by Irish writers make up a third of this year's Booker longlist for the first time in the prize's history. Ian McMillan explores the boom in Irish writing and the wave of new and experimental voices melding poetry and prose emerging from both the North and South of Ireland. With Elaine Feeney, Martina Evans, James Conor Patterson and Liam Harte, professor of Irish Literature at the University of Manchester.
Sep 15, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents Radio 3's The Verb from the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. He's joined by poet Clare Shaw whose poetry extols the poetic possibilities of peat bogs and moss; Ben and David Crystal whose new book Everyday Shakespeare offers us a quotation from the bard for every day of the year; Jimmy Andrex offers a meeting place between music and poetry and singer Emily Portman and musician Rob Harbron sing the words of Irish poet Louis MacNeice
Jul 14, 2023•44 min
A writing and confidence masterclass - Ian McMillan's guests Denise Mina, Kathryn Williams, Ian Humphreys and Len Pennie share their tips and experiences. How much confidence do you need to write or create out of your comfort zone? What does it take to embark on unfamiliar genres - the historical novel perhaps, starting a podcast or vlog, or writing a lyric poem? And how can the great poet, performer and humorist Ivor Cutler inspire us to write our most authentic material? Is confidence a helpfu...
Jul 07, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan explores different ways into and out of and through the things we write, and discovers new ways of thinking about language and meaning; with poet Nick Thurston who has co curated The Weight of Words, an exhibition on the poetry of sculpture and the sculpture of poetry, fiction writer Alice Jolly whose new collection of stories ‘From Far Around They Saw Us Burn’ examines how everyday interactions can change our lives in new and unpredictable ways, playwright and theatre maker Megan B...
Jun 30, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan explores fathers, fathering and time with Nick Laird, Katherine Rundell and Jude Rogers. Nick Laird's new poetry collection 'Up Late' (Faber) is a powerful account of what it means to think around and through grief, time and fathering, Katherine Rundell's incisive and moving account of the life of the mortality-obsessed poet John Donne (which also takes in his fathering of twelve children) is 'Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne', and Jude Rogers's story of her love of...
Jun 23, 2023•44 min
From blank page to bestseller, how do you write a successful novel? The Verb offers you another chance to join a masterclass in storytelling recorded earlier this year at Hay Festival, with renowned authors Kate Mosse and Philippa Gregory, best known for The Other Boleyn Girl; and Booker Prize-winning novelist Douglas Stuart. How do you begin, how do you redraft and decide what to take out and what to leave in, what happens when you experiment and play with language to shape-shift and distort th...
Jun 16, 2023•58 min
Ian McMillan discusses the enduring appeal of the novel and explores how poetry and prose can collide to create a new kind of language; with Jacqueline Crooks, whose debut novel 'Fire Rush' is a tale of music and parties and love and life in late 1970s and 80s London; Liv Little, founder and former CEO of Gal-dem, a sadly now defunct online and print magazine run by women of colour, whose first book 'Rosewater' is an exploration of how it is to live a creative life in London when time and money ...
Jun 09, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan presents the first in a series of Verb visits to the future, asking whether we need new words, new plots and new genres to help us think about it creatively. The BBC has signed up to a climate pledge which presents an exciting opportunity for new writing (it is pledging to make sure its visions of the future aren’t simply dystopian ones, to recognise other visions, fair and balanced ones, sustainable and informed by the science ). To explore this opportunity we are first joined by t...
Jun 02, 2023•44 min
Ritual, seduction, silliness and sacrifice - all this and more in 'The Wicker Man Verb' - marking 50 years of the iconic horror film. Ian McMillan is joined by one of our best fiction writers -Sarah Hall. Sarah shares a new commission for The Verb imagining Summerisle in 2023. David Bramwell and Eliza Skelton have been influenced by the film as writers and performers - they give The Verb an insight into how their Sing-A-Long-A-Wickerman events work. David has just published 'The Singalong-A-Wick...
May 26, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan explores the monsters that haunt our imagination, the monstrous labels that have historically been imposed upon 'the Other', and the modern day monstrosities that provoke our fears and threaten to make monsters of us all. With Prof Roger Luckhurst who specialises in classic 19th-century Gothic, literature, film, and cultural history; his new book 'Gothic' traces our fascination and representations of the Gothic through history to its place at the very heart of popular culture today,...
May 19, 2023•44 min
Ian McMillan revisits the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival for new writing: BBC Contains Strong Language in Leeds to present a gathering of poets from all over the world. The World in Words event brought together poets from countries in Africa, as well as New Zealand, the Caribbean and Sri Lanka.
May 12, 2023•44 min
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
