The Verb

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 Portma...

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, perfor...

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 i...

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 chil...

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 wha...

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 bo...

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 o...

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 insigh...

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 re...

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.

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...

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 Doct...

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 ch...

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...

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 evoc...

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...

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 i...

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 dem...

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...

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 gaz...

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...

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 't...

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...

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 Sonne...

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 bre...