The Verb

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 ‘...

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 f...

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.

Ian McMillan's cabaret of the word, featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance

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 migh...

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 lates...

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...

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 inves...

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...

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...

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.

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 no...

‘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 Twitte...

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.

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 T...

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...

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 ne...

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...

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 t...

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, wh...

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...

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.

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...

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 la...

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,...