The Verb

The Verb, which for the past 22 years has been bringing linguistic delights to the Radio 3 audience, will be leaving to make its new home on Radio 4. But in a mood of celebration Ian McMillan and his guests put the number 3 in the spotlight as they explore the magic and the power of three in poetry, storytelling and writing; with poet and memoirist Don Paterson to guide us around those poetic forms based on the number three, by long-time Verb favourite Ira Lightman with a brand new commission, storyteller and author Daniel Morden and The Bookshop Band who'll be performing songs inspired by books and by The Verb.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Cecile Wright

Ian McMillan is leaning into unease this week as he discusses writing and Claustrophobia. His guests are Holly Pester, whose new novel 'The Lodgers' examines the psychological disturbances of precarious housing situations; we meet a woman renting a flat that is more like a sandwich packet than a house, and another who must make her own life extremely small as she lodges with a family.Catherine Coldsteam’s new memoir is ‘Cloistered’, a book about the twelve years she spent in a Carmelite monastery where she lived the life of a silent contemplative nun.Hannah Sullivan won the T.S. Eliot award for her collection ‘Three Poems’. Her latest book ‘Was it For This’ considers a life shrunk small by new motherhood.The last in our series of Verb Dramas is Ghost In The Machine by Karen FeatherstonePresenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

This week The Verb offers you another chance to hear a special extended interview with Zadie Smith. Her audacious first book 'White Teeth', written when she was just 24, was one of the most talked about debut novels of all time. Most of Smith's novels take place in north west London, where she grew up, and which she has described as the location of her imagination, and her heart. In her latest novel 'The Fraud', also set in the area, Smith moves into historical fiction with a story inspired by an extraordinary real life court case.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Cecile Wright First Broadcast 13 Oct 2023

On International Women's Day Ian McMillan is joined by poets Joelle Taylor, Rommi Smith, Kim Moore and Shirley May to explore how women poets are using poetry and writing to explore and challenge sexism and to empower women through words. There's also music from soul singer, Sarah-Jane Morris, and musician, Tony Remy, from their new album 'Sisterhood'. Rommi Smith reads a poem specially written for The Verb celebrating the colour purple; in 'The Night Alphabet', Joelle Taylor's first novel, one woman’s tattoos are each portals to a story of repression and women’s resistance, violence and justice; Kim Moore's poetry explores and exposes everyday sexism, gender, class and also performance as a female poet; Shirley May writes from the perspective of the Caribbean diaspora and reflects on stories of the women who came before her, and the young women poets finding their voices now.

Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ practise notebooks, pianist Stephen Hough’s account of tackling Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, the voice of Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny in the words of Scottish poet Don Paterson, and E. M. Forster’s evocation of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in Howard’s End: just some of the texts we’ll hear on tonight’s celebration of writing about music.Ian’s joined by four Radio 3 presenters to discuss the challenges of all sorts of music writing, from concert reviews to programme notes, memoirs, poetry, fiction, and scripts for radio. His guests are Essential Classics Georgia Mann who pored over Oasis reviews in the N.M.E. in her teens, Hannah French from The Early Music Show who once read a biography of Pablo Casals in a day, Composer of the Week’s Kate Molleson who started out writing concert reviews at University in Montreal, and Corey Mwamba who presents Freeness and immersed himself in jazz books at Southampton library whilst doing his A-Levels. Producer: Ruth Thomson

This week it’s the ‘cabaret of cuteness’ as this week Ian McMillan and his guests examine all things small, fluffy, wide eyed and sleepy in The Cute Verb. Ian is joined by poet Isabel Galleymore who reads from her new collection Baby Schema which asks what we ask cuteness to do for us and follows Mickey Mouse’s journey towards cuteness across the past one hundred years. Tom Morton Smith wrote the smash-hit RSC adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro, here he helps us consider being cute as well as being big, noisy, smelly, and a little bit scary. Karen McCarthy Woolf’s new experimental verse novel is ‘Top Doll’, a story told by a chorus of cute and not so cute dolls. And finally Kate Fox imagines a meet-cute between a cute creature and a not so cute one – can cute be an eco-strategy? Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

The World in Words. The Verb, presented by Ian McMillan, revisits the Contains Strong Language which was held in Leeds in September of last year. It was a gathering of poets from all over the world and featured Felene Cayetano from Belize, Andre Bagoo from Trinidad and Tobago, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo from Kenya, Lebo Mashile from South Africa, Chris Tse, the Poet Laurete of New Zealand, Ramya Jirasinghe from Sri Lanka and Titilope Sonuga.

This edition of the verb is a celebration of the physical - everything from mountain climbing, human desire, a mother's touch or the act of writing. The poet Helen Mort writes in her head, while running, climbing and she even wrote one whilst in labour. She tells Ian about her new collection The Illustrated Woman - inspired by what she calls a "pain epiphany" while being tattooed - and how her poems "spookily" prefigure her life. The Norfolk born writer Jon Ransom wrote The Whale Tattoo, which won the Polari first book award, on his phone on the bus. His new novel The Gallopers opens in the aftermath of the 1953 North Sea flood where 19-year-old Eli yearns for Jimmy Smart, the handsome older fairground worker his aunt has taken in. And award-winning poet Victoria Kennefick has written on the back of her child's drawings and on shop receipts when an idea urgently strikes. She tells Ian McMillan about her collection Egg/Shell, inspired by a lockdown encounter with a swan whose eggs wouldn't hatch. Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy.

The Verb goes back to the brilliant Contains Strong Language Festival held in September last year in Leeds to consider the poetics of rap, rhyme and flows with a celebration of 50 years of hip hop. Rapper and playwright, and friend of The Verb, Testament led a panel discussion on one of the 20th and 21st century’s most powerful and influential literary movement with guests UK rapper Jehst, writer and spoken word performer Michelle Scally Clarke, and hip hop luminary Paul 'Oddball' Edmeade.

Ian McMillan presents a special extended interview with writer and novelist Tessa Hadley. Tessa Hadley's books are admired for the flowing, thoughtful intensity of her prose; and she is a master of capturing the humanity of domestic lives and the quietly devastating drama of the everyday. Hadley is a writer with a keen eye for the telling detail and a gift for bringing everything she has, sees and knows about life to the characters she creates. Her first novel was published when she was 46 and since then she has written short stories as well as novels.Producer: Cecile Wright

Ian McMillan presents a celebration of remarkable poets and poetry readings from one of the major events in the poetry calendar: the TS Eliot Prize Readings at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The prize is awarded annually by the TS Eliot Foundation for the best collection of the year. The winning book Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant also won the 2023 Forward Prize.

Ian McMillan is looking at, and listening to, the wonderfully different ways we use language with three poets: Daljit Nagra whose new collection Indiom celebrates language in more than forty different poetic forms; Nasser Hussain whose poems take us deep into individual words often creating patterns so that build something new, and Safiya Kamaria Kinshas; a poet, dancer and choreographer whose work weaves together dance and poetry on the page and stage. And we’ve also got one of our new Verb Audio Dramas made in collaboration with BBC Writers and the BBC Audio Drama North team: No Smoking In The Ground by Matthew Smith.Producer: Cecile Wright

Ian McMillan enjoys last lines in poetry, song, memoir, and novels - and his guests introduce him to different varieties of endings: the trap door, the rug-pull, the fade and many more. Stuart Maconie, writer and broadcaster, is Ian's guide to the bathetic and sometimes dramatic ends to be found in popular song - and explores an ending created by the Cornish poet Charles Causley. Caroline Bird reads a sonnet from her poetry collection 'The Air Year' and reveals the draft that helped her reach the poem and its ending, and fellow poet Sinéad Morrissey shares a work-in-progress inspired by endings: 'Seeing Red', her memoir of growing up in a Communist family in Northern Ireland. Producer: Faith Lawrence

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 begin...Producer: Cecile Wright

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 of Black Mountains College), by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason ('On Time and Water'), and by Lisa Merrick-Lawless co-founder of 'Purpose Disrupters' (who has 20 years experience in the language of advertising and communications).Ian also hears from John Marshall in America, who co-founded 'Potential Energy' - a coalition of creative, analytic and media agencies who want to shift the conversation on climate change. John reveals his international research into the language that really makes us think.We also share the best wild poems from our call-out in the summer, and road-test an 'eco' sting for radio broadcasts (inspired by 'EcoAudio' - a new certification for greener, sustainable audio productions that is now available for BBC programme-makers).Producer: Faith Lawrence

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

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 published his first collection of poems, Vinegar Hill.Producer: Cecile Wright

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.

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.

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.