The Verb

Ian McMillan's guests celebrate hedges, with poetry from Alison Brackenbury and Testament, singing from Sam Lee, Michael Symmons Roberts explores a poem with a nightingale at its centre, and hedgelayer Paul Lamb records himself walking a hedgerow that's rich in wildlife.This hedge-themed special features a haunted hedge from poet Alison Brackenbury, part of the anthology 'Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined' (ed, Anna Milon and Rory Waterman). Alison's hedge started off life as a talking hedge in her non-fiction book 'Village' which is all about her childhood home in Lincolnshire (to be published online in July)Testament, a world record-breaking beatboxer, rapper and poet, performs a poem called 'The Lig', based on his experiences observing three generations of farmer hedge-layers in Cumbria. Testament is a member of the Hot Poets Collective which explores climate change through spoken word poetry.Sam Lee's most recent album is 'Songdreaming' - and he sings, not only in front of human audiences, but also with and alongside nightingales. Sam takes musicians and small groups of people into woodland for annual 'Singing With Nightingales' events - events which celebrate this vulnerable bird and our creative connection with it. Sam sings 'Bushes and Briars' on the show and explores the poetry of 19th century poet John Clare.Poet and professor Michael Symmons Roberts chooses a 'neon line' for The Verb's ongoing series about stand-out lines in poems . His choice is from a poem that features a 'deconstructed hedge' and a singing blackbird. Michael listened carefully to the blackbirds in his garden whilst writing his new book 'Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief and Birdsong', - inspired by his relationship with the music of the composer Olivier Messaien.Ian also dips in and out of a very long hedge with the help of Paul Lamb, a hedge-layer who walks the Gower Peninsula to bring us hedge language. Paul's new memoir is called 'Of Thorn and Briar - A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer'

Ian McMillan's guests are the Scottish Makar Peter Mackay, Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, as well as Indian dancer and poet Tishani Doshi, and the musician Scanner.Scanner lets us into the baffling and mysterious 'poetry' of album titles by Autechre, Aphex Twin and other electronic music artists. Scanner has worked with Laurie Anderson, and Pauline Oliveros amongst other artists, as well as creating sound design for installations at museums, at an airport and for dancers at the London Olympics. For this week's Verb Scanner has created sound design for poems by Peter Mackay, inflected with uncertainty and nostalgiaWe hear new poetry by Peter Mackay, in Gaelic and English, written in response to 'O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast' by Robert Burns. Peter explains why Burns is a great poet for uncertain times, and why the Gaelic word 'ta' is so useful. His poems can be also heard at the Poetry Jukebox, at the Linenhall Library in Belfast (part of a set of curated poems by ten different writers responding to work in the 'Fragments of Scottish Poetry Project').Queen's Gold Medal winning poet, and former Poetry Laureate of Jamaica Lorna Goodison explains why Miss Lou, (the ground-breaking champion of nation language in Jamaica, and a good friend to Lorna) is a key character in her new version of Dante's Inferno (Carcanet).Indian Poet and dancer Tishani Doshi presents the next in our recurring series 'The Neon Line' - where we celebrate a stand-out line from a poem, and work out why it's powerful, beautiful, or memorable. Tishani also shares new poetry that explores the connection between human emotions and the natural world.https://scannerdot.com/ https://www.tishanidoshi.com/ https://linenhall.com/event/launch-of-the-mcadam-poetry-jukebox/

Rebecca Watts has just published her third poetry collection - The Face In The Well. She discusses writing poems that engage with the work of an earlier generation of poets, turning a cherished childhood memory into poetry, and Emily Brontë's love of ironing. Poet and writer Brian Bilston is as much a fan of the American writer, artist, and designer Edward Gorey as The Verb. He accepted our commission to create an updated version of one of Gorey's most celebrated poems - The Gashlycrumb Tinies. He premieres his approach to Gorey's alphabetical and flatly macabre list of children's final fates - The Garbledoom Tiddlers.Cristina Rivera Garza is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Mexican writer, poet and professor. Her new book, Death Takes Me, fuses crime fiction, literary theory, and the poems of Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik. She discusses the power of language to reflect, proscribe, and change society.Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet, a professor, and editor at Pavilion Poetry. She talk to Ian about the art of creating a poetry collection and how deciding on the order of the poems in a new collection can be a surprisingly physical activity.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Flames and poetry - what poetry tell us about the Los Angeles fires, the pleasure the poet John Keats took in reading - a poem-letter to an imaginary estate agent, and magical language. To explore all this McMillan is joined by poetry writers and poetry lovers.Ian's guests: BBC newsreader and journalist Reeta Chakrabarti is a trustee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. She shares her passion for John Keats' poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' - with its 'realms of gold' and a planet that 'swims'.Fred D'Aguiar is a British-Guyanese poet who lives and teaches in Los Angeles - he shares a powerful new commission which bears witness to the Los Angeles fires, and asks how we might depict and talk about fire in an age of rising temperatures.What does it mean to be a tenant, or an artist in residence in someone else's house - at a time when it is harder to buy houses than in the past? The poet Ella Frears has written a book-length poem exploring rented and borrowed spaces - addressed to an imaginary estate agent - full of tender and frank observations about modern life.Edward Wilson-Lee's new book 'The Grammar of Angels - A Search for the Magical Powers of Language' explores the attraction (and the rejection) of language that has a powerful effect, or casts a spell on us - including the speech of angels and inscriptions on amulets. The book invites us to consider when sound is more powerful than sense, and why that might have concerned our ancestors.

How does it feel to be adopted? How does naming things affect experience? Why does a mysterious sound make Ian want to get out of the studio in Salford? Is it ever a good idea to pretend to have a particular accent? Poems, questions and much more - on this week's Verb.Ian McMillan is joined by poets Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, Luke Wright, and sociolinguist Rob Drummond.Joelle Taylor brings us a brand new commission inspired by the 50th anniversary of the BBC television series 'The Changes' - with its mysterious sound that transforms and challenges modern life. Does it still have resonance today? Joelle won the TS Eliot Prize for poetry in 2022, and her most recent book is a novel - 'The Night Alphabet', which has been described as 'relentlessly inventive.'Anthony Joseph is a poet, musician and academic. He shares poetry of intimacy and intimacy with language - in work from his selected poems 'Precious and Impossible'. Anthony won the TS Eliot prize in 2023 with his 'luminous' collection 'Sonnets for Albert'.Luke Wright is a ground-breaking performer and poet - currently touring with his show 'Joy'. He reads new poems which look at the power of early experiences: a book that helped him understand the experience of being adopted, and a poem which celebrates the beauty of the view from his window in Suffolk.Did the contestant who faked a Welsh accent on 'The Traitors' TV series make a good decision? And what poetry was there to be found in the series? Ian talks to Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Ian McMillan presents highlights from the TS Eliot Prize Readings - extraordinary poetry from 2024.Poetry books featured :Raymond Antrobus 'Signs, Music' (Picador Poetry) Hannah Copley 'Lapwing' (Pavilion Poetry) Helen Farish 'The Penny Dropping' (Bloodaxe Books) Peter Gizzi 'Fierce Elegy' (Penguin Poetry) Gustav Parker Hibbett 'High Jump as Icarus Story' (Banshee Press) Rachel Mann 'Eleanor Among the Saints' (Carcanet Press) Gboyega Odubanjo 'Adam' (Faber & Faber) Carl Phillips 'Scattered Snows, to the North' (Carcanet Press) Katrina Porteous 'Rhizodont' (Bloodaxe Books) Karen McCarthy Woolf 'Top Doll' (Dialogue Books)

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins tells Ian McMillan about the influence of poetry on his writing, and shares poems written by his own mother. Ian also explores the influence of a very competitive mother on the life and poetry of former National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis. And as it's the first Verb of the year, stand-up poet Kate Fox suggests new names for all the calendar months, whilst Stagedoor Johnny brings a new 'eartoon' (which explains why the names of baby animals can be so confusing).Richard Dawkins' new book is 'The Genetic Book of the Dead' Gwyneth Lewis' memoir is 'Nightshade Mother' Kate Fox's latest book is 'On Sycamore Gap'

The Morecambe Poetry festival hosts Ian McMillan and the Verb at the Morecambe Winter Gardens, for a special recording with poets Pam Ayres, Raymond Antrobus and Henry Normal, three performers much- loved by audiences.Pam Ayres takes us back to the beginning of her career with the first poem she ever performed live whilst working for the Royal Air Force. This preceded her memorable winning appearance on the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks. Raymond Antrobus reads from a long sequence of poems written after he learned he was going to be a father. One of his poems describes the sign language his hearing son - born in 2021 - communicated with before he could speak. Raymond's own deafness was diagnosed when he was six.Henry Normal has a long association with the Morecambe Poetry festival. He was involved in its creation and is almost its resident poet. He reads poems inspired by libraries saying he would not have become a writer were it not for free access to the wide world through the pages of books. Produced by Susan Roberts

A special recording of The AdVerb at The Hackney Empire . Ian McMillan introduces six unique collaborations - new commissions between poets composers and musicians in collaboration with BBC Contains Strong Language and the BBC Symphony Orchestra Poets from the East End of London team up with composers to make new pieces that tell stories of this part of the capital city in all its astonishing diversity .1. Keith Jarrett with his new poem 'E Note' set to music by Iain Farrington 2. Hannah Silva performs 'The Empire Memorial Sailor's Hostel ' with music by Evan Jolly. 3. Christian Foley's Learning to Swim, performed by the poet with music by Calum Au. 4. Livia Kojo Alour and composer Charlie Bates present a new arrangement of Livia's piece Soul Death 5. Yome Sode and composer James B Wilson present their collaboration Roots. 6. Kat Francois and composer Lee Reynolds present Roots Presented by Ian McMillan with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lee ReynoldsProduced by Susan Roberts

Ian McMillan is joined by four guests for more poetry and performance . After a year characterised by wet weather, Alan Connor constructs a poem from 188 Words for Rain collected on travels around the country for his new book with that title. Comedian and writer Isy Suttie treats us to a new song written with the approaching Bonfire Night in mind, but the fireworks in the studio don't only come from her guitar. The other guests get a chance to join in too. Poet Pascale Petit opens up her first novel which took 17 years to write, examining the differences and similarities between poetry and prose and Deryn Rees Jones reads from her own work and takes on this week's neon line, "all the worse things come stalking in". Produced by Cecile Wright Editor Susan Roberts