The Verb

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 trousers' ). Also on the programme, the spoken word poet Jenny Lindsay delves deep into the art of the humblebrag (the pretence of self-deprecation, most frequently spotted on social media ) with a brand new poem. Angie Hobbs, (Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield) takes us back to Ancient Greece to talk about pretentious sandal-wearing on the part of great philosophers' acolytes - and she explains how Plato, the founding father of Western philosophy shows his teacher Socrates dealing with pretentious orators. And finally writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade explores the advice given by George Orwell on how to avoid pretentious prose - and finds out whether Orwell always followed his own advice.

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 languages and Ian offers a Yorkshire dialect interpretation of the 'Crumble Song'.Joseph Coelho shares his spooky pudding poetry and reads a special commission for The Verb - a poem which explores the pleasure of disastrous puddings. His first poetry collection 'Werewolf Club Rules' was published in 2014. What if Emily Dickinson, T.S.Eliot and Maya Angelou took part in a poetry themed bake-off? That's the kind of thought experiment that stand-up poet Kate Fox likes to conduct for The Verb. She imagines their baking - and wonders if you can tell how well a poet will cook from their poetry.D Fariha Shaikh is a New Generation Thinker and Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham. She tells us about the pudding making of emigrant Catharine Parr Traill, born in 1801, who emigrated to Canada and wrote many books on her life there and on natural history, for women readers in particular. Frances Atkins is a Michelin star winning chef. She explains the difference between a pudding and a dessert and argues that descriptive pudding names are most likely to excite the palate.

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, big ideas, mischievous comedy, powerful tragedy and, again and again, simple observations that make you pause and say, yes, that’s it, that’s how it is'. James' most recent novel 'News of the Dead' also explores time.Alison Miller is National Library of Scotland and Orkney Library & Archive's Scots Scriever - she shares her love of George Mackay Brown's poem 'Them at Isbister' which appears in 'The Storm and other Poems', his first collection. Alison invites listeners to contact BBC Radio Orkney if they have a copy; only 250 were printed and she is part of a project to track as many down as possible ( radio.orkney@gmail.com).Josie Giles has just published a verse novel called 'Deep Wheel Orcadia' which has Orcadian dialect at its heart. 'Deep Wheel Orcadia' itself is described as 'a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind'. Josie reads poetry in Orcadian dialect and in English translation and explains how the English has been made less transparent.Artist Anne Bevan grew up in Orkney and George Mackay Brown was a family friend. She reads letters from two 'fairies' ( Moonbeam and Rosebud) which George wrote for her when she was a child, and reads the poem he dedicated to her when she was at art school. Anne explains how he still inspires her art. http://www.annebevan.co.uk/

For the last of our programmes recorded at the Belgrade Theatre for the Contains Strong Language Festival of poetry and performance, Ian McMillan is joined by Simon Armitage & LYR, Theresa Lola, Romalyn Ante and Andrea Mbarushimana for a programme that celebrates the relationship between mentor and mentee, the importance of cultural exchange and work that pushes at the boundaries. Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage has been working with the musicians Richard Walters and Patrick Pearson to set his spoken word to music under the name Land Yacht Regatta (LYR). For the Verb they play two songs from their 2020 album ‘Call in the Crash Team’, which join Armitage's lyrics with intense and atmospheric musical arrangements from Walters and Pearson. Theresa Lola is a British Nigerian writer and poet. In 2019 she was appointed the 2019/2020 Young People's Laureate for London, and her debut poetry collection 'In Search of Equilibrium' is published by Nine Arches.Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-born, Wolverhampton-based author. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry. Her debut collection is Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus). Andrea Mbarushima is Coventry born and bred. She is the author of two chapbooks and is a current cohort of the Room 204 mentoring programme with Writing West Midlands. Romalyn and Andrea is part of the CSL ‘Twin Cities’ project, inviting poets to exchange postcards with writers from Coventry’s 26 twinned cities. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

Ian McMillan is joined by an audience at the Belgrade Theatre as he explores Coventry's green places and the river that ghosts through the city with poets David Morley, John Bernard, Sujana Crawford and Olga Dermott-Bond. He is also joined by musicians from the City of Coventry Brass Band.Poet David Morley unpacks the meaning of the River Sherbourne, which flows through and under Coventry. David is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and his latest collection is 'Fury' (Carcanet). He is also a freshwater ecologist and brings an ecologist's attention and ear for language to his Sherbourne poem. John Bernard also explores the River Sherbourne with a poem called 'Revered River'. John is a spoken word artist and rapper – and a finalist on Radio 1 Extra and Asian Network’s ‘Words First’ programme. He explores the idea that he has become 'acquainted' with the river.Sujana Crawford reads a poem called 'Marshland Whispers' - inspired by Brandon Marsh, a nature reserve and former quarry. She was commissioned to write the poem as part of Contains Strong Language's 'Green City' project. Sujana's work has featured in many anthologies; her plays have been staged at venues including the Birmingham Rep, and the Belgrade Theatre. Poet Olga Dermott-Bond has been spending time with the City of Coventry Brass Band learning about their history, and experiencing rehearsals. She performs two poems with Stephen McDonald and Christopher Moore from the City of Coventry Brass Band - inspired by listening to the band warm up and by their performance of the hymn 'Nicaea'. Olga is a former Warwick Poet Laureate, and was one of the winners of the 2018 BBC Proms poetry competition. 'Apple, fallen' is her debut poetry pamphlet.

The Verb is Live at the Contains Strong Language festival of poetry and performance at the 2021 City of Culture, Coventry. Ian McMillan is in front of a studio audience at the Belgrade Theare and will be joined by just a few of the festival guests; the Mercury-prize nominated musician Loyle Carner and poets John Agard, Siana Bangura and Roy Mcfarlane.Loyle Carner is a hip-hop artist with a love of poetry that began when he was a child. His debut album, 'Yesterday's Gone' was nominated for the Mercury Prize and he released the follow up, 'Not Waving But Drowning' in 2019. Loyle shares Guyanese heritage with one of his poetic heroes, John Agard. One of our best loved poets, John agard was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry in 2012. Poets Siana Bangura and Roy Mcfarlane have been comissioned by Contains Strong Language to walk 'In Ira Aldridege's Footsteps', here, they celebrate the groundbreaking African American actor-manager and his connection to Coventry. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica treen

We reveal our new 'Rules for Writing' - six ideas to inspire, excite, and to break! The musician and songwriter Damon Albarn - and award-winning poets Don Paterson and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett - all join Ian McMillan to illustrate these provocations, which are designed to help launch a new era of poetry, story-writing and performance. The composer and producer Gerry Diver has also contributed a piece of sound art inspired by the cadences of the human voice called 'You May be Mistaken'.Across our 'Experiments in Living' season, The Verb asked over a hundred guests ( including Margaret Atwood, Yanis Varoufakis, Claudia Rankine and Simon Armitage ) for their ideas about how we might write most powerfully, and creatively in these times. Certain themes surfaced again and again, including time, uncertainty, the non-human world, and listening. Find out how they made their way into our manifesto, and inspired our six new rules.

Ian McMillan is joined by Anita Sethi, Kate Fox, Ira Lightman, and Tom Chatfield to explore the language of time, listening and uncertainty and to celebrate the most compelling ideas that have been gathered into the Verb's 'keepnet' over the last year. This is the final summit of our 'Experiments in Living' season, before we reveal our writing manifesto in the autumn. Writer and journalist Anita Sethi reads from her book 'I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain' , the story of how a race-hate crime on a train led her to undertake a series of journeys through northern landscapes. Anita discusses the importance of thinking about deep time and the natural world, and listening as an act of restoration.Technology philosopher Tom Chatfield's new book is called 'How to Think' and it touches on many of the themes that have been surfacing and resurfacing on The Verb over the last year, including 'uncertainty' and the way language can help us think clearly about technology and ecology.Our regular Verb guests, the poets Ira Lightman and Kate Fox also join us for the season's coda programme. Kate shares a new collage poem which contains the words spoken by our guests at 20 minutes and 21 seconds within each of our Verb recordings - to see what it might reveal about the thinking of our guests in this challenging year. Ira helps us think about language and time and reads a brand new commission for The Verb which we hope will help us futureproof our manifesto.