Ian McMillan celebrates pauses and punctuation with guests Kei Miller, Eley Williams, Kate Fox and Angela Leighton. They explore the different emotions, listening and reading experiences prompted by brackets, full stops, em dashes, blank spaces, and other writerly ways of building obstacles, time and listening into poetry and prose.

Eley Williams reads a brand new commission for The Verb, a very short story, which delights in the longest dash of all - the em dash, putting it at the heart of a romance. Eley is the author of the novel 'The Liar's Dictionary' and a BBC National Short Story Finalist.

Verb regular and stand-up poet Kate Fox offers a very personal review of various forms of punctuation - imagining them as rest stops. Is a full stop like 'bunking in a hostel on a Scottish island and rolling over on to a pocket full of Kendal Mint Cake in the middle of the night'? Kate thinks so.

Poet and essayist Kei Miller discusses the way he uses space on the page, particularly in his new book of essays 'Things I have Withheld', to explore what is buried or repressed in silences. He also reads from his poetry collection 'In Nearby Bushes'.

Angela Leighton, poet, critic and translator, opens brackets up for us - showing how they let us listen, especially in a poem, in a remarkable variety of ways. Angela also reads from her collection 'One, Two', evoking the soundscape and listening of the first lockdown of 2020.