Ian McMillan explores Rainer Maria Rilke's life advice, and is joined by Paul Farley, Griot Gabriel, Kate Fox and Ulrich Baer

Paul Farley brings us the sound of planes, and the world of the usher - as well as a life-long connection to Robert Louis Stevenson's 'A Child's Garden of Verses'. Paul's latest collection 'When it Rained for a Million Years' was shortlisted for this year's T.S.Eliot Prize.

'Can poetry change your life'? - poet and Verb regular Kate Fox - and writer and scholar Ulrich Baer explore a 'neon line' (an outstanding line of poetry' ) by the German language poet Rainer Maria Rilke; an enigmatic line that has left the page and entered popular culture. So why is Rilke's poetry so popular in 2026 - a hundred years after his death?

Griot Gabriel is from Manchester, and founded The Poetry Place. In 2025 he won the Forward Prize for 'Best Single Poem – Performed' for ‘Where I’m From’. Here he shares extracts of new work and explores the resonance of the word 'hand-me-down'.

Join Ian McMillan for a celebration of remarkable poets and poetry as he presents highlights of the annual T.S. Eliot Prize readings, recorded in front of an audience at London's Southbank.

Ian was the host for the TS Eliot Prize readings at the Royal Festival Hall - where shortlisted poets read from their shortlisted collections in front of a packed audience.

For this edition of The Verb Ian has selected poems featuring infinity pools, slush, shopping malls, family inheritances, the beaver, and lost keys - and tells us which collection scooped the prize of £25,000, awarded by the T.S.Eliot Foundation.

The poets featured this year are:

Testament, beatboxer, rapper and writer - presents a festive Adverb (complete with a yuletide salad battle), with his guests the former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, poetic legend John Hegley, Mercury prize nominated folk singer Sam Lee, as well as satirical supremo Brian Bilston.

They bring iconic robins, soul stirring music, poetic Christmas questions, and quirky Yule traditions to an audience in the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Hall in Salford.

Brian Bilston's very funny books include 'You Took the Last Bus Home', and 'Alexa, what is there to know about love'? His latest book is called ‘A Poem for Every Question’. He shares new poems and poems from his book ‘And so this is Christmas’:

John Hegley brings surreal festive interaction and poignantly playful poems to the Adverb. He also celebrates a playful December celery battle recorded in the letters of Romantic poet John Keats.

Sam Lee's album is ‘Songdreaming’ – he's joined by pianist James Keay to perform songs that sing us deep into this time of year. Sam organises 'Singing with Nightingale' events, so we find out where nightingales go for Christmas.

Jackie Kay's latest book is 'May Day' - she shares a poem by one of her favourite poets Norman McCaig - which stars a robin - and tender winter poems from her collections.

Ian McMillan's guests include the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage with poetry from his latest collection 'New Cemetery', impressionist and poet Alistair McGowan and Joelle Taylor with her new book 'Maryville'.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage shares poems from his recent collection 'New Cemetery' - inspired by a cemetery that was being built near his house during lockdown. The poems incorporate a litany of moth species' names, meditations on writing, the dead as an audience for nature - and include responses to the death of Simon's father. Simon also contributes to our 'Neon Line' series - where we ask a poet to celebrate a remarkable line from any poem.

Alistair McGowan is an impressionist, a stand-up comedian, as well as a pianist and a poet. In his poems featured on this week's show we encounter a tussle between a sofa and a cat, a critique of using 'that' instead of 'who' or 'which', and a tender exploration of the names we give siblings. His poetry collection is called 'Not what we were expecting'.

Joelle Taylor brings us brand new poems from 'Maryville' - the story of a mythical bar in a snowglobe, a stage and a space for lesbian lives and relationships that might otherwise be forgotten. It's been described by Bernadine Evaristo as 'a consistently dazzling work of art'. Joelle won the TS Eliot Prize for poetry for 'C+nto & Othered Poems' and has since published her acclaimed novel, 'The Night Alphabet'.

Ian McMillan enjoys the language of the iconic 'Night Mail' poem by W.H. Auden, invites us into signal boxes, imagines train station bars, and evokes the empty platforms that inspire songs - as he celebrates 200 years of railway inspired poetry with his guests Don Paterson, Carmen Marcus, Bella Hardy and Patrick McGuinness.

Don Paterson is a poet and musician. He's the editor of an anthology of train poems called 'Train Songs' (with Sean O'Brien) and described the chapters of his memoir 'Toy Fights' as 'train windows'. The Verb has commissioned Don to write a poem about a station that seems to him particularly unpoetic..

Carmen Marcus is a graduate of the 'Verb New Voices' writing scheme. She is a novelist and poet, and for the anniversary of the passenger railway she has been talking to passengers on the Stockton & Darlington line and writing train inspired poems. Carmen brings railway trolls and brand new words for the excitement of train travel to the Verb studio.

Patrick McGuinness is British-Belgian writer and poet. He teaches French and Comparative Literature at Oxford. His latest book is a series of essays called 'Ghost Stations' - he explains why the idea of the 'ghost station' has been such a powerful 'engine' for his writing.

Bella Hardy is a lover of ballads, a BBC Folk Singer of the Year, and a songwriter. The Verb has asked her to respond to one of the greatest train platform inspired songs of all time - Paul Simon's 'Homeward Bound' . Bella performs a brand new song that celebrates the way waiting for a train can lead artists to come up with some of their best work.

You'll also hear the acoustics of a real signal box - part of a soundscape produced by Sheffield folk and electronics duo Polyhymns.

Produced by Faith Lawrence

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Shaun Usher's Letters of Note project became a cultural empire spanning multiple books, stage shows, and an online archive. He's now produced Diaries of Note - a collection of diary entries that span centuries from the great and the good . He discusses the relationship between a diary entry and a poem.

Katrina Naomi on her latest pamphlet of poems, Dance As If, in which she reconnects with her body, as a woman of a certain age, through the medium of dance.

Amani Saeed on the culmination of the Language Is A Queer Thing project which for the last three years has brought poets from India and England together to create new work.

Mother and daughter, Fran Edwards and Jennifer Jones, on Rebirth - a collection of poems which began as a private conversation reflecting on their relationship, during the pandemic.

Presenter Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan celebrates an iconic poem that inspired a generation of poets and readers - Tony Harrison's 'Them and Uz'.

Presented by Ian McMillan

Writer and poet Maria Popova on taking inspiration from 19th century ornithological studies for her new publication, An Almanac of Birds – 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days.

Slam poet Aditya Narayan has had an impressive winning streak this year – winning the Roundhouse Poetry Slam in April and the Loud Poets Grand Slam final in August. He discusses writing poetry for performance and rhyming English, Hindi, and Urdu.

Kimberly Campanello and D.M. Black are members of a distinguished group - poets who have translated Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy. They reflect on their different approaches to the 14th century three part work which takes the reader to hell, purgatory, and heaven - Kimberly weaving in her personal history including her Parkinson's diagnosis and the history of Italy in her translation of Part 1: Inferno, and D.M. Black drawing upon his experience as a psychoanalyst in his award-winning translation of Part 2: Purgatorio, and his recently published Part 3: Paradiso.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan presents The Verb from Contains Strong Language in Bradford - with poets Imtiaz Dharker, Kieron Higgins, Nabeela Ahmed, and Katrina Porteous (reading poems from her Laurel Prize winning collection Rhizodont).

Rock, stone and sediments are everywhere in this celebration of poetry and poetry in Bradford. We have millstone grit and the story of stone in a specially commissioned poem from Queen's Gold Medal winner Imtiaz Dharker, the influence of ska on the sediments of language that turned Kieron Higgins into a poet. Nabeela Ahmed reads from her new book 'From Kashmir to Yorkshire' and explores the layers of languages, including Pahari, that helped to tune her poetry ear, and the winner of this year's Laurel Prize for Nature or Environmental poetry, Katrina Porteus, reads from her collection 'Rhizodont'. She was described by the judges as 'always keeping faith with the north-east' and the book was praised as a 'a crucial act of the imagination. speaking as non-human entities (eg an ice core) ...loving, knowing and authoritative'.

Produced by Faith Lawrence

Testament presents poetry in performance from Daljit Nagra, Kate Fox, Andrew McMillan and Kirsty Taylor

The Adverb is recorded in front of a studio audience in St George's Hall, Bradford at the Contains Strong Language festival. Part of the Bradford 2025 City of Culture celebrations.

Testament is a writer, rapper, educator and world-record breaking beatboxer. Daljt Nagra won the Forward Poetry Prize for best single poem in 2004 for "Look We Have Coming to Dover!" Verb regular Kate Fox's recent books include 'Bigger on the Inside' and 'On Sycamore Gap'. Andrew McMillan won the Guardian First Book award for his debut collection Physical and Kirsty Taylor is a writer and educator inspired by her beloved hometown Bradford - she opened the City of Culture year in January performing to 20,000 people in City Park.

Presenter: Testament