The Verb

Ian McMillan revisits the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival for new writing: BBC Contains Strong Language in Leeds to present a gathering of poets from all over the world. The World in Words event brought together poets from countries in Africa, as well as New Zealand, the Caribbean and Sri Lanka.

Ian McMillan celebrates spectral spaces, the pulse of the body, and the power of repetition, in a Verb which showcases emerging talent - new sound designers from the Sound First scheme (a collaboration between BBC Contains Strong Language and Radio 3). Ian is joined by the songwriter, producer and sound designer Benbrick, the poet, playwright and performer Hannah Silva, and Sound First participant Noah Lawson, to explore what sound design can bring to poems, and what sounds are buried in poems themselves. The poems in this show - which the Sound First sound designers used as the basis for their work - were all commissioned for The Verb's 'Something New' series, marking 100 years of poetry on the BBC.

Sound First work featured:

This Verb could change the way you think about dreams, it might change your perception of your own doctor, or your perception of those who become extremists. That's because the writers who join Ian McMillan this week all interviewed people to enrich the texture of their work, and the concepts at the heart of it.

Steven Moffat is a writer and television producer - celebrated for his writing on Doctor Who. He is joined on the programme by Dr Peter Dong (Peter runs a research programme in particle physics at the Large Hadron Collider) to explore a story called 'Going Dark' - which Steven wrote for the collection 'Collision' published by Comma Press. 'Collision' was edited by scientists Rob Appleby and Connie Potter - and brought together a number of writers who were keen to produce stories inspired by research linked to the CERN laboratory, liaising with scientists working on different projects.

Polly Morland's 'A Fortunate Woman' (Picador) has been described as a 'compelling, thoughtful and insightful look at the life and work of a country doctor'. Partly inspired by John Berger's book focusing on a doctor in the same valley ( published in 1967) - Polly spent many hours walking and talking with the current doctor and listening to local people to produce an intimate and detailed picture of the importance of GPs' capacity for telling and holding stories.

Arji Manuelpillai's new poetry collection is 'Improvised Explosive Device' (Penned in the Margins) and is full of inventive and powerful metaphors that help us understand violence, extremism and compassion. He interviewed those affected by extremism to inform his poems, and to understand the political and personal impact of language.

Ian McMillan explores funny fiction by women with Helen Lederer, the writer and comedian (and now creator of the 'Comedy Women In Print: Book Prize'), author of Big Girl, Small Town and The Factory Girls, researcher and performer Dr Naomi Paxton who has written about the use of comedy as a political took in the Women's Suffrage movement and comedian Joanna Neary, who's Brief Encounters-inspired character Celia Jesson tries her hand at comedy.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

For our watery and wild Verb - which flows though the water of chalk streams, the ocean, a baby's bath water, and birth waters - Ian McMillan is joined by Ruth Padel, Vik Sharma, Caroline Bergvall and Will Burns. Ruth and Vik share their collaboration '24 Splashes of Denial' which combines an apprehension of loss with vast and delicate beauty, Will Burns reads a new commission for The Verb on his experience of chalk streams (a globally rare and 'gin-clear' habitat) in Buckinghamshire, and Caroline Bergvall opens a door in our watery imagination, tracing the idea of refuge in extracts from her project 'Nattsong'.

Wild Poetry 'Call-out' !

From Ian McMillan: "As part of the BBC’s celebration of our wild isles, we thought we’d tap into the deep waters of the Verb listeners’ collective and individual imaginations. We want to see your poems that use the idea of wildness as their seed – they could be as short as a haiku – or as long as twenty lines – that’s the limit. We're particularly interested in poems that take the word ‘wild’ itself on a journey. Email your poems to [email protected]. Although we won’t be able to respond to each poem, together they’ll give us a national snapshot - a moment in wild time that we’ll explore later in the year; we’ll share some of your poems on-air.

Ian McMillan is joined by poets Michael Symmons Roberts, Kate Fox, Jacob Polley and sound designer Amanda Priestley to celebrate the rich variety of new poetry commissions written for the BBC's centenary year. The show includes work from the Sound First scheme (Radio 3 and BBC Contains Strong Language working together to find the best emerging sound design talent in the UK) - three poems with evocative sound design. Also, we share the very last commission in our Something New series, by Sinéad Morrisey - called Charm.

Sound First work featured:

Speaker - poem by Jacob Polley, sound designer Nicky Elson

This week Testament - poet, theatre-maker and world-record-breaking human beatboxer, explores the meaning and power of the sounds we make between words, including sighing and laughing - with spoken word artist and writer Polar Bear (Steven Camden) , 'Wild' author Jay Griffiths, and poets Shirley May and John McAuliffe.

Polar Bear presents a brand new commission for our series celebrating the BBC's centenary ('Something Old, Something New') which includes the sounds of his childhood home, John McAuliffe shares poems of deep sighs and his work inspired by the experiences of organ donors and recipients, Jay Griffiths lets us into the way our fellow creatures take pleasure in sound and the importance of wild sound to humans, and Shirley May explores the importance of breath in her work, and the role of the body in performance - something she teaches as artistic director of 'Young Identity' - the youth spoken word collective.

As a new season arrives, Ian McMillan and guests consider ambivalence and beauty in writing about spring.

This week Ian peers into the yellow heart of the daffodil to find out what makes a great spring poem, and shares poetry by some of the most remarkable poets of our moment, as well as those inspired by the colours of crocuses past. Spring is always beautiful, but there is earthiness and grief in the language of the season too. His guests will include writers and those who work with and study the earth itself.

Ian is joined by Booker Prize-winning novelist and keen gardener Penelope Lively who has contributed an essay to the new anthology 'In The Garden' (Daunt) on 'the Gardening Eye', passing the passion for growing on to her daughters, and gardening later in life.

In his poem 'Here Too Spring Comes to Us with Open Arms', Caleb Femi takes us to spring on a South London Estate.

In books such as the T.S Eliot prize shortlisted collection 'The Mizzy' (Picador), Paul Farley turns our attention to the overlooked and unloved places, finding spring thrives here just as in the meadow.

We also hear a selection of poems read by Colin Tierney and Indira Varma:

Crocuses - Richard Meier

Presenter: Ian McMillan

What's stopping us telling the stories of women's inner lives, or listening to them, especially once they become mothers, or are over forty? Actresses discover there are far fewer roles once they're no longer seen as young; whilst middle-aged and older women's lives are conflated, as if they are having exactly the same experiences.

Ian McMillan is joined by Victoria Smith, author of 'Hags: the demonisation of middle-aged women' , by poet Patrick McGuinness (sharing poems from his forthcoming collection 'Blood Feather') by Jenny Lewis, author of 'Gilgamesh Retold' (her retellings of Mesopotamian myth reveal a female inn-keeper at the edge of the world) , and by folk legends Marry Waterson and Lisa Knapp (performing as 'Hack Poets Guild ) who share haunting songs of silenced and traduced women.

We also hear our latest BBC Centenary commission - this week it's 'Deep Listening' by Emily Berry.

Secret names, original names, nicknames, invented names for characters - this Verb explores the intimacy of naming, the sound of names, and the way they can influence character.

Ian is joined by the former Makar (National Poet of Scotland) Jackie Kay, with a brand new commission for The Verb - by Liz Berry, who shares poems about an ancestor called Eliza from her new collection 'Home Child' - and by Christopher Reid with explorations of childhood (and an imaginary character called Theodore Faddlefoot) all taken from his collection 'Toys/Tricks/Traps' - just published.