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 ( [email protected]).

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

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

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.

What makes a good manifesto? Are they better if they are sloganeering or questioning? Radio 1's Greg James and co-writer Chris Smith's new book is like a manifesto for the imagination, Malika Booker co-founded a poetry workshop that has transformed the literary landscape, and Kathryn Williams' songs always chart new territory - they join Ian McMillan to help him shape The Verb Manifesto which will be launched in the autumn.

Malika Booker founded the poetry workshop 'Malika's Poetry Kitchen' alongside fellow poet Robert Robinson twenty years ago, inspired in part by the American writer June Jordan's ideas in 'Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Handbook' . The workshop has included many of our most exciting poets, and an anthology celebrating the workshop is published on 5th August, called 'Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different' ( edited by Maisie Lawrence and Rishi Dastidar).

Greg James and Chris Smith have turned an idea that came to Greg in a dream, into a novel for children called 'The Great Dream Robbery'. With a an acute ear for the sound of language, and a Dadaist expertise in the absurd , Greg and Chris celebrate the power of the imagination and the power of Llamas ( with bananas) - but will these things make it into our manifesto?

Celebrated for her songwriting, Kathryn Williams' first novel 'The Ormering Tide' (Wrecking Ball Press) may have a listening manifesto at its heart. Its narrator is a curious listener, both to the natural world, and the people on her island. It's Rozel's listening which gives the reader hints of something mysterious that happened a long time ago -and which unsettles the present. As Kathryn has such an acute sensitivity to place, we asked her to write a special song to celebrate the places where manifestos are conceived.

Ian McMillan is joined by the Labour Party politician Ed Miliband, by ambassador for ‘Compassion in Politics’ Jackie Weaver ( Jackie recently shot to fame after a parish council meeting went viral), by writer Emilie Robson with a 'Verb Drama' featuring an existentialist cat, and by our regular guest, stand-up poet Kate Fox.

How do they think the language of politics could change to become more compassionate? And what about their perception of the word ‘authority’? Can writers help us see it differently? And why did the young Ed Miliband love the 1980s US soap opera Dallas so much - which was all about the power and authority exerted by Stetson-wearing characters like JR Ewing?

Ian McMillan on the language we use to think and write about trees and the kind of thinking we do alongside them - with forester and environmentalist Peter Wohlleben whose books include 'The Hidden Life of Trees', poet and academic Jason Allen-Paisant, bestselling novelist Sarah Moss, and Scots language specialist and Makar of the North East, Sheena Blackhall.

Producer: Ruth Thomson

Ian McMillan on how language and poetry affect our perception of time.

In this Verb he explores the language of slowness with Oxford University geographer Professor Danny Dorling, asks poet Rachael Boast to read time-bending poetry from her new collection 'Hotel Raphael' (and also to take us deep into the different time-modes and time-zones inhabited by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Philosopher Roman Krznaric explains how to write about future time and how to be a good ancestor, and Verb regular, stand-up poet Kate Fox offers an insight into the smooth running of book groups for other species: the slow-reading flies, and the fast-reading deep sea isopods.

Suggestions for a time-themed Book Club: