The Verb

By BBC Radio 4Society & Culture

The Verb episodes

January 22, 2021 Writing the Weather - Experiments in Living
Ian McMillan and guests including Jenny Offill, Alice Oswald and Wayne Binitie discuss weather writing.
Alice Oswald
The Oxford Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald is a great listener to the weather, something she has written about as being part of her experiences as a gardener. She has shown great attentiveness to water in all forms – with books like ‘Dart’ her long river poem and with her writing on rain for Radio 3. Along with her co-editor Paul Keegan, Alice has put together an anthology of weather writing called ‘Gigantic Cinema ‘. For The Verb she reads from Daniel Defoe’s 'The Journal of the Plague year'; and from her own book ‘Nobody’. She also shares the following works: ‘My Cocaine Museum’ by Michael Taussig , ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel IV’ by Francois Rabelais , ‘Conversation about Dante’ by Osip Mandelstam, and ‘Trees in the Garden’ by DH Lawrence. The anthology is described as a 'bare-headed' collection, which in part means that titles from the selections are only referred to on the contents page - this allows the reader to experience the weather writing as if it all takes place on a single day.
Wayne Binitie
Artist Wayne Binitie bring us the sounds of ancient weather. He has been collaborating with the British Antarctic Survey, and shares with us original compositions (made with his collaborator Art Lewy ) that allow us to hear a soundtrack of air bubbles being released from Antarctic ice cores which are thousands of years old. The compositions (Ice Fragments 1 and 2) also weave the music of Ravel and Debussy into these bubble sounds, as a way of exploring memory. Wayne is fascinated by the different states of water, and his work explores freezing and melting, condensation and evaporation, sublimation and deposition states. We are focusing on his sound art, but Wayne’s work takes in other senses, as his exhibitions have demonstrated ( http://waynebinitie.com/ ). All of Wayne’s work with the BAS helps us reflect on what it means to talk about the weather at a time when the climate is changing in profound ways.
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill thought deeply about how we talk about the weather in ways that are true to our experiences and our thoughts, in order to write her novel ‘Weather’. ‘Weather’ is narrated by Lizzie a librarian who ends up answering the mail for a doom-laden podcast called 'Hell and High Water'. Soon she is fielding questions from those worried about climate change. The novel is written in fragmented paragraphs which show how weather thoughts move through our thinking – and contain beautiful and comic observations. She discusses humour, the difficulty of talking about glaciers and the pleasure of manifestos. Jenny’s previous novel is the equally playful ‘The Department of Speculation’.
45 min
January 08, 2021 Optimism in Stories for Children - Experiments in Living
How do you give hope to children when you're not feeling hopeful? What's the difference between optimism and hope? How do children's writers balance light and dark, joy and sadness? And what kind of language sustains and nurtures us through difficult times when we're young? Smriti Halls, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kate Fox and Gaia Vince join Ian McMillan for a 'hope-ist' Verb.
Smriti Halls
Smriti’s books often seek to acknowledge loss and sadness whilst suggesting through image, rhythm and story that we are never truly alone. Smriti reads from ‘Rain Before Rainbows’ and explains how carefully she thought about the balance of dark and light in this book for young children, and about the nature of time. Smriti shares the language that sustained her as a child – Louise May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ and Oscar Wilde's ‘The Happy Prince’. Books by Smriti are read all over the world: ‘I’m Sticking with You’ was a number one bestseller in the U.S.A and recent stories include ‘The Little Island’ and ‘Elephant in my Kitchen’.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Screenwriter and author of children’s books Frank Cottrell-Boyce, reads us his story about a world surrounded by cloud and a girl called Sunny who realises there's life beyond it. ‘Murcaster’ is a story written as a ‘hope’ to give to children during this pandemic (it’s one of over 100 such ‘hopes’ included in an anthology by Katherine Rundell ). Frank explains how the writing process itself is inevitably an act of hope, and discusses the influence of hymns – the way even their rhythms can communicate a kind of hopefulness. Frank also considers the way ‘hope’ is integral to the DNA of the ‘Doctor Who’ (he has written for the series) . His most recent book for children is ‘The Runaway Robot’.
Gaia Vince
Gaia is an award-winning science journalist, author, and broadcaster. She’s interested in how human systems and Earth’s planetary systems interact. Her book ‘Adventures in the Anthropocene” won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. She discusses her writing on co-operation and on the idea that we are now part of a collective she's named ‘Homni’ (explored in her new book 'Transcendence') . Gaia reads a special commission for The Verb – a letter to her children for them to open when they're in their eighties.
Kate Fox
Fresh from captaining Loughborough University on University Challenge, stand-up poet and Verb regular Kate Fox shares the most interesting comments on hope she has come across this year, and quotations from her own childhood reading. These include the extended railway metaphor employed by Government scientist Jonathan Van-Tam, ideas about hopeful journeys from 'Jane Eyre' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and the enduring resonance of 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich’s phrase ‘All shall be well’.
45 min
December 18, 2020 Christmas Lights Verb - Experiments in Living
Ian McMillan and his guests explore the ‘language’ of light this Christmas. He’s joined by Baroness Floella Benjamin, who tells the story of leaving Trinidadian sunshine for the very different light in the south of England; one of our best-loved lexicographers, Susie Dent lets us into the vocabulary of light; poetry legend John Cooper Clarke talks about the leading lights of his childhood, and the glow of an extraordinary cocktail cabinet; and Ian rejoices in the glow of the screens that have connected us this year, with a celebration of the poet Edwin Morgan’s ‘The Computer’s First Christmas Card’, made into sound art by the musician Scanner. The poet Caroline Bergvall performs work that celebrates Morgan's centenary year; she also discusses the impact of Norwegian twilight on her work. Throughout the show, the socially distanced Knott Singers celebrate the starlight to be found in carols and introduce our guests with shining harmonies. Edwin Morgan was the first Scots National Makar. He published 25 collections and was a prolific translator. His 'Centenary Selected Poems' has just been published by Carcanet, (ed. Hamish Whyte). For more information on the events marking his centenary visit edwinmorgantrust.com
Part of Radio 3’s Light in the Darkness season, illuminating winter.
Baroness Floella Benjamin is a national icon – she delighted generations of children in her role as presenter of 'Playschool' and other programmes. She is also an actress and a singer, has performed with orchestras across the country, and has long been a champion for children and for diversity. The story of her own journey from Trinidad to England, which she made as a child, inspired her book ‘Coming to England’ – and it has now been turned into a children’s picture book with illustrations by Diane Ewen. Baroness Benjamin shares her love of the Caribbean sun she was brought up with, her joy in snow-light, and in the visits her family would make to see the Christmas lights in London.
Scanner ( AKA Robin Rimbaud ) is a composer and sound artist whose work has always broken new ground since the release of his first albums in the 1990s, which often show a fascination with spaces and with technology. He has collaborated with leading musical lights e.g. Michael Nyman and Laurie Anderson - and has worked on installations, has scored ballets, films and has been commissioned to create sound art for the Tate Modern. He is often to be found in photos illuminated by the glow of his laptop screens ( see here): http://scannerdot.com/robin-rimbaud-scanner-biography/ For The Verb Scanner celebrates the blue light emanating from computers, which has been so important to so many social lives this year - and has made us two versions of Edwin Morgan’s ‘The Computer’s First Christmas Card’ – one of which can be heard in the broadcast programme, the other on the podcast.
John Cooper Clarke is a poetry legend and has been an important part of the performance scene since the 1970s. His album ‘Snap Crackle and Bop’ was a massive hit with tracks like ‘Beasley St’ and ‘Evidently Chickentown’. But his latest work is his autobiography ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ - and is the perfect book for The Verb’s programme on light – detailing, with John’s characteristic humour and sharp eye for detail, the bright lights of Salford when he was growing up, the light of the cinema screens that were so important to him – and the memorable lit cocktail cabinet that features in a chapter called ‘Maldano’s Late Night Final’ a drink billed as offering a ‘glow in every glass’.
http://johncooperclarke.com/
Caroline Bergvall is an award-winning poet, writer, sound artist and performer. She is half-French, Half-Norwegian and explains to The Verb how northern light and long twilights have inspired and informed her work. She has been organising special collaborative streamed writing events at night during this year called ‘Night & Refuge’. For the Xmas Verb she delights in the language and poetry of light that was so important to Edwin Morgan’s oeuvre – and performs a poem inspired by his poetry that was commissioned for his centenary year.
https://carolinebergvall.com/https://edwinmorgantrust.com/2020/06/29/the-concrete-world-of-edwin-morgan/
Susie Dent offers The Verb a glittering array of light sensitive words and sayings. She explains the etymology of 'silver screen', 'apricity', and tells us why Dr Johnson, the father of the dictionary, thought that to pursue perfection as a lexicographer was to 'chase the sun'. Susie is one of our best-loved lexicographers showing her passion for language and dictionaries as an expert member of team on the game-show 'Countdown' and she has just published 'Word Perfect: etymological entertainment for every day of the year'.
47 min
December 11, 2020 Brazil - Experiments in Living
This week Ian McMillan dives into the word 'Brazil' and 'Brazilian', discovering irony, fusion and confusion, and the astonishing ability of one of its most famous novelists, Clarice Lispector, to dilate time. He also translates a Brazilian poem into Yorkshire dialect to see what happens to the tone.
Toby Litt
The novelist Toby Litt has become fascinated by the novels of Clarice Lispector, and responds with his own fiction in this, her centenary year. Lispector was born in Ukraine but spent much of her childhood in Recife, also living as an adult in Europe and the USA, as well as Rio de Janeiro. Toby is intrigued by her ability to 'dilate time', something he was also praised for achieving in his most recent novel 'Patience' (Galley Beggar ).
https://tobylitt.wordpress.com/
Victor Esses
Victor Esses is a Brazilian theatre and performance maker and a live artist based in London. He is interested in participation, autobiographical material, storytelling and multimedia as ways to investigate belonging. He performs part of his show 'Where to Belong' and discusses the way he involves the audience in his show.
https://www.victoresses.com
Angélica Freitas
Angélica Freitas grew up in Pelotas in Brazil and her poetry collections include 'Rilke Shake' and 'Um útero é do tamanho de um punho' ('The Uterus Is the Size of a Fist'). The Verb finds out why she feels there is a symmetry for her between the two words 'Brazil and 'Woman' . Ian McMillan's shares with her a Yorkshire Dialect version of her poem ('I sleep with myself' ) which he's written specially for this show.
Natan Barreto
Natan Barreto was born in Salvador, Brazil, and is now based in London. He explains why Clarice Lispector is such an important writer not just nationally for Brazilians, but also internationally; he also explores her sensibility and the importance of language and Brazilian landscape to his writing. Natan is the author of six collections of poetry in Portuguese, including 'A Backyard and Other Corners'. He is about to publish his first novel.
http://www.natanbarreto.com/
A Brazilian bilingual book club can be accessed via this website:
http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml
45 min
November 27, 2020 Zero-Growth Writing - Experiments in Living
What might a zero-growth world mean for writers? The Verb offers this provocation to this week's guests, and asks how poets in particular can adjust to a world economy that's changing rapidly under long-down. Is there such a thing as a sustainable poem? Ian McMillan is joined by: Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author and member of the Greek Parliament, Dr Seren Griffiths, an archaeologist and Radio 3 New Generation Thinker (fascinated by time and the taxonomy of soil), by novelist and poet Patrick McGuinness who is intrigued by the idea of a poem that leaves the 'ordinary' just as it is, and we welcome Jade Cuttle, (critic and poet) back to the Verb for second time this season - she reads French eco-poetry to her house-plant for us and we listen to its reaction via special technology.
Yanis Varoufakis' new novel is 'Another Now', Jade Cuttle's album of poem/songs is called 'Algal Bloom', and Patrick McGuinness's most recent publication is the novel 'Throw me to the Wolves'.
45 min
November 20, 2020 Jan Morris
In a special extended conversation with Ian McMillan, the travel writer Jan Morris looks back over a career in writing that has spanned seven decades and explains what it is that keeps her returning to her writing desk every day at the age of 91. Jan Morris has just published 'Battleship Yamato: Of War, Beauty and Irony' (Pallas Athene) - it's the story of a ship that has always fascinated her, but, as she tells Ian, more importantly it is a portrait of the ship as an allegory for war itself. Jan has always been interested in allegory, as she says 'everything turns out to have more than one meaning'.
Jan takes us inside her writing practice, including discussion of her strong musical sense (she even sings sentences aloud), her love of the exclamation mark and why three is the magic number when it comes to writing drafts. Finally, after a life-time of making connections and putting them into words, and considering what she believes is the 'self-centred' nature of her job, Jan is an advocate for 'kindness', which she calls 'the ultimate virtue'.
Presenter: Ian McMillan
Producer: Penny Boreham.
45 min
November 13, 2020 Green Memoir - Experiments in Living
The Verb on 'green' memoir - with the actor and writer Gabriel Byrne, and the poets Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Pascale Petit. What would our stories sound like if we told them through our relationships with the plants, animals and landscapes that are most dear to us? What happens when we start to see the natural world as an integral part of our own histories?
Gabriel Byrne is an award-winning actor and writer. His new memoir 'Walking with Ghosts' starts emphatically and lyrically with the landscape of his childhood home in Ireland and the great pleasure he took in it as a child. Gabriel also talks about his relationship with the earth - the experience of feeling the ground shift during an earthquake in Los Angeles and about the 'photograph he carries in his heart' - a memory of a ploughman working the land.
Pascale Petit won The Laurel Prize earlier this year (a new prize for poetry on environmental themes), for her remarkable poems fusing myth, the natural world (the teeming life of the rainforest) and her family relationships. Her new collection 'Tiger Girl' has at its heart, an encounter between a tiger and a baby - a baby who grew up to be Pascale's grandmother. Pascale also explains why the kapok tree is so special to her.
Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's 'The Grassling' has been called a 'geological memoir' - it's a book which explores her deep appreciation for the red earth of Devon, where she grew up, alongside an account of her relationship with her father. Elizabeth-Jane reads new poems on the programme, poems which bring us closer to invertebrates and mosses. Always innovative in her approach to writing about intimacy with natural world, she also explains some of the writing processes that sit behind her work.
45 min
November 06, 2020 The Changing Language of Veganism: Experiments in Living
Are you what you eat? The way we talk and think about food has changed a lot in recent years, particularly when it comes to the idea of eating ethically and the concept of veganism. Once a punchline, it's now a multi-million pound industry. What do the words we use to talk about food tell us about the underlying moral issues? Why is food so tied up with shame? Can we find the language to become 'good enough' eaters?
Joining Ian to talk about the language of food from 'clean' to 'dirty' are Benjamin Zephaniah, who became a vegan instinctively before he even knew the word for it, and who is perhaps best loved for his plea to be kinder to animals at Christmas; 'Talking Turkey'. The novelist Jonathan Safran Foer first examined morality and food in his 2009 non-fiction book 'Eating Animals', and it's a subject he has returned to in his latest book 'We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast'. Argentinian novelist Agustina Bazterrica explains the challenges of not eating meat in a country where it is central to the culture, and discusses her dystopian novel 'Tender is the Flesh'. And meat runs throughout the poetry of Rachael Allen, who is in fact a vegan.
Presenter: Ian McMillan
Producer: Jessica Treen
45 min
October 30, 2020 Comedy writing in difficult times: Experiments in Living
This week Ian McMillan and guests are turning to humour to help us get through difficult times. If 'comedy equals tragedy plus time' - how much time do we need to make something funny? Or is it more dangerous to leave a topic too long, and risk your audience moving on? Because in comedy, timing is everything...
Joining Ian are Ben Schott, the author of two novels set in the Jeeves and Wooster universe on why so many people have turned to P.G Wodehouse during lockdown, comedian Grainne Maguire on the challenges of performing to masked audiences and how comedy will adapt to socially distanced audiences, Kate Fox has written us a brand new poem on why she's found it difficult to be funny recently, and Dr Matt Winning explains how he makes climate change funny - and why humour might be the key to making people care about the planet.
Presenter: Ian McMillan
Producer: Cecile Wright
45 min
October 23, 2020 The Poetry of Walls: Inside Out at the Southbank Centre
Ian McMillan introduces new poetry that takes its cue from the limestone, fossils and concrete of the walls of London's Southbank Centre, in a celebration of all kinds of poetry walls, real and digital. His guests are the poets Chris McCabe, Anthony Anaxagorou, Joelle Taylor and Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa.
Chris McCabe is a poet and the joint librarian of the National Poetry Library (based at the Southbank Centre). He performs a new commission for The Verb - inspired by the fossils ('scavengers and predators') in the limestone at the Royal Festival Hall. Chris has just edited 'Instagram Poetry for Every Day' and his poetry collections include 'The Triumph of Cancer' ( Penned in the Margins).
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa is a dancer and poet. In 2019 she became the first person to win the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Slam Championships, become a BBC 1 Extra & Asian Network Talent Search finalist and the Hammer and Tongue UK Poetry Slam Champion in the same year. Safiya has been thinking about walls and their multiple meanings during the pandemic. She performs a poem called "Plastered Heart, August". Her poetry is to be published by Out-Spoken Press.
Anthony Anaxagorou is the founder of Out-Spoken – which encompasses poetry and performance nights and a press. Out-Spoken has partnered with the Southbank Centre, breaking down barriers between poets, genres, and sharing the work of marginalised groups. Anthony’s poetry collection ‘After the Formalities’ ( Penned in the Margins) was nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Joelle Taylor is an award-winning author, performer and poet, and the founder of Slambassadors – her latest collection is “Songs My Enemy Taught Me” (Out-Spoken Press). She is also an editor for Out-Spoken.
This episode is part of the programming for BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre.
45 min