The Verb

This week The Verb is messing about on the river of language, part of BBC Radio 3's season of programmes on Rivers.

Ian McMillan is joined by the Booker Prize-winning novelist Alan Hollinghurst, music journalist and broadcaster Jude Rogers and the poets Chris Wallace-Crabbe and MacGillivray.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

Ian's guests on the 'late-night language lock-in' are the novelist Mark Haddon on his new novel The Porpoise' and poet Rachael Allen, whose debut collection 'Kingdomland' has just been published by Faber. We're also joined by Verb Regular Kate Fox and Allison Davies, who has written the next in our series of Verb dramas.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan and guests explore writing about insects and insect-language – including the way insect aliens are depicted in science fiction. Will Burns and Hannah Peel celebrate moths in a new sound commission, poet Elizabeth-Jane Burnett shares work-in-progress, linguist Rob Drummond explores Ursula Le Guin and Doctor Who, entomologist Richard Jones explains why he is happy to call himself 'Bugman', and editor Michael Schmidt celebrates the Australian poet Les Murray.

The Verb explores the pleasure and possibility of 'the gap', including line-breaks, spaces between words, and gaps in our understanding - with Linda Grant, Ira Lightman, Fiona Moore and Emma Smith.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

In an extended interview, the Booker Prize winning poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje sits down with Ian McMillan to discuss the pleasure of naming characters, dark houses as settings, listeners in his fiction, his re-shaping of forms, and the enduring inspiration of music, along with other aspects of his writing process.

Michael is best known for his critically acclaimed novel, 'The English Patient', turned into an Oscar winning film starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, and now on the shortlist for the Golden Man Booker Prize - celebrating the past 50 years of winners.

One of the most important musical ideas that informs Michael's work comes from the jazz musician Ornette Coleman - who said that 'you begin with the territory and what follows is the adventure'. Ian riffs off the 'territory' outlined in Michael's rich and sensuous poem 'Death at Kataragama', and uses its themes to inspire an adventure through his books - starting with his first novel 'Coming Through Slaughter' and including his seventh, 'Warlight' (Cape), set in the aftermath of World War Two.

In this programme, Michael reads 'Death at Kataragama' from his poetry collection 'Handwriting' (Cape), from his novels 'Warlight', 'The English Patient', 'Coming Through Slaughter', and from his memoir 'Running in the Family'. We also hear extracts from 'In the Skin of a Lion' and his afterword to 'The Collected Works of Billy the Kid'.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

This week The Verb is looking at modern retelling and remixing of ancient stories. Jenny Lewis discusses her book 'Gilgamesh Retold' (Carcanet), Fiona Benson explains why Zeus is at the heart of her new collection 'Vertigo & Ghost' (Cape), there's new poetry from Richard Scott and Jack Bernhardt is off to Sherwood Forest, Hollywood style.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

The Verb explores footnotes, ironic detective fiction, poem-spells, satire, sound loops and neologisms - and the way they can all be used to fight sexist language - in honour of International Women's Day.

Ian's guests are the writer and sociologist Professor Ann Oakley, who popularised the word 'gender' in the 1970s, and founded the Social Science Research Unit at the UCL Institute of Education, the novelist and critic Dr Siri Hustvedt on her new novel 'Memories of the Future', the poet Salena Godden on her new collection 'Pessimism is for Lightweights: 13 Pieces of Courage and Resistance' - and he presents brand new work from sound artist and composer Ingrid Plum.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan explores what happens when writers have to shift their thoughts and feelings into a second language. Novelist Patrick McGuinness argues that he can 'feel more than he can say in French, and say more than he can feel in English', Nick Makoha brings us a new poetry commission inspired by leaving Uganda (and three languages behind) when he was only four. We also hear about the 'Polish Sappho' - the groundbreaking poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska who moved to Blackpool during the Second World War, and Heather Dohollau (who was born in Wales , but became an acclaimed poet in French). And our returning guest, the poet Kate Fox skewers that the familiar trope of the book blurb - the writer who 'divides their time' by choice - between two equally glamorous locations.

Ian McMillan looks at language after dark and writing about nightlife with guests Dave Haslam, Geraldine Quigley, Rachael Young and Chris Green.

Dave Haslam is a writer, broadcaster and Dj and the author of 'Life After Dark', a comprehensive history of nightlife in Britain. Geraldine Quigley's debut novel 'Music Love Drugs War' follows a group of young friends trying to have a good time against the background of the troubles in Derry, Theater Maker Rachael Young examines both the good and the bad sides of going out in her piece 'Nightclubbing', and there's brand new work from Christopher Green on his love of dancing.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan celebrates the bicentenary of writer, artist and critic John Ruskin, alongside US fiction writer Kristen Roupenian (author of 'Cat Person' - a story which went viral after being published in The New Yorker), Professor Dinah Birch, and Sarala Estruch. He also introduces a new commission inspired by Ruskin's fascination with geology (a collaboration between the musician Sonic Pleasure and Verb regular, the poet Ira Lightman).