Ian McMillan discusses the enduring appeal of the novel and explores how poetry and prose can collide to create a new kind of language; with Jacqueline Crooks, whose debut novel 'Fire Rush' is a tale of music and parties and love and life in late 1970s and 80s London; Liv Little, founder and former CEO of Gal-dem, a sadly now defunct online and print magazine run by women of colour, whose first book 'Rosewater' is an exploration of how it is to live a creative life in London when time and money and history all seem to conspire against you; Lemara Lindsay-Prince, the senior commissioning editor of Merky Books, the publishing house set up by rapper and grime artist Stormzy to nurture under-represented and marginalised writers; and poet, film-maker and dramatist Owen Sheers.

Ian McMillan presents the first in a series of Verb visits to the future, asking whether we need new words, new plots and new genres to help us think about it creatively.

The BBC has signed up to a climate pledge which presents an exciting opportunity for new writing (it is pledging to make sure its visions of the future aren’t simply dystopian ones, to recognise other visions, fair and balanced ones, sustainable and informed by the science ). To explore this opportunity we are first joined by the ecological philosopher and green activist Rupert Read to discuss 'thrutopianism', and by the writer and artist Alistair Gentry who has brought his flying saucer along to the studio.

In the second half of this show we do a deep time dive into the work of one of America’s greatest visionary poets – Jorie Graham - and hear new poetry from her collection 'To 2040' (Carcanet)

BBC Climate Change Pledge

Rupert Read

Alistair Gentry

Ritual, seduction, silliness and sacrifice - all this and more in 'The Wicker Man Verb' - marking 50 years of the iconic horror film.

Ian McMillan is joined by one of our best fiction writers -Sarah Hall. Sarah shares a new commission for The Verb imagining Summerisle in 2023.

David Bramwell and Eliza Skelton have been influenced by the film as writers and performers - they give The Verb an insight into how their Sing-A-Long-A-Wickerman events work. David has just published 'The Singalong-A-Wicker-Man Scrapbook' https://www.drbramwell.com/

Folk musician Brian Peters explores the old songs that sit behind the soundtrack, and Verb regular - the poet and performer Kate Fox, goes on a emotional journey with Lord Summerisle, imagining how he might operate in the world of social media influencers, and endless 'wellness' marketing.

Producer: Faith Lawrence

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in May 2023.

Ian McMillan explores the monsters that haunt our imagination, the monstrous labels that have historically been imposed upon 'the Other', and the modern day monstrosities that provoke our fears and threaten to make monsters of us all.

With Prof Roger Luckhurst who specialises in classic 19th-century Gothic, literature, film, and cultural history; his new book 'Gothic' traces our fascination and representations of the Gothic through history to its place at the very heart of popular culture today, Poet Tom Juniper whose Monstrous poems are a collection from the point of view of sundry folkloric creatures, conceptual poet and artist Ira Lightman who has written a specially commissioned poem on the theme of the Monstrous, and composer Sarah Angliss whose new opera 'Giant' tells the story of the 18th century “Irish giant” Charles Byrne, a man whose corpse was stolen to order and put on public display.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

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