The Verb

Rebecca Watts has just published her third poetry collection - The Face In The Well. She discusses writing poems that engage with the work of an earlier generation of poets, turning a cherished childhood memory into poetry, and Emily Brontë's love of ironing. Poet and writer Brian Bilston is as much a fan of the American writer, artist, and designer Edward Gorey as The Verb. He accepted our commission to create an updated version of one of Gorey's most celebrated poems - The Gashlycrumb Tinies. He premieres his approach to Gorey's alphabetical and flatly macabre list of children's final fates - The Garbledoom Tiddlers. Cristina Rivera Garza is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Mexican writer, poet and professor. Her new book, Death Takes Me, fuses crime fiction, literary theory, and the poems of Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik. She discusses the power of language to reflect, proscribe, and change society. Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet, a professor, and editor at Pavilion Poetry. She talk to Ian about the art of creating a poetry collection and how deciding on the order of the poems in a new collection can be a surprisingly physical activity. Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Ian McMillan's guests are George Szirtes, Cecilia Knapp, Lisa Knapp, Gerry Diver and Rishi Dastidar. The beauty of a swimming pool seen from the air, banks that fly up and out of small towns never to return, the poetry of single objects seen from a train window, and the miniature brilliance of poetry pamphlets - all in this week's edition of The Verb. It can be a shock when banks leave our high streets - poet George Szirtes presents a brand new commission for The Verb inspired by that experience, and reads work from his 2004 collection 'Reel' which won the TS Eliot Prize. George has just been awarded the 'King's Gold Medal' for excellence in poetry. Cecilia Knapp finds surprising images for memories of being a teenager in new poetry on this week's show. Cecilia's first collection is 'Peach Pig' - she has published a novel called 'Little Boxes', and is Poet-in-Residence for London’s City Bridge Foundation. We look out of train windows, in a new song by Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver ( from a new album called 'Hinterland'). Gerry has arranged music for films – and in his ground-breaking album 'The Speech Project' he created scores for the remarkable speakers including Christy Moore, the boxer Barry McGuigan and the singer Charlotte Church. Lisa Knapp has been nominated for the BBC folk awards multiple times - her recent performances on the 'Hack Poets Guild' album 'Blackletter Garland' were described as 'expert' and 'ethereal'. Gerry, Lisa and their daughter Bonnie Diver perform live in the studio. Rishi Dastidar shares the joy of small collections - as he celebrates poetry pamphlets with Ian - exploring their appeal and their potential. Rishi is a poet, critic and copywriter. His latest collection is 'Neptune's Projects' described by one reviewer as 'add(ing) wit, postmodern panache and mythic irony to the tradition of the open sea'

The beauty of flower names, time-thieving hedgehogs, the poetry of fertile earth, and the absurdity of English spelling - all appear in The Verb this week. Ian McMillan's guests are the poets Don Paterson, Zena Edwards, and John McAuliffe who's celebrating fellow poet Michael Longley - and we also hear a new 'eartoon' on the origin of words for numbers, by Stagedoor Johnny ( Richard Poynton). Don Paterson shares a brand new poem in which the speaker is a hedgehog who knows 'one big thing' - a big thing that challenges the way we might think about time. Don is also a musician, and a memoirist - his most recent book is 'Toy Fights' - described by the writer Geoff Dyer as 'devastatingly funny'. His award winning collections include 'Rain', 'Landing Light' and 'God's Gift to Women'. Zena Edwards is a poet and theatre maker who has collaborated with many different artists. Her passion for the natural world shines out in her poem 'Tincture' which she shares on the show, and which came about because of a project called We Feed the UK – which brings together spoken word poets from the climate science and poetry organisation Hotpoets, and regenerative farmers – coordinated by the Gaia Foundation. John McAuliffe is poet, and a director of the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. He has published six poetry collections - and his latest - 'National Theatre' (Gallery) is out now. John celebrates the 'miniature but not minor' poem 'Thaw' by the Belfast born poet Michael Longley who died in January. And we hear another installment of a satirical history of the English language by Stagedoor Johnny - in which the letter 'U' has a crisis of confidence.

Flames and poetry - what poetry tell us about the Los Angeles fires, the pleasure the poet John Keats took in reading - a poem-letter to an imaginary estate agent, and magical language. To explore all this McMillan is joined by poetry writers and poetry lovers. Ian's guests: BBC newsreader and journalist Reeta Chakrabarti is a trustee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. She shares her passion for John Keats' poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' - with its 'realms of gold' and a planet that 'swims'. Fred D'Aguiar is a British-Guyanese poet who lives and teaches in Los Angeles - he shares a powerful new commission which bears witness to the Los Angeles fires, and asks how we might depict and talk about fire in an age of rising temperatures. What does it mean to be a tenant, or an artist in residence in someone else's house - at a time when it is harder to buy houses than in the past? The poet Ella Frears has written a book-length poem exploring rented and borrowed spaces - addressed to an imaginary estate agent - full of tender and frank observations about modern life. Edward Wilson-Lee's new book 'The Grammar of Angels - A Search for the Magical Powers of Language' explores the attraction (and the rejection) of language that has a powerful effect, or casts a spell on us - including the speech of angels and inscriptions on amulets. The book invites us to consider when sound is more powerful than sense, and why that might have concerned our ancestors.

How does it feel to be adopted? How does naming things affect experience? Why does a mysterious sound make Ian want to get out of the studio in Salford? Is it ever a good idea to pretend to have a particular accent? Poems, questions and much more - on this week's Verb. Ian McMillan is joined by poets Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, Luke Wright, and sociolinguist Rob Drummond. Joelle Taylor brings us a brand new commission inspired by the 50th anniversary of the BBC television series 'The Changes' - with its mysterious sound that transforms and challenges modern life. Does it still have resonance today? Joelle won the TS Eliot Prize for poetry in 2022, and her most recent book is a novel - 'The Night Alphabet', which has been described as 'relentlessly inventive.' Anthony Joseph is a poet, musician and academic. He shares poetry of intimacy and intimacy with language - in work from his selected poems 'Precious and Impossible'. Anthony won the TS Eliot prize in 2023 with his 'luminous' collection 'Sonnets for Albert'. Luke Wright is a ground-breaking performer and poet - currently touring with his show 'Joy'. He reads new poems which look at the power of early experiences: a book that helped him understand the experience of being adopted, and a poem which celebrates the beauty of the view from his window in Suffolk. Did the contestant who faked a Welsh accent on 'The Traitors' TV series make a good decision? And what poetry was there to be found in the series? Ian talks to Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University.