The Verb

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Radio 4's cabaret of the word, featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance

The Verb: The Twentieth Anniversary Verb

The Twentieth Anniversary Verb

BBC Radio 4 - The Verb, The Twentieth Anniversary Verb

Ian McMillan and guests celebrate 20 years of poetry and performance on The Verb!

Join Ian McMillan and guests to celebrate 20 years of The Verb with guests Kate Fox, Malika Booker, Joelle Taylor, Toby Litt, Luke Wright, Ira Lightman and Cia Mangat.

In 2002 a new radio programme was born. It was almost called 'Saturday Speakeasy', but Radio 3 finally settled on 'The Verb'.  This is our twentieth anniversary programme, so as you might expect it's packed with energetic language-play, poetry, and prose, and with five new commissions, as we reflect on the ways in which writing and performance have changed in the last two decades, and ask what might happen over the next twenty years.  

Ian's guests are poets Kate Fox, Malika Booker, Ira Lightman, Luke Wright, Cia Mangat (who was born the same year as The Verb), and novelist Toby Litt. We also present a piece of mystery audio which stars the award-winning poet Joelle Taylor.

As if that's not enough for one week,  in this episode we launch a brand new recurring feature called 'Something Old, Something New'  celebrating the BBC's role in commissioning and broadcasting poetry over the last hundred years. In each programme over the next year we'll be sharing a remarkable poem from the archive, and a contemporary poet will present a new commission. This week you can hear the Irish icon and public poet W.B.Yeats reading his poem 'Song of the Old Mother' in 1935, and our contemporary poet is Luke Wright; he reads a poem called 'Covehithe Beach'.

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