Description
Ian McMillan is joined by poets and poetry lovers for this celebration of language recorded at this year's Hay Festival.
The actor, Harry Potter star, Dickens virtuoso and national treasure Miriam Margolyes shares one of her favourite poems, the 19th century poet Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'.
Miriam invites listeners to imagine the Duke, who is the speaker in the poem, as being like 'Hannibal Lecter' from 'The Silence of the Lambs' - a good planner, who has killed his wife.
Irish novelist Kevin Barry has written three novels and four collections of short stories - a master of dialogue, and a beloved voice in the New Yorker magazine. He explores the poetry of the language in his most recent novel 'A Heart in Winter'.
Gwenno has won awards and acclaim for her haunting and groundbreaking song-writing and performances. Gwenno's albums Le Kov and Tresor are in Cornish (she has a Welsh mother and a Cornish father). She joins Ian to share her love of the Welsh artist and poet Edrica Huws, who achieved fame late in life as a visual artist. Her poem 'Vingt-et-un' has stayed with Gwenno, and she explains why Edrica is a creative inspiration.
The poet Owen Sheers explores a poem with a stand-out line (what we call on The Verb the 'Neon Line'). This week the poem explored is 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Is it the 'bee-loud glade' that has caught Owen's attention, or something else? Ian finds out. Owen has an acute ear for language, with writing often inspired by his interviews with real people, for books like 'The Green Hollow'.
Ian McMillan is joined by four guests for more poetry and performance .
After a year characterised by wet weather, Alan Connor constructs a poem from 188 Words for Rain collected on travels around the country for his new book with that title. Comedian and writer Isy Suttie treats us to a new...
Published 11/03/24
On this week's edition of The Verb, Ian McMillan gathers together -
Wendy Cope - the poet whose 1986 debut collection "Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis" became that rare thing - a poetry best seller. As her first collected poems are published she reflects on poetry forms and why some of her old...
Published 10/27/24