The Verb

The Verb celebrates the centenary of the poet W.S. Graham - exploring his language and his relationship with Cornwall. Ian McMillan presents new poetry inspired by Graham from Rachael Boast and Penelope Shuttle, songs inspired by the Cornish landscape from Gwenno, specially commissioned work from Gerry Diver ('The Speech Project') and a collaboration between Bob Devereux and Adrian O'Reilly.Writer's block, the silence of the blank page, words for the Cornish landscape, the Welsh concept of 'inspiration', 'the sea as metaphor of the sea' - hear about all of this and more in our W.S.Graham special. The Verb is in St Ives to celebrate W.S.Graham (known as Sydney), a poet fascinated by language, its possibilities and difficulties, who also wrote about 'love imagined into words' . In honour of Graham's centenary year, we hear unpublished poems (broadcast for first time), new commissions inspired by him ( written especially for The Verb), and we also present innovative performances of Graham's work. All this takes place in a remarkable venue called the 'St Ives Arts Club' in front of a poetry and art-loving audience. Graham grew up in Greenock in Scotland, but moved to Cornwall in the 1940s and spent the best part of his life there, in the midst of a flourishing community of artists (including Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, and Terry Frost ). T.S. Eliot was Graham's editor at Faber and Faber - he argued that Graham wrote some of the most important poems of the 20th century. His long poem 'The Nightfishing', with lines like 'sea as a metaphor of the sea' and ' the iron sea engraved to our faintest breaths', is one of Graham's greatest achievements, but as The Verb discovers he was also a remarkable poet of place, and of intimacy and thwarted intimacy. Above all he was preoccupied by language as his medium and subject.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Faith Lawrence.

Join Ian McMillan as he comperes a special evening of some of the very best poetry published over the last year - at the annual T.S.Eliot Prize readings, recorded in front of an audience at the Royal Festival Hall. All the short-listed poets will be featured, including the U.S. Laureate Tracy K Smith, Terrance Hayes, Nick Laird, Zaffar Kunial, Fiona Moore, Sean O'Brien, Ailbhe Darcy, Hannah Sullivan, Richard Scott and Phoebe Power.

We're crossing senses on The Verb this week, examining Synesthesia, with musician LJ Rich, linguist Rob Drummond, and poetry from Ruth Padel, Abi Palmer and Hannah Silva.For musician, broadcaster and synesthete LJ Rich, the world is drenched in music. With the help of a piano, she lets us inside her experience of the world, where tastes, colours and even the most boring train station make beautiful music.Verb regular, the linguist Rob Drummond has been researching the colour associations we all have with certain vowel sounds and has discovered some intriguing patterns.And there's plenty of poetry to stimulate your senses, Ruth Padel's latest collection is 'Emerald' (Chatto). The book is a meditation on grief, but is also shot through with colour. Hannah Silva presents her 'musical shirt', as made for her by Tomomi Adachi, the shirt is an invention that allows her to turn movement into sound poetry. And finally, poet and performer Abi Palmer finds that her synesthesia is heightened by the experience of water, so especially for The Verb she presents a poem written while taking a 'musical bath'...Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

Merry Verb Christmas! We're at Vinyl Tap in Huddersfield for a festive evening of storytelling and song with brand new writing from poet, Simon Armitage, Joanne Harris and her Storytime Band and Owen Roberts.Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Faith Lawrence

Ian McMillan and guests examine the language of sleeplessness.How does AL Kennedy's insomnia inform her prose? Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun presents excerpts from her diary of motherhoood, there's brand new poetry from Bridget Minnamore on her experience of disordered sleep, and Marina Benjamin on her new book 'Insomnia'Producer Cecile Wright

With Will Eaves, Ben Schott, Selina Nwulu and Jeremy Noel-Tod

with Iain Sinclair, Kate Fox, Sam Illingworth and Marilyn Hacker

To mark 100 years since the end of the First World War, The Verb presents ‘Unwritten’, a special edition of the programme telling the neglected stories of those who fought in the British West Indian Regiment, and the stories of those they left behind, through a series of new poems. The Verb recorded Unwritten in front of an audience at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull earlier this year. We couldn't fit all the poems in the broadcast edition, so we've produced this extra podcast episode featuring the full length poems as performed at Contains Strong Language, alongside a previously unbroadcast poem by Kat Francois.

To mark 100 years since the end of the First World War, The Verb presents ‘Unwritten’, a special edition of the programme telling the neglected stories of those who fought in the British West Indian Regiment, and the stories of those they left behind, through a series of new poems. 15,600 men from the Caribbean served everywhere from Messines to Egypt, Passchendaele to Palestine – and many received medals for their bravery. However, as the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf comments, ‘The wartime stories of these Caribbean servicemen were largely unheard at the time and have remained so ever since…We know many of their names and the roles they played, but we have few first-hand accounts to tell us what their lives were like during the conflict… “Unwritten: Caribbean Poems After the First World War” is an attempt to address this gap in the narrative.’Those poets commissioned by this project, writing and researching new work, come from both the Caribbean, and the Caribbean diaspora. Performing are: Jay Bernard, Jay T John, Ishion Hutchinson, Kat Francois, Tanya Shirley, Vladimir Lucien, Charnell Lucien, Malika Booker and Karen McCarthy Woolf.Recorded at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull, ‘Unwritten’ is a co-commission by 14-18 Now, The British Council, and BBC Contains Strong Language. As part of the Unwritten project, many of the poets involved visited Jamaica. All the poems in this programme are included in the book ‘Unwritten: Caribbean Poems After The First World War’, published by Nine Arches Press in partnership with Wrecking Ball Press. Full versions of the broadcast poems can be heard in The Verb podcast.https://www.1418now.org.uk/ https://www.britishcouncil.org/

The Verb explores 'The Midlands' - with the novelist Jonathan Coe - on using the Midlands 'to think with' in his new book 'Middle England' , the poet Liz Berry on Black Country language, the writer and performer Steven Camden ( AKA Polar Bear) on the different influences on his 'voice' - and musician Ben Walker and researcher Bethany Whalley offer a sound art tribute to the cult 1974 film 'Penda's Fen'.