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 song written with the approaching Bonfire Night in mind, but the fireworks in the studio don't only come from her guitar. The other guests get a chance to join in too.

Poet Pascale Petit opens up her first novel which took 17 years to write, examining the differences and similarities between poetry and prose and Deryn Rees Jones reads from her own work and takes on this week's neon line, "all the worse things come stalking in".

Produced by Cecile Wright Editor Susan Roberts

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 poems are making their first public appearance in her new book.

Ira Lightman, poet and artist, reflects on the nature of the epic. A marathon endeavour for poets and readers, it's usually seen as an ancient style but it is a form of poetry that contemporary poets continue to embrace including Ira himself.

Susie Dent, known for her ability to find just the right word, discusses her new novel, Guilty By Definition in which a group of lexicographers use their dictionary-making skills to solve a mystery.

Theresa Lola, former Young People's Laureate for London reads from her new collection, Ceremony for the Nameless, a poetry disquisition on the subject of naming.

Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Ekene Akalawu

This week on The Verb Ian McMillan is joined by Paul Farley, author of the bird-centred 2019 poetry collection 'The Mizzy'. Especially for The Verb he's written us a brand new poem that considers birds on our workplace, inspired by new 'Nature Postive' building regulations.

Malika Booker is tackling this week's 'Neon Line' poem. Booker won the Forward Prize for 'Best Single Poem' in 2023 and she takes us through the 2024 winners, who have recently been announced.

Linguist and author of 'You're All Talk', Rob Drummond brings us up to speed on langauge change.

And there's a brand new comission from Kate Fox on Strictly Season as well as a reading from her new book 'On Sycamore Gap' - inspired by the famous tree near Hadrian's Wall that was felled last year

Presenter: Ian McMillan Producer: Jessica Treen

Ian McMillan talks to Margaret Atwood and Alice Oswald about how we write poetry, and their own process, the natural world, time, and the possibilities of myth.

BBC Contains Strong Language 2024 took place in Sydney Australia in partnership with Red Room Poetry and ABC Australia . This special edition of The Verb was recorded in State Library of New South Wales n front of a audience as part of the festival.

With guests Eileen Chong the first Asian Australian poet to be on the school syllabus, who came to Australia from Singapore in 2007.

Singer songwriter Paul Kelly - described as the Laureate of Australia - whose latest project sets the work of poets as varied as Shakespeare and Les Murray to music .

Omar Sakr - the son of Turkish and Lebanesemigrants whose collection The Lost Arabs won the prestigious Prime Ministers Literary Award .

Ali Cobby Eckermann - a First Nation poet who only met her birth mother as an adult. She, her mother and grandmother were all stolen , tricked or adopted away from their families . Her poetry talks powerfully about this personal and national story .

Recorded with an acknowledgement of the Gadigal people the traditional custodians of the land where this edition of The Verb took place Produced by Susan Roberts

Bringing you the best in Australian spoken word poetry . A special edition of Adverb, recorded at the Riverside Theatres in Parramatta the creative edgy hub of West Sydney. Featuring the founder of the exciting Bankstown series of poetry slams Sara Mansour along with many of the poets who have performed there in slams that attract huge audiences to poetry .

The Dharug people are the traditional custodians of the land upon which this performance was recorded in front of an audience.

Here 7 of the best perform their work.

Presented by Ian McMillan with

L-Fresh the Lion Yleia Mariano Sara Mansour Adrian Mouhajer Hani Abdile Mohammed Awad and Dobby

Recorded live at the sunny Latitude Festival Ian McMillan has gathered three top poets for The Adverb - The Verb's showcase of the best live poetry and readings.

Dr John Cooper Clarke is a legend of the punk poetry scene and gets us into gear with a poem about the thrilling allure of the hire car. The best art can come out of limitations and Luke Wright shows his amazing lyrical dexterity with a poem entirely based on the assonance of the letter A.

And TS Eliot prize winner Joelle Taylor spellbinds the crowd with an autobiographical poem about growing up as a butch lesbian, touching on her early life in Accrington.

Along the way, the Barnsley Bard Ian McMillan offers us some of his own work, including a no-holds-barred anaylysis of the perils of drinks machines.

Presented by Ian McMillan Produced by Kevin Core

Why does 'mean' have so many meanings? Why do poets take metaphor so seriously? Why do objects like pink ghetto blasters make poems live? And why are the filaments of our eyes in the edges of the snow?

To answer these surreal, and not so surreal questions - Ian McMillan is joined by Alistair McGowan, Caroline Bird, and Toria Garbutt, and presents an 'eartoon' - a cartoon for the ear, from Richard Poynton (otherwise known as Stagedoor Johnny).

Alistair McGowan is an impressionist, actor, writer, pianist, and now - poet. He joins Ian McMillan in a pun-off - the first time such an event has ever been staged on national radio (probably). Alistair's collection of poems is called 'Not what we were expecting' (Flapjack Press).

Toria Garbutt is a spoken word artist, poet and educator from Knottingley. She shares tender, funny poems from 'The Universe and Me' (Wrecking Ball Press) many of which take us into her relationship with her sister when they were young, and reveal how much poetry there is in the objects of childhood.

Caroline Bird's new poetry collection is called 'Ambush at Still Lake' (Carcanet). She reads poems of motherhood which are like 'upside down jokes' and take 'toddler logic' (like the idea that imaginary carrots have completely run out) to surreal and sinister conclusions. Caroline also presents us with our neon line, a stand-out line from a classic poem, and explores why it works so well. It's this mystery poem which proposes that there are 'filaments of our eyes' in the 'edges of the snow'.

Richard Poynton is a writer and performer (also known as Stagedoor Johnny). He stars in his own invention, a backstory for the origin of the English language, which explains why it has so many words with multiple meanings. In this week's Eartoon Richard introduces us to a 'mean' lasagne. (you won't want to meet it down a dark alley).

Crocodile-like men, fireflies, a soul hitching a ride on a bee, the coolness of Switzerland, anagrams, and a mysterious rhyming poem - all this and more from Ian McMillan's guests this week - as they explore the way a poetic image can change the way we see things,

Arji Manuelpillai is a poet and creative facilitator. His poetry collection 'Improvised Explosive Device' (Penned in the Margins) emerged through research and interviews with academics, sociologists, and former members of extremist groups and their families. He also presents a poetry podcast: 'Arji's Pickle Jar'.

Mona Arshi is a poet, and was a human rights lawyer. Her poetry collections are 'Small Hands' and 'Dear Big Gods' (Pavilion), and she recently published her first novel 'Somebody Loves You'. Mona's third poetry collection will be published next year.

John McAuliffe is a 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) will be out shortly. John unravels our 'neon' line this week ( a stand-out line in a classic poem) and explains why it works so well.

Tom Chatfield is a novelist, writer and tech philosopher - and now author of 'Wise Animals: How technology has made us what we are' (Picador). He helps us pit human poets against AI or more precisely - against Large Language Models - to see what human poets can still do best.

Frogs who love rain, the poem that came from a magpie, the poetry of the peleton, and the everyday language of dating apps. Ian McMillan's guests this week (Hollie McNish, Testament, Ira Lightman and Liz Berry) bring all of this to the studio table and much, much more.

Hollie McNish's latest book is 'Lobster and other things I'm learning to love' - she shares a pluviophile poem that shows how much joy there can be in realistic love.

Ira Lightman is an innovative poet and artist and this week, especially for The Verb, he turns the Salford studio into a poetry version of the Tour de France - including a hot potato.

Liz Berry's latest book is 'The Home Child' - she celebrates the poetry of Charlotte Mew, and reads a brand new poem inspired by a frightening but enchanting encounter with a magpie.

Testament is a rapper, beatboxer, poet and playwright. His careful attention to the everyday language of people from different political positions, and to the language of dating apps informed his play 'Love in Gravitational Waves' - he shares some of the poetry that its characters write.

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'.