26/12/2025

Ian McMillan brings The Adverb to the stunning surroundings of Redhills, the newly-restored Durham Miners' Hall, for the city's Brass Festival.

Seams of coal infuse the poems of Ian's guests, Helen Mort, Katharine Goda and the poet laureate, Simon Armitage. Simon reads a poem about his grandparents' old coal scuttle, Katherine performs her work 'My Great-Grandpa Hands Down His Miner's Lamp', and Helen brings us extracts from her poem 'Scab'.

Interspersed with the poetry, there's music from Simon's band LYR as they perform their emotive project Firm As A Rock We Stand, a commemoration of the tragic history of County Durham's Category D Villages. Villages that were declared economically unviable in the 1950s and cut off from public funding, leading to decades of hardship and entire communities erased. Combining spoken word, soaring vocals and the haunting brass arrangements of composer and conductor Simon Dobson, performed by LYR and the Easington Colliery Band.

Presenter: Ian McMillan
Producer: Elizabeth Foster
Production Co-ordinator: Julie Downing