10 June 2006
Saturday 10 June 2006 21:25-22:10 (Radio 3)
Ian McMillan challenges novelist Maggie Gee to turn her hand to thriller writing. Plus, an interview with poet Charles Tomlinson.
Programme Details
This week on The Verb, Ian McMillan talks to one of the great English poets of our time, Charles Tomlinson, whose work spans over fifty years. He discusses his latest collection of poetry, Cracks in the Universe - a wonderful example of Tomlinson's tradition for accuracy of perception, and which further shows him as a poet of intense visual experience.
The novelist Maggie Gee talks about accepting The Verb challenge to write a story based around the dictum of Raymond Chandler, who once said that if a story stalls you just need a guy to come through the door with a gun in his hand and see where that takes you...
And, as The World Cup kicks off The Verb begins a mini series which explores the poetry of England's opponents throughout the tournament. This week, writer and publisher Michael Schmidt begins with the poetic traditions of Paraguay.
Also on the programme, David Gaffney - a writer of a new collection of extremely short stories - explains how he constructs a narrative arc within a couple of hundred words, and which of the genres are hardest to reduce.
Plus, a new website which challenges poets to come up with compositions on a given subject within fifteen minutes - and records how they do it.
That's all on The Verb with Ian McMillan at 9.25pm here on BBC Radio 3.
Additional Information:
- Sawn Off Tales by David Gaffney will be published by Salt in September
- Cracks In The Universe by Charles Tomlinson is published by Carcanet
- For details on quickmuse, go to www.quickmuse.com
- My Cleaner by Maggie Gee is published by Telegram Books
Producer: Ella-Mai Robey
