Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, Luke Wright, Accents

How does it feel to be adopted? How does naming things affect experience? Why does a mysterious sound make Ian want to get out of the studio in Salford? Is it ever a good idea to pretend to have a particular accent? Poems, questions and much more - on this week's Verb.

Ian McMillan is joined by poets Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, Luke Wright, and sociolinguist Rob Drummond.

Joelle Taylor brings us a brand new commission inspired by the 50th anniversary of the BBC television series 'The Changes' - with its mysterious sound that transforms and challenges modern life. Does it still have resonance today? Joelle won the TS Eliot Prize for poetry in 2022, and her most recent book is a novel - 'The Night Alphabet', which has been described as 'relentlessly inventive.'

Anthony Joseph is a poet, musician and academic. He shares poetry of intimacy and intimacy with language - in work from his selected poems 'Precious and Impossible'. Anthony won the TS Eliot prize in 2023 with his 'luminous' collection 'Sonnets for Albert'.

Luke Wright is a ground-breaking performer and poet - currently touring with his show 'Joy'. He reads new poems which look at the power of early experiences: a book that helped him understand the experience of being adopted, and a poem which celebrates the beauty of the view from his window in Suffolk.

Did the contestant who faked a Welsh accent on 'The Traitors' TV series make a good decision? And what poetry was there to be found in the series? Ian talks to Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University.