The Verb - Dreda Say Mitchell/Simone Felice/Larissa Miller

Dreda Say Mitchell Dreda Say Mitchell was the head teacher of a primary school in East London when she began attending creative writing classes. During those classes, she began writing about the character Schoolboy, who would become the central character in her award-winning first novel, Running Hot. This week Dreda has written a brand new monologue especially for The Verb, which is performed in studio by Jessica Dickens. Geezer Girls, by Dreda Say Mitchell, is out now from Hodder Simone Felice Simone Felice is a songwriter, singer and novelist from a tiny town in the Catskill Mountains, upstate New York. Currently touring with his band The Duke and the King, he stops into The Verb studio to play songs from their latest album, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and to preview a work in progress - his as-yet-unfinished novel Black Jesus. Larissa Miller & Richard McKane One of Russia's foremost lyrical poets, Larissa Miller's clear poetic voice stood out against oppression and censorship during the Communist era - often at great personal cost to herself and her family. Larissa and her translator Richard McKane read from Larissa's collection We Are Guests of Eternity and consider the role poetry plays in helping both writer and reader endure difficult times. We Are Guests of Eternity, by Larissa Miller, is published by Arc Press Out of the Cold Blue, by Richard McKane, is published by Hearing Eye Alex Horne Taking his inspiration from HW Bergerson's book Palindromes and Anagrams, Verb Language Spy Alex Horne wanted to see if our listeners would take up a daring poetic challenge: writing Vocabularyclept poetry. 'Vocabularyclept' is a term used to describe a poem that's written using all the words of another poem, but in a different order... one poem from the verbal rubble of another. Last week, Alex gave you 140 words of his choosing, and asked for poems to be sent in using only those words, and Verb listeners everywhere responded enthusiastically - not to say wittily! This week Alex reads a selection of your finest Vocabularyclept verse, and he and Ian reveal the poems they've created.