The Verb - Jo Shapcott, Christos Tsiolkas, Peter Blegvad

Jo Shapcott The award-winning poet discusses her new collection, Of Mutability, and how it's been shaped by serious illness, collaborations with scientists and artists, and a desire to know everything. Of Mutability is out now from Faber. Christos Tsiolkas Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for his exhilirating portrait of suburban life amongst second-generation Greek, Indian and Lebanese Australians. This week on The Verb he presents a memoir of a long hot summer in 1970s Melbourne, Forty Degrees. Peter Blegvad The Verb's Sony award-winning Eartoonist makes a long awaited return with a brand new song, Golden Helmet, inspired by a medieval illustration of a knight's disused helmet being used as a hive for bees. Adam O'Riordan Adam discusses his first poetry collection, In The Flesh, which draws on the year he spent on a Wordsworth Trust residency at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's former home in the Lake District. In The Flesh is out now from Chatto and Windus.