Harriet Walter, Jason Singh, Gillian Allnutt, Glacier Poetry

Ian McMillan is joined by actor and writer Harriet Walter, sound artist Jason Singh, poet Gillian Allnutt - and hears ritual language for glaciers - from writers Andri Snaer Magnason and Manjushree Thapa.

Dame Harriet Walter is one of our best loved actresses. She's absorbed the rhythms of Shakespeare's writing over decades of her award-winning work on the stage. For 'The Verb' Harriet performs new poems she's written for her book 'She Speaks', an anthology which gives the women characters from Shakespeare's plays a chance to explore their experiences and their relationships with each other.

Jason Singh is a sound artist, and nature beatboxer. He shares an evocative soundscape recorded at a Shinto Ceremony in Japan for a scientist who's been called 'The Mother of the Sea'. Leigh-born biologist Kathleen Mary Drew Baker made important discoveries about a type of seaweed, discoveries that have had a huge impact on Japanese Nori production. You can hear Jason's whole piece on 6th July at Pennington Flash in Leigh ( Greater Manchester). https://www.visitmanchester.com/event/flashes-festival-of-nature-2025/99390101/

Poet Gillian Allnutt was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal in 2016 - and her new collection 'Lode' has been celebrated for its 'indelible images' . Gillian reads a poem about meeting the Queen, in which the word 'plimsoll' plays a surprising part, and another poem in which she invents the word 'ditheridoo'.

Icelandic writer Andri Snaer Magnason, and Canadian-Nepali writer Manjushree Thapa have both written inscriptions to mark the dying of a glacier called Yala in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. They join Ian to talk about finding the right words for the ceremony, and what impact they hope their language will have.