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Performance artist Emma Bennett has created a specially commissioned sound piece for this week’s Verb which examines the use of birdsong to attract partners and makes use of phatic speech. Emma is fascinated by the overlaps in everyday conversation, her work involves finding the music in these moments. Emma also makes a case for the value of phatic speech, terms such as ‘like’, and ‘sort of’, she sees them as the frilly bits that make a conversation come to life.

Hollie McNish Introduces…Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus is a poet, teacher and facilitator whose debut pamphlet ‘To Sweeten Bitter’ (Out-Spoken) came out last year. With Hollie he discusses his poem ‘Dear Hearing World’ – a piece inspired by Danez Smith’s ‘Dear White America’; a powerful statement condemning the illiteracy rates of deaf people in the UK. Raymond’s first full-length collection will be published by Penned in the Margins later this year.

The actor and writer Ruth Jones has just published her debut novel ‘Never Greener’ (Bantam) and explains how it started life 15 years ago as a screenplay and how it became a novel. We delve into the opening paragraphs and find out how she uses them to ‘sell’ the novel to the reader. Ruth also explains how her sitcom ‘Gavin and Stacey’ caught the commissioner’s eye, not with a traditional sitcom pitch, but with effective character descriptions, and warns that having a hit under your belt doesn’t necessarily make pitching other projects easier.

Jon Torrens is a communication coach with a background in stand-up and in the computer games industry. Much of his work involves helping people successfully pitch their ideas. Jon explores the similarities between a successful pitch and a successful joke – both should be as short and direct as possible. He also demonstrates the differences between a good pitch and a bad pitch for a computer game, emphasising the importance of confident delivery and warning against using too much detail.