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This year the Contains Strong Language Festival of poetry and spoken word goes to Cumbria, as part of the programme of events marking the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth. This week's Verb was recorded at the Forum Theatre in Barrow-in-Furness, with a small, but enthusiastic socially distanced audience. Our theme is the meeting of language and landscape, and Ian's guests are the poet Clare Shaw whose 2018 collection Flood conveys water at its most awesome and destructive, writer and playwright Zosia Wand, who uses the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay as her stage in work that examines how we find identity amidst unreliable memories and family secrets. National Youth Slam Poetry Champion Matt Sowerby is one of the poets commissioned by the Contains Strong Language Festival to write a poem in response to Ruskin's View, alongside Karen Lloyd, who also reads from her work in progress book of essays on the importance of telling hopeful stories and truly paying attention tot he natural world.

Many of the events at Contains Strong Language are available to view online, please see the website for more details: /events/ezb3v2

Presenter: Ian McMillan
Producer: Jessica Treen