Word of Mouth

Michael Rosen meets acclaimed poet Raymond Antrobus. Winner of the 2018 Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry, his collection The Perserverence brings together autobiographical poems on race, deafness and family. He joins Michael Rosen to discuss language, sign language and deafness. Producers: Melvin Rickarby and James Cook

Michael Rosen asks what the earliest language was and how it evolved. Michael joins linguist Dr Laura Wright on a journey to meet our meat-scavenging, fire-harnessing ancestors to discover the primal sources of language. There are thousands of languages today - is it possible to trace them back to a single ancestor? With anthropologist Robert Foley and linguist Maggie Tallerman. Producer: Melvin Rickarby

Damian Le Bas talks to Michael Rosen about the Romani language and his experience with using it. Damian is the author of The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain. Producer Beth O'Dea

Can a series of images be 'read' like a series of words? What makes something a language? We have written, spoken and signed languages, but could the sequences of images we see in comics also qualify? Michael Rosen explores the visual language of comics and graphic novels, with comics theorist and cognitive researcher Neil Cohn, author of The Visual Language of Comics. Producer: Mair Bosworth

Jeffrey Boakye talks to Michael Rosen about exploring black British identity, including his own, through the words used by and about black men and women. Jeffrey's the author of Black, Listed and of Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & the Meaning of Grime. Producer Beth O'Dea