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In 2013 James Robertson set himself the task of writing a story for every day of the year. Each story had to be exactly 365 words long, and they were published on-line. Now that ‘365 Stories’ is being published as a book (Penguin), James talks about the ‘great adventure’ of writing a story a day, his experiments with ballads, folk stories, satire and the challenge of 365 last lines.

Techno-linguist Tom Chatfield returns to The Verb to help guide us through technological neologisms. This week, Tom is up in ‘The Cloud’, finding out what lurks beneath this fluffy term and making a case for the importance of pushing back against seductive language. Tom’s book, Netymology is published by Quercus.

Nathan Jones and Mark Greenwood from the Liverpool-based arts collective Mercy present their work-in-progress project ‘Nodes’. A ‘language event’, Nodes mixes ‘high’ and ‘low’ language, blending the philosopher Maurice Blanchot up with Azealia Banks. Nathan and Mark work with the fragmentary language we hear in everyday life, and discuss how vibrant and beautiful language can be when it is freed from meaning.

Nodes is performed by Patrick Goodwin, David Bartley, Olivia Robinson, Sonia Kennedy and Sophie Alison.