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Hear poet James Giddings read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. James Giddings wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Born in Johannesburg and now living in Sheffield in the north of England, James Giddings is the author of Everything is Scripted , published in 2016 by Templar Poetry. the poems Look inside 00:00 / 01:00 At the base of the back of my neck is the button you press to get a look inside. One firm push with your thumb and FWIP! my head pops back like the top of a kettle and a noise strikes the same tone as a microwave casserole when it’s cooked, a mushroom cloud of steam ballooning from the neck hole of my thin cigarette body. Once you’ve released all that hot air, take a peek, you’ll see there’s not much there: no gold elements, no dial tone of great intellect, just a feeling, as if staring down a deep ravine. There seems as if there’s no end to it, until you throw something down and a sound calls back from the bottom. There are versions of us in alternate universes 00:00 / 01:37 One where we’re partners on a buddy cop show who stand back-to-back with our guns raised as our theme tune swells to a crescendo and the screen detonates, our names exploding out of picture. Another where we bloom on trees like bright fruit and our lives are spent waiting for the great fall. Then there’s the one where I am your father and you are my son, and you are crying because you’re hungry and I am crying because I can’t get the car seat to bloody fit, but we stop, for a few seconds, each of us near silent when we catch the eyes of the other. One where we are giant glass shards reflecting. Another where we are bank robbers, our ears pressed against a safe door like expectant fathers listening for a heartbeat. Another where we wait in a long line for the entrance to Hell and both complain about how long it’s taking. And even though I know there are worse universes than ours, I can’t shake the one in which each night you tell me all the unextraordinary words you know like spam , hardcopy and telemarketer, then right before you leave, say a couple of extraordinary ones, which are only so because of how rarely I’ve heard you utter them in this world. No requests 00:00 / 01:55 I’m working on my vanishing act, an homage to my father. To learn more I attend a show where the magician starts by sawing a ladle in half. To further subvert the genre he pulls a hat out of a rabbit, places the rabbit on his head like a toupee and shaves it into oblivion with a set of clippers, leaving the cue ball of his bald head shining. Do the one where the father disappears and you bring him back on stage! I heckle, but he doesn’t do requests. Next he does a card trick entirely with birthday cards, which, in a feat of anti-gravity, levitates the heart in my chest. With love , one reads, then his signature, a single kiss. Impressed, I shout, do the one where you bring back the father! But he still doesn’t do requests. Next he stretches a ten pence piece leaving the Queen’s face visibly frustrated. Then he solves a Rubik’s cube by throwing it behind his back; it is so convincing and easy, I hope a policeman might hand him a murder case. I rise from my seat, plead, please do the one where you bring back the father! He gestures off-stage theatrically, magics up security and I’m escorted out through a plain grey door. No traps. No secret panels. I never got to see the big finish, whether he did the trick, but I waited anyway, checking every face that left the auditorium, hopeful he had pulled it off. Publishing credits Look Inside: exclusive first publication by iamb There Are versions of Us in Alternate Universes: Poetry Wales (Vol. 56, No. 2) No Requests: Poetry London (Issue 97)

Hear poet Neil Elder read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Neil Elder wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Neil Elder’s The Space Between Us won the Cinnamon Press Debut Poetry Collection Prize in 2016. Prior to this win, Neil published Codes of Conduct (Cinnamon Press, 2015) and Being Present (The Black Light Engine Room, 2017). His latest collection, And The House Watches On, will be published in 2020. Neil lives and teaches in North-West London. the poems Ministry of Waiting 00:00 / 01:22 Of course there are no clocks, or windows, that might allow guests to track time. And these days only people over forty wear a watch, and we’re less concerned about them. Mobile devices? We block network signals so that guests can go unbothered by distractions. The décor is always neutral; if anyone asks, which they don’t, we tell them the colour is August Wheat, but you and I can see it’s beige. A pastel shade here or there, a couple of abstract pictures, nothing too involving, nothing too fussy. New arrivals are the most tricky to placate, a lot of pacing often occurs, they fret about why they are here, and for how long; adjustment can take time, but every guest comes round at some point: notice how their bodies mould themselves to the shape of the furniture. Now, let’s leave this Department to look at another Ministry; Suffering is near-by, or perhaps you’re interested in Broken Promises? Truth be told it could be some time before anyone is called from Waiting. Writing 00:00 / 00:52 I am writing this letter of resignation, the one I’ve written every Monday for the last eighteen months, to make myself believe that I might take a risk some time; just pack the basics and head off to South America. I’ll swim Amazonian tributaries, live without Wi-Fi, marry a Yanomami lady and paint myself in clay. Or I might change my name and slip away, to drive a taxi on the graveyard shift in some place where no one lives. But on my desk stands that picture of my kids, and there behind them looms the ocean liner I am chained to – iceberg just out of shot. Like My Daughter Says 00:00 / 00:23 If, like my daughter says, you are now a million particles orbiting in space, may you keep on spinning. Or else as I look out tonight, I hope you fall like snow and settle for a while. Publishing credits Ministry of Waiting: Like This (4Word) Writing: Being Present (Black Light Engine Room) Like My Daughter Says: The Space Between Us (Cinnamon Press)

Hear poet Christopher Arksey read poems for wave 19 of literary poetry journal iamb. Christopher Arksey wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Writer and voice actor Christopher Arksey's debut poetry pamphlet, Variety Turns , appeared in January 2024. He's had poems published in Anthropocene and The Friday Poem , as well as in the anthology, Companions of His Thoughts More Green: Poems for Andrew Marvell – while his poem Ceremony was Carol Rumens' Poem of the Week in The Guardian . Christopher lives in Hull with his wife and two sons. the poems Nil 00:00 / 01:03 As each left more arrived. Old friends, colleagues, church regulars joined to say goodbye. I gave up my seat and perched on the windowsill, edging in and out of last conversations. A one-time congregation of sorts. Some dredging holiday stories and office jokes to keep it light, stifling croaks of laughter. Some were all prayers. While others warmed their chairs in sniffled vigil and waited for the next to take their places. Your life’s work concentrated to one room. In their faces flashed sides I’d not seen in you. Roles outside of mum and wife, the ones that rounded up your life, were now diminishing in full view: loyal companion, beloved boss, true believer. My singular loss humbled by multiple thefts, as each arrived and more left. The Laugh 00:00 / 00:37 It was like you’d surfaced after a spell underwater; spent and roused at the same time, breathless towards the inevitable big reveal of your long-delayed punchline. Then you let fly – the laugh of someone twice your size – with such potency it rocked your frame and sent you seeking my arm for balance, stopping short of doubling over from the strain. Only this soundless record of it exists. And I forget the joke, but I’ve got the gist. Tried Praying 00:00 / 00:20 While time travelling in Google Street View, I spot your try praying sticker. A year or two uproots the bay tree and plants a new For Sale sign, while pansies bloom in the entrance. Not one of these made a difference. Publishing credits Nil / Tried Praying: Variety Turns (Broken Sleep Books) The Laugh: The Friday Poem (November 4th 2022)

Hear poet Stewart Carswell read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Stewart Carswell wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Stewart Carswell grew up in the Forest of Dean and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, where he co-pilots the Fen Speak open mic night. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. His poems have recently been published in Under the Radar , Envoi , Ink Sweat & Tears , and The Fenland Reed . His debut collection, forthcoming in 2021, is Earthworks . the poems Earthworks West Kennett 00:00 / 00:34 I migrate back to this farmland burdened for summer with corn, where the mound distorts the harvest and the great stones form the façade of a house that swallows the dead and has for centuries. On a ledge inside the entrance a line of faces stares down at me, their flesh behind glossy feathers, and guarding its nest is the swallow, inverting the tomb into a cradle, raising five lives from this chamber. Listen to this 00:00 / 00:26 The river is fed by brooks that pour sound down the hillside. A season of rain fattens it. The level has risen higher than I expected, but it is level still and that is important: to stay balanced no matter how much rain has fallen, no matter how much you want to flow with that water away from this place. Sleepers 00:00 / 01:45 A curtain of ferns spreads at eye height to a child and parts from the push of a hand to expose the shrinking clearing and the treasure at its centre: an ancient sleeper laying like a sunken casket and shrouded by a puzzle of oak leaves. The specimen ornamented with metalware: rusted plates and bolts, brooches carried by the dead to the next station of life. Close the curtains. Change the scene. A figure stands at the end of the platform, his face masked by a flag. Steam spirals around him, a spire above rows of sleepers. There is one line drawn from childhood through junctions to connections, and the destination is close to definition. I feel the platform vibrate from something about to begin. The figure sounds his whistle. His flag drops and it is my face unmasked and it's time to leave this dream and I see it now. The trackbed has lost its track and I have lost track of time. I get up to check my phone but there’s no signal and my daughter is asleep, habitually dreaming of a better life to travel in and I see it now. The ancient sleeper is a relic, an inherited burden, second-hand history. I step outside, and the first engine of the day sets out light, and I see it now: I know what to do. Publishing credits Earthworks: Ink, Sweat & Tears Listen to this: Eighty Four – Poems on Male Suicide, Vulnerability, Grief and Hope (Verve Poetry Press) Sleepers: Elsewhere

Hear poet Kevin Grauke read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kevin Grauke wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet With work in The Threepenny Review , The Southern Review , StoryQuarterly , Fiction , and Quarterly West , Kevin Grauke is the author of short story collection Shadows of Men . He's also the winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Kevin teaches at La Salle University, and lives in Philadelphia. His next collection, Bullies & Cowards , arrives in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. the poems The Secret of Tornadoes 00:00 / 01:07 Tornadoes, I knew at age four, were dragons spun to furious life from sickly spring skies. Watch meant be careful. Warning meant hide. Born in the Alley’s south, I learned this quick. Let’s make a fort in the tub! Mommy once shouted much too loudly, wrestling a mattress past the toilet. Houses could become like weeds pulled up and flung. Cradles landed in trees, sometimes still with babies. But then an older girl, already in school, told me the secret: Touch the sidewalk, honey. If it’s warm, one’s coming. A whisper—wisdom meant only for me. Honored, I stayed quiet. Pretending to tie a shoe I couldn’t yet knot, I pressed my palms to the sun-shot sidewalk, dirtying them in the unicorn dust of her hopscotch chalk. Frightened but grateful, I flew home fast to warn Mommy, my pink hands aflame with a May day’s false prophecy. Ant 00:00 / 01:00 I hope to capture this moment exactly, how the late afternoon sun on this sixth day of May is shining now on this journal page so perfectly, casting a shadow of my pen that looks like nothing if not a hummingbird darting its bill into and out of the flower of yet another attempt at something good. Soon, the sun’s gold will sink below the trees, but for now it holds steady, content to give me a little more time to try to capture its likeness. Onto the glare of this still empty page an ant wanders. Nothing more than a dark speck, it meanders about, a mobile period in search of a true sentence to end. I watch it move from here to there and there to there until it finally disappears over the edge, headed elsewhere, but not before leaving me a path to follow with the words of this very poem, now finished and named in its honor. First Lesson 00:00 / 02:06 Two houses down, a young man, a little girl, and a bicycle. Behind them, in the grass, training wheels tossed aside. Way down and far back, I feel both dad’s stooped patience and the mettle of his daughter’s courage. But what I feel most: the unspoken swirl of their fears—of spills and scrapes, of tears and pain. And it’s almost a more aching beauty, even as clumsy and raw as it is, than I, remembering my own once-tiny girl now grown, can bear on my own. I watch him, the father, so proud, how he claps and shouts while jogging alongside as close as he can manage without jostling an arm or handlebar. He sends out so much encouragement: Go! You’re doing it! Keep pedalling! When the inevitable comes, it’s no surprise. It is, after all, inevitable. The front wheel wobbles, turns too much to the left, to the right, to the left again. The end then happens so slowly—the flailing, the toppling, the falling over— almost if it were taking place in a series of stages (Duchamp’s bicycle descending the stairs) as she moves from upright to tilted to tilted still more to crashed to now splayed on the sidewalk like the insides of a dropped egg. Not unlike a hand-cranked siren from days even before my own, the two wheels spin two cries into the neighborhood silence: one the girl’s, one the father’s. Together, they braid a thin rope that each hopes the other will snatch to save the day’s grace. It swings between them, back and forth, then stops. Each is so certain they’ve let the other down. Except for the crickets, it’s silent now. She’ll learn, of course, and he will have taught her. Of this I’m sure. For now, though, failure. But in memory this will glow like treasure. Publishing credits The Secret of Tornadoes: The Minnesota Review (Issue 101) Ant: Alabama Literary Review (Vol. 32) First Lesson: Poet Lore (Vol. 118)

Hear poet Barney Ashton-Bullock read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Barney Ashton-Bullock wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Barney Ashton-Bullock is the poet and librettist in the Andy Bell is Torsten music/theatre collective, as well as the narrator of his own verse on Downes Braide Association albums. Barney's poetry has been published in a wide range of cult poetry journals, the Avalanches In Poetry tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, Broken Sleep Books' poetry tribute to Aphex Twin, and Pilot Press' Queer Anthology Of Healing and Soho Nights . His most recent books are Café Kaput! , F**kpig Zeitgeist! and Bucolicism . the poems apoplex-perplex-complexities 00:00 / 01:56 bicarbonate frenetics; the genesis? multi-generational, tape-to-tape deck dubs, their foamy flumes of playback hiss as rattly, miscued mixtapes mis-struck in bonkerz flanged brushstroke percussives of amp-max gated smash o’snare – metronomic melismatic wonk, polychromatic sub-glottal alien sprechgesang aligned to time signatures noodled in varispeed; in fraying flays o’dubsy drubbin’ vectored beatz. nu-alt clubbin’ zeroed in on decorous glitchin’ and ad hoc, thereof, repeatings as if spiked reportage to mux a retro cha-cha stomp distort to crunching churns irradiate; to arcing, vaulting interference compacting in a vice of abstruse its apotheosis to gungey grunge – maced in such displace, an aura; billowed streaks astray in strobics, we all, thrift of light limb, aflail in apoplex-perplex-complexities. Aphex et al in the cans, sofa-slothing in Glaxo infused confuse of veiled glissando drippage, arrhythmic mallow sonics of opaque, oracular, aural twistesse; irregular polygons transduced to audible, to choriambic vassals in vibrato sensoria, splice-spruced micro-loops, re-up sampled to peak infinities flippering as fractals in mid-air … Village 00:00 / 02:12 These dew dashed Ballard Downs at dusk, Their flannelette filtered translucency, Their ethereally gust thwacked sparsity, Their muted refractions of wheatsheaves asway, Grainy as y’like in the drawn light; We, mere pinpoints a-prance, Free-styling in the flashlights ‘Midst their giddy levity … Our scruff of signature left in the stomped crops trample. We vortices of loneliness Eschew the coital co-substantiates Of a GPS iPhone app engineering freelove Betwixt such brittle strangers … Who melt for lust and pour for sex. The top road through which we, as e’er, shuffling exeunt To the 09.07 market day bus; The rusting hoops of stanchions of the withered Wreck of shelter in which ‘first time’ memories were made … Cigs, ket, stout, cide, hash, snog, blow, laid, vom, chuck. On that trusty bus immemorial, now, only e’er on a Thursday, Sometimes, silently, without word or intimation, Through the wanding wonk of cattle pong that sands the breeze, A youngster won’t return And an aged farmer’s wife in well-versed, mock concern Will glintily gliss ‘er tamps o’goss … 'Dreckly, all spuddlins hath ped off thru d’dimpsey of a yoretide eve Dey’ll match an’ hatch as t’were e’er thus; ’cordin’ t’dis eye, ’tis ne’er a goodbye!' As, in absentia, all flaxen fledglings were wont t’do As, in perpetu, all sylvan nestlings e’er ‘av and must … 'Afore the byre’s been tromped to mere dander dust.' inferno al forno (impact +3 days) 00:00 / 01:55 Cobalting cinders in soot-storms A blanketing-dust graphite Dead-black clinker spun Back into nightfall With no morn, nor star You said I was ‘ telegenic’ Until my taste for ash Until the bankrupt shop units Were hulled to make befilthed Lino lain concourses For various novelty vending machines Purveying massprod sundries of a sexual nature With a comedic saucy bent Until the rebellion, until the bootstomp Until the hefty cruciforms borne by looters Had wireless CCTV nailed to each axis Arcing each orifice Our wan limbs shackled by bracelet and anklet tags Our movement shadowed by weaponised tannoy drones I have no coins to spend or insert All long since smelt or dealt All pockets full of oxides … I’d rather have been pilloried and cook-pot quartered Than be in this scourge of rootless, retroid reminisce Recalling when urinals and not welted legs Were lacquered in perma-drip masticity of piss And your soul, and my soul, Miles adrift, miles apart, Cankered in a centrifuge of dead, dead sparks … Publishing credits Apoplex-Perplex-Complexities: You’ve got so many machines, Richard! – An anthology of Aphex Twin poetry (Broken Sleep Books) Village: Bucolicism: Alt-lite verse for a post-pastoral England (Cherry Red Records) Inferno Al Forno (Impact +3 days) : Response (Dreich)

Hear poet Bill Sutton read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Bill Sutton wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet London-based Cumbrian poet Bill Sutton (he/him) creates visceral, abstract reflections of nature in his work. His poetry has appeared in Anthropocene and new zine Overgrowth . In 2015, Bill and his brother formed music project Slabtoe, which has released several albums and EPs. Bill's recently lent his poetry/song-writing abilities to the BFI-funded short film The Leerie , and his debut screenplay Corpse Road will be produced later in 2022. the poems Helton 00:00 / 00:22 to see stars, the hulk of barn, the rise behind and silent. to see rain, smoke wrapped, the valleys slope and dreaming. to all orbits, a ripple, and the quiet fields sleeping. Lend The River Rain 00:00 / 00:32 The lights on the hillside are a constellation, scattered. A half-remembered conversation; a friend lost, a family gathered under a winter sky, whose clouds are torn and tattered. 'It’s just a shadow cast from a different day, but none of that now matters … ' I lend the river rain. It lends it back again. Black Barn Rise 00:00 / 00:23 shadows in the mist, an echo where a wood once was. moon cold mist, settled on the river's twist. above and behind, black barn rise, there, where an echo of a wood once was. Publishing credits Helton / Lend The River Rain: exclusive first publication by iamb Black Barn Rise: Overgrowth (Issue No. 1)

Hear poet Maggie Mackay read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Maggie Mackay wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet After retiring as a support teacher for young people with additional needs, Maggie Mackay took up writing again in 2009. A Masters degree from Manchester Metropolitan University followed – as did her pamphlet The Heart of the Run , and debut collection A West Coast Psalter . Maggie's second collection, The Babel of Human Travel , appeared in 2022. Her poem How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s inaugural WordView 2020 permanent collection, and one of her poems was a runner-up in The Liverpool Prize, judged by Roger McGough. Maggie is a regular reviewer of poetry collections and pamphlets at The Friday Poem . the poems Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages 00:00 / 00:53 To witness the birth of my father one hundred and four years ago on that sunny November day To meet my grandmother humming a baloo to her new son To hear the milk cows low beyond the limewashed buildings To walk the fields towards the White Cart, Crookston Castle within sight To feel the oak barley breeze in my hair To watch the Clydesdale’s hooves sink as the plough carves into the soil To smell pure country air To play with my toddler uncle on the stone floor with his home-made wooden train which I have to this day To run it down the hallway and hear the wheels clatter as they have for three generations The Babel of Human Travel 00:00 / 01:37 The day comes when she hears the pasture murmur for the last time, and so/her trunk and her soul head for the/Broomielaw where the ship waits for her coming and the Lord/keeps faith while all manner of Scots are scattered/with all manner of dialects and accents, treasuring them/in this fine, vessel-stranger towards new lives abroad/She waits for a roll call, goes from deck to berth from/dining table thence/to fall upon/her lonely spot and weep the/salt from her pale face/dream of/the final lament her brother played, all/the longing pouring through the/Atlantic waters, that handful of earth/deep in her pocket and/the treasured Christening robe folded where they/packed it with the promise of babies to come. Those too aged waving off and miles away, left/behind. The worn spurtle, flat irons, darning mushroom, cradled too in the hold, as the ship casts off/towards the land of caribou and snowshoes through struggles to/understand othery Baltic tongues which yearn to build/homesteads along riverbanks, seek to befriend the Cree nation, preserve the/songs and stories of home, create new histories of their Manitoba city. Void 00:00 / 00:26 Father hanged himself perhaps above the washhouse mangle, or in the orchard maybe, dead weight dressed in apple blossom. You’re wondering if I miss him, if I miss his hand on my arm, if his voice is fading. It’s in the sparrow’s call, ten chisel clangs, a bicycle bell. Publishing credits Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages: exclusive first publication by iamb The Babel of Human Travel: The Babel of Human Travel (Impspired Press) Void: A West Coast Psalter (Kelsay Books)

Hear poet Robin Helweg-Larsen read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Robin Helweg-Larsen wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Anglo-Danish but raised in the Bahamas, Robin Helweg-Larsen was educated in Jamaica and at Stowe. He's lived and worked in the Bahamas, Denmark, Canada, Australia and the USA. Robin has had more than 400 poems published in various literary journals, including the Alabama Literary Review , Allegro , Ambit and Amsterdam Quarterly. His chapbook, Calling the Poem – on the art of summoning and working with 'The Muse' – is available to read online. the poems Camelot at Dusk 00:00 / 01:44 From under low clouds spreading from the south The red sun drops slow to night’s waiting mouth. Rush lamps are lit; the guards changed on the walls; Supper will not be served in the Great Halls With Arthur still away. Each in their room, The members of the Court leave books or loom To say their Vespers in the encroaching gloom. Lancelot, up in his tower, Sees the sunset storm clouds glower, Feels his blood’s full tidal power, Knows he has to go. In her bower, Gwenivere Puts a ruby to her ear, Brushes firelight through her hair, Feels her heartbeat grow. Guard, guard, watch well: For the daylight thickens And the low cloud blackens And the hot heart quickens To rebel. From his tower, caring not For consequences, Lancelot Crosses courts of Camelot, Pitying his King. In her bower, Gwenivere Feels his presence coming near, Waits for footfalls on the stair, Lets her will take wing. Guard, guard, watch well: If attention slackens When the deep bond beckons, Evil knows Pendragon’s In its spell. And as the storm clouds, rubbing out the stars, Deafened the castle and carved lightning scars, Drenched Arthur rode for flash-lit Camelot Where he, by Queen and Knight, was all forgot. Old Sailors 00:00 / 00:54 Two tars talked of sealing and sailing; one said with a sigh 'Remember gulls wheeling and wailing, we wondering why, and noting bells pealing, sun paling — it vanished like pie! And then the boat heeling, sky hailing, the wind getting high, and that drunken Yank reeling to railing and retching his rye, John missing his Darjeeling jailing, and calling for chai? While we battened, all kneeling and nailing, the hurricane nigh, and me longing for Ealing, and ailing?' His mate said 'Aye-aye; I could stand the odd stealing, food staling, not fit for a sty, and forget any feeling of failing, too vast to defy – home-leaving your peeling-paint paling too far to espy – all because of the healing friend-hailing, the hello! and hi! and, with the gulls squealing, quick-scaling the mast to the sky.' This Ape I Am 00:00 / 01:48 Under our armoured mirrors of the mind where eyes watch eyes, trying to pierce disguise, an ape, incapable of doubt, looks out, insists this world he sees is trees, and tries to find the scenes his genes have predefined. This ape I am who counts 'One, two, more, more' has lived three million years in empty lands where all the members of the roving bands he’s ever met have totalled some ten score; so all these hundred thousands in the street with voided eyes and quick avoiding feet must be the mere two hundred known before. This ape I am believes they know me too. I’m free to stare, smile, challenge, talk to you. This ape I am thinks every female mine, at least as much as any other male’s; if she’s with someone else, she can defect – her choice, and she becomes mine to protect; just as each child must be kept safe and hale for no one knows but that it could be mine. This ape I am feels drugged, ecstatic, doped, hallucination-torn, kaleidoscoped, that Earth’s two hundred people includes swirls of limitless and ever-varied girls. This ape I am does not look at myself doesn’t know about mirrors, lack of health, doesn’t know fear of death, only of cold; mirrorless can’t be ugly, can’t be old. Publishing credits Camelot at Dusk: The HyperTexts (2015) Old Sailors: Snakeskin (No. 146) This Ape I Am: Better Than Starbucks (Vol. II, No. X)

Hear poet Julie Easley read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Julie Easley wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Julie Easley (she/her) is a working-class poet, activist, intersectional feminist and trans ally widely published in anthologies online and in print. Her poems have featured as audio readings on the US New Generation Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead’s album From the Ancestors (with music by Gabriel Walker), BBC Upload, Open Collab, and Butterfly Effect's MdZ Estate . Her film-poem skin was published by IceFloe Press. Julie's debut poetry chapbook, NOT MY KING , is forthcoming from The Black Light Engine Room Press in October 2023. the poems god in heels 'Anyone who does not know love does not know God, because God is love' 1 John 4:8 00:00 / 00:48 if god appeared before you now, they would demand you look away if you had dared to steal their words and harm them they would fix their hair, loosen a top button or two then slip on heels to stomp on your placards that preach your commandments of hate that god you howl is dead sometimes god is just a kid growing into themselves sometimes they retreat find their community online sometimes god wears knee high boots and risks being killed in a bathroom imagine Dedicated to MPs Priti Patel and Suella Braverman 00:00 / 01:20 imagine you had just crossed the sea crashed out of the waves fell down onto your knees imagine your kids strapped to your sides their lives wrapped in plastic snapped and tagged for all the front pages imagine that journey, the swell of fear in your mind, the relief of the sand as your feet hit the ground imagine being met by military might their strength and power transposed onto you imagine being met by all that force imagine the drowning of your spirit no helping hands to keep you afloat imagine that danger, your desperation imagine the spectacle of media transmission is live on the 6 o’clock news your trauma and torment in full public view imagine if none of this were true when I walked with my First Nation friend in Australia 00:00 / 02:35 our footprints were the same – marks in time and place, whispers on the land. hers had longer toes, a lighter touch, her higher arch scarcely skimming the surface of the red dust road. you could tell I was following, hers paused occasionally, turning and smudging the powdered earth between us, gathering up the grains in pinched skin. her footsteps were rhythmic, heartbeat paced, moments of movement that mourned the song of the mother. she danced a little, displaced the land beneath belonging feet, placed her land beneath her feet. our bodies became the map, charting out the points where we lingered longingly, where the dappled sunlight dripped on us like melting butter, running down our bare flesh onto crusted paths. we merged into one as we rounded the river, disappearing into cooling waters quenching that part of us that thirsted for more. we swam till fading light beckoned us home, our impressions trailing behind tired limbs, through bush-lined lanes into the mass of structures that bore the town. we left our embrace in the earth, toes melting into toes obscuring our separation, and as the sky dimmed into night we promenaded the parade of hotels, where the tone of her feet was too dark to glide through the guarded gates into the gilded paradise of cocktails and canned laughter. in her country it was the pale stranger at her side who held the keys. we retreated to the welcome noise of the downtown bar that had no care of the colour of our soles and rested, pressing our toes together as if in prayer. if by chance you were soaring overhead and happened to glance upon us, you’d find two figures playing footsie like childhood friends in the park. Publishing credits god in heels: written exclusively for iamb imagine: Culture Matters when I walked with my First Nation friend in Australia: StepAway Magazine (Issue 33)

Hear poet Matthew Stewart read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Matthew Stewart wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Dividing his time between Extremadura in Spain and West Sussex in England, poet Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade. Following on from his debut collection, The Knives of Villalejo – a work some 20 years in the writing – Matthew recently published his second full collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t . He's also the author of the popular, influential and much-praised poetry blog, Rogue Strands . the poems Los Domingos 00:00 / 00:48 You’ve taught me to sip a café solo , to let its bitterness seep through my gums and mark the end of our tapas and wine, just as you’ve taught me to relish silence in the slow, shared sliding-by of minutes. I no longer force the conversation these never-ending Sunday afternoons while muffled westerns blink on the telly. An ancient carriage clock fights to strike four and your mother pours her glass of water. Perhaps this week she’ll suddenly repeat her suspicion of a neighbour’s illness. Or we’ll sit here without the need for words till your father stirs and cranks the volume to signal kick-off at the Bernabéu. Heading for the Airport 00:00 / 00:40 The cab suddenly turning up twenty-seven minutes late after my ten frantic calls from the pavement outside your block, your dressing-gowned silhouette hovering on the balcony with a halo of wispy hair. My suitcase thrown in the boot, doors slammed, the driver crunching gears, I forgot our goodbye wave while checking my flight. If only that cab had left me behind, longing for Spain. No way to know I’d never see you alive again. The Last Carry El Paseo Marítimo, Chipiona 00:00 / 00:32 You were seven and hadn’t asked for one in months, but the salt wind had whipped your energy away before calamares fritos at our favourite place on the prom left you woozy, slumped in your seat. Even as I threw you over one shoulder and braced for the trudge to our house, my back was hinting at a future without your breath tickling my neck. At you walking, beside us, if we were lucky. Publishing credits Los Domingos: Wild Court (King's College London) Heading for the Airport: The Spectator (July 16th 2022) The Last Carry: The Spectator (January 30th 2021) Author photo: © Marina Rodriguez

Hear poet Róisín Ní Neachtain read poems for wave 6 of literary poetry journal iamb. Róisín Ní Neachtain wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Róisín Ní Neachtain is an autistic Irish-Scottish poet and artist now based in County Kildare, Ireland. Though mainly self-taught, she was briefly educated at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin, before studying for two years under Irish artist Gill Berry. Róisín is creator and editor of online literary and art journal Crow of Minerva , and has had her poetry featured in a number of digital publications. She's currently at work on her first collection. the poems Memory 00:00 / 01:12 I held my dreams in my palms Though they were bleeding A soft tremor against my skin Some were shallow Some like a cave Some pricked my conscience Their threads tethered to my flesh And I chewed their weights to set them free My teeth wore down I fell in a haze through our memories When a hollow sound echoed in my mouth And fell past my lips You bit my tongue and hummed The ebb of nameless laughter A cadence of sorrows Spinning a steep melody Now I am unfearful of pain A slow praise of closeness Breathing blue In midnight songs Tightening my pulse Fingers twisting in a frenzied dance To unworded lyrics My last need stilled Remembering Without Believing 00:00 / 01:21 Remembering without believing The stars appeasing Against their obsidian abyss Heat and light unseamed from dust Remembering without believing Questions pressed in psychosis And promises which feel no shame Illegible hypergraphic promises Of love and empty rooms and symbiotic existence And undivided sounds and realities And reproached pain and laughter And dissonant dreams Which lead to my repossession A petty heresy of Silence Look at this earth embedded beneath our nails Our language measured by prayers And lumen a measure of their glare Look at this skin scored by hate Their unfamiliar eye Rooted in fear All truths unchanged in time The Edge of Reason 00:00 / 01:22 A room Like a trite cage Between these four walls Where prodigal sons and daughters return And are rejoiced and bound once more A spiel read like a dead poet A bastard pain The object of such a conclusion Perhaps an accidental gale? Swept and tendering our bones Archaic songs of sorrow That lull us in their readiness Black on white Black on black White on white Letters made barely visible And nonsensical A few steps closer to the edge of reason A past and future arrested in a photograph What will happen if we awake again To see these passings going beyond that edge? To the beginnings of someplace? Someplace more of a sedentary mind A hollowed space in each Man’s chest Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ysella Sims read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ysella Sims wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet Poet, writer and producer Ysella Sims has had her work featured in The Guardian , Brittle Star and the The Blue Nib Literary Magazine , where she was a contributing editor. Ysella produces poetry and spoken-word events, as well as the immersive poetry podcast, Tell Me Something . She published her first poetry pamphlet, you are here , in 2021. the poems Echo 00:00 / 01:45 They watch the screen as the sonographer traces slow circles on her belly and the room dulls to a thick, cloistered hush. In another room, smaller, colder the world rends, roils beneath the blue plastic sofa while they wait for the midwife to tell them, it doesn’t look good. In the weeks between, they lean against the cool bark of the witching tree on the heath whisper pleas into its tessellations stick stray feathers into the sand to arrange their wishes, just so. And when it is time, she lies still oh-so-still on the table holds her breath behaves. Outside, a morning of crows bare-branched, murdering the brumal air with clatter and chaws; a carnival flash of parakeets at the Richmond window. Sun breaking through dank in the gorse-crowned field to colour the sky sugared pink starling egg blue the sweet heft of a pear-sized ghost in her arms. I am turning into all the mothers 00:00 / 00:45 I am turning into all the mothers my younger self condemned; the ones that baulked at journeys, heights, the world beyond the door the diazepam-rattlers cake-offerers, stomach-ragers sobbers the confidence-tricksters told-you-so-ers nitpickers frowners the news-tutters jar-scrapers eavesdroppers sighers – all those felled by their children’s fingers un- – picking the strings. Folk Festival, 1982 00:00 / 01:21 All she remembers is that there was a coach brimful with men and women punchdrunk with Friday night and possibility, the air sun-ripe and sweet kids stacked amongst kit bags fiddles and sticks and as dusk fell a field of yellow and green where they pitched their tents and Big Sue, apple-cheeked and bangled, squeezed her brother into her bosom’s curve in the tent’s zipped orange glow a car park, pulsing with music and bells light spilling from the pub like it was somebody’s front room the electric scent of men their danced-in shirts the velveted whirl of women’s black-chokered throats childrens’ voices in the glow-wormed hedges and a scratchy-faced stranger pinning her, like a butterfly, to the August ground – her brother, reaching in to release her like she was one of his own. Publishing credits Echo: The Blue Nib I am turning into all the mothers / Folk Festival, 1982: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Helen Kay read poems for wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb. Helen Kay wave 17 spring 2024 back next the poet Helen Kay has poems in The Rialto , Stand and Butcher’s Dog , as well as in her pamphlet, This Lexia & Other Languages . She curates Poetry Dyslexia and Imagination : a creative platform for people with dyslexia and other forms of neurodiversity. A finalist for the 2022 Brotherton Anthology, Helen won both the Repton and the Ironbridge poetry competitions in 2023. On social media, she's known for her hen puppet sidekick, Nigella. the poems Bitter (from OE Biter) 00:00 / 01:37 The fox took away my old hens last night to feed its starving cubs. Its vampire teeth parted feathers, pierced the oesophagus and windpipe below the sinewy neck and severed the spinal cord, quick as birds that snatch worms or pluck a butterfly off a shelf of air. No waste; no signs, bar sequins of spilt corn on moulted feathers. Wearing his wife’s kimono, a QC beat to death a fox caught in the wire fence round his hen coop, blooded his baseball bat. I am not bitter, Foxy. The cruellest bite is the empty plate of death. I would bequeath you my thighs, breast and legs to plump up your bony kin. Worse things lurk darkly: two million hens gassed and eaten daily. We will chainsaw the coop, splintering tears of plywood on the earth. We will plant egg-smooth bean seeds in our hen manure and watch the sparrows steal red cherries. I will stir my tears in a glass of wine or let them fall to dry on a page of words. I will wear my fox socks, post #fox pics cross my fingers, bolt my door at dusk. Scrabble 00:00 / 01:08 Every night Dad and I clicked the tiles slick as casino chips. A whiskey soda lit his petrol-coupon glass to a sparkling chandelier. An ashtray snake-charmed a Silk Cut while he positioned the tiles, turned misspellings into jokes. Winning did not matter; it was our way of talking. We were both dictionary-dependent, lifting its cover like the lid of a Milk Tray box. We fished letters from a yellow wash bag, sliced them into so many meanings. Slotted in our chairs, we made order: ashtray, coaster, fag packet. My pen knitted lines of scores, filled the evening’s blank page, and always, upstairs, Mum, out cold, a burnt stub, empty tumbler, blank tile, jumbled-up bag of letters we could never put into words. My Brother’s Widow 00:00 / 01:05 Not wanting to waste things, she sows your tomato seeds, too late. The seedlings sprout in May, vulnerable and hairy, moving forward imperceptibly, as she is. Soon she has too many plants and gives me two. Neither of us knows which bits to snip, what to feed them, only that we are growing gently together, reaching out. Green leaves unfurl their fingered symmetry towards me. Constellations of yellow flowers hold tomorrows. I can catch your flamboyance in the way they crowd my yard. Sal has planted marigolds with hers, calls it companion planting. In a way, I won’t mind a lack of tomatoes. The absence of them, lurking round and red beneath the leaves, seems fitting. Publishing credits Bitter (from 𝑂𝐸 Biter): Live Canon Anthology 2022 (Live Canon) Scrabble: won first prize at the Iron Bridge Poetry Festival 2023 My Brother's Widow: longlisted for the Cheltenham Poetry Competition 2023

Hear poet Maxine Rose Munro read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Maxine Rose Munro wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Maxine Rose Munro is a Shetlander adrift on the outskirts of Glasgow. Her poetry has been published widely, exhibited at the Stanza Poetry Festival, shortlisted for the SMHAFF Awards, and nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Maxine runs the First Steps in Poetry feedback programme, which offers beginner poets free feedback and support. the poems Finnman 00:00 / 01:12 My land is a constant, stripped by inconstant seas and I should know better: allure soon abandons all promise and beauty lies like an oily film on your surface. I have no use for fortune-tellers spinning gaudy futures – tall, dark strangers on narrow, isolated islands can't be true, but are surely puzzle and paradox. False, false man there is as much plastic in your offer as silver fishes in the sea. Now you tell me of your sunken treasures and hidden depths, but never your shifting, treacherous nature. I dream of your sea rising to enfold me, cover my mouth and stop my breath. I am lost and will go with you. But first come close, closer, let me see if, like waves meeting land, you break against me. The Finnman is a legend of the Northern Isles. Sometimes he can be benevolent, others he seeks to entice women down to his undersea world, only to turn them into his slaves. Let me sing a song of love 00:00 / 01:11 though we both know I'm not romantic. Though it could end in embarrassed mumbling and staring at our feet. I know I take time to get going, and often head off in a confusing direction , but just sit, and I'll do my best. Let my voice crack, wander between dialects like it does when I'm worried I'm an idiot putting myself forward for a kicking, a puppy wanting to pee all over the floor, shivery with terror, anticipating horror. I've written the words and rehearsed them a dozen different ways but none of them were as right as I wanted. It's funny how so very hard it is to do this, but let me try. Let me stand up before you, not quite look at you, let me sing the words I wrote you, edited over and over and over again. Let me sing this song – I love you. I'm glad I found you and no one else. Let's live all our lives together. There. I have sung my song. I hope you don't think I got it wrong. I hope you feel the same. Mother Tongue 00:00 / 01:04 If I were to speak with my mother's tongue my words would reach up out of the land, rooted deep in the language she learned sat at the knees of Viking descendants – the soil pressed against her bare skin: möld , a word that grew in her fertile mouth. To be dirty rich was möld -rich. To be nearly buried by the drink, möld -drocht. Her word for the Earth: Aert . Spoken with an ai , a rolling r , and a tih . Compact. Solid. And if she were to say 'from all the earths', well, this was her way of saying 'everywhere'. Stuck and grounded, both aert -fast. And that was how she looked to me, a woman who couldn't work with abstracts, their gush, their drift from the source. But my father, ah now, my father, he was one who was soothed by this. His words were dreams of the sea. Publishing credits Finnman / Let me sing a song of love: exclusive first publication by iamb Mother Tongue: Acumen

Hear poet Kelly Davis read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kelly Davis wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Kelly Davis lives on the West Cumbrian coast and works as a freelance editor. Her poetry has been widely anthologised and published in magazines such as Mslexia , Magma and Shooter . She has twice been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and she appears in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021 anthology (Black Spring Press). In 2021, she collaborated with Kerry Darbishire on their poetry pamphlet Glory Days (Hen Run). Her debut solo collection, The Lost Art of Ironing , was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2024. the poems Calling them in 00:00 / 01:33 Come home for your tea! We called them in, as day fled and night ate our words. The sun had already set. Come home for your tea! Anxiety edged our voices and night ate our words. It was much too late. The sun had already set. Come home for your tea! Anxiety edged our voices, imagined fears grew larger and night ate our words. They grew up so suddenly. Dusk took us by surprise. It was much too late. Come home for your tea! They could no longer hear us. The sun had already set, with darkness at its heels, and night ate our words. We were wasting our breath. It seems a moment ago but it’s twenty years or more. Somehow they gave us the slip. Time wouldn’t wait. Did we suspect, even then? Anxiety edged our voices. Perhaps we had a premonition – imagined fears grew larger. We tried to call them home and night ate our words. Grandfather 00:00 / 01:16 My grandfather’s hands were thick-knuckled and strong. Bear’s paws that scooped me up when we swam in the sea at Durban beach. Sometimes they held carving knives, sliced succulent roast chicken or salt beef, stole the fatty trimmings, popped them in his mouth when he thought no one saw. As a boy in Lithuania, his hands must have been small and soft. Perhaps he played chess with his brothers, helped sort envelopes at the family post office. In 1941, in Durban, those hands opened a letter that said his parents, brothers, brother’s wives and children had all been shot. Somehow his hands continued brushing shaving cream on his chin, patting his daughter’s head, fastening his cuff links, wiping his eyes when he wept. Meeting in deep time 00:00 / 01:20 I’m on a journey inside my husband’s head. We normally exist in different worlds – me with my words, him with his rocks. But now I’m editing his book and travelling back 400 million years. I’m starting to understand how slowly tectonic plates meet and move apart; how layers of rock can shift; how they thrust, fold, edge into one another’s space; how vast glaciers freeze the warm earth and thaw into torrents, sculpting jagged peaks and scooping out deep valleys. I’m seeing orange pyroclastic flows obliterate ancient slopes; and swarms of rounded drumlins under the grass, like whales breaking the surface; realising that a million years is the tiniest sliver of time; that the two of us, and every thought we’ve ever had, are at once utterly unimportant and infinitely precious. Publishing credits Calling them in: Dusk: Stories and poems from Solstice Shorts Festival 2017 (Arachne Press) Grandfather: exclusive first publication by iamb Meeting in deep time: Magma (Issue 81) Author photo: © Clare Park

Hear poet Charlotte Gann read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Charlotte Gann wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Charlotte Gann is a writer and editor from Sussex who enjoys walking the South Downs in her spare time. Her first pamphlet was The Long Woman , which saw her shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2012. Two full collections followed: Noir and The Girl Who Cried , as well as another pamphlet, Cargo . Charlotte also founded and runs online hub The Understory Conversation : a space for fellow writers to meet, talk and share in small groups and one to one. the poems The house with no door 00:00 / 00:38 The house with no door looks welcoming, with its wisteria and robins. I can see, through the kitchen window, a bowl of cherries. They’re the brightest, darkest, shiniest cherries. But that window’s shut and bolted. I move on round. I know I shouldn’t walk on flowerbeds. I keep thinking the door must be around the next corner. I’ve lost count now how many times I’ve circumnavigated. In the Classroom of Touch 00:00 / 01:36 This is how you hold a person , Mr Farnham says demonstrating. Your touch needs to be light but firm. Felt in the skin like a weight, a squeeze. No sudden movements, please. Still is best. The pupil he’s performing on closes her eyes, head slightly folded like a bird’s. She’s collapsed into his woollen front. See how my arms arc? the teacher asks his class. Hold each other like precious cargo. Never be rough. Don’t shove into the person you love. Don’t steal touch. Be clear about this: we give a hug. Thanks Lydia, back to your seat now. Giles–? The boy stares down at his feet, face pink. His worst subject. Mr Farnham waits quietly, bends his head, smiles. C’mon Giles , he says gently. The boy staggers down the ragged aisle between assorted classmates. Waits while this man opens his arms. Falls forward, hiding his face, his sobs. The teacher enfolds him carefully, whispers, You’re doing well, Giles . Calling Time 00:00 / 02:09 So I’d sit at my desk waiting and hoping and trembling before someone would say it – maybe me – A quick drink after work – and we’d go night after night, pint after pint after pint. We’d smoke sixty cigarettes, drink drink after drink starting at six when seven thirty seemed another, safe country but suddenly was upon us, then long gone and it’s more like half nine and our table a landscape of pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays after trip upon trip to the cigarette machine in the hallway and turn after turn to the bar for another round, another tray of toppling filled glasses and laughter and it still only Tuesday, say, and then the bar staff flashing the lights on and off and it must be after eleven and they’re calling a warning and stacking chairs at the other end of the narrow room and we’re the only table left and still we stay drinking and shouting until they call ‘Time’ and yank the noisy chain grille down over the bar and padlock it and turn the lights off and we grope our way blindly foghorning back up the stairs and even then not out into the night, contrite, rushing for last Tubes but into the hotel bar for residents only where the drinks are even more expensive and it’s just us two now usually and we order ‘A night cap’ then ‘One for the road’ lighting cold fags and slumping on that black-leather slidey sofa in this pot-planted environment with piano muzac playing softly and it’s hard now to keep my spirits up with you falling silent beside me so near and far away. Publishing credits The house with no door: The Lyrical Aye: Richie McCaffery Calling Time: London Grip (Summer 2022) In The Classroom of Touch: The Rialto (No. 81)

Hear poet Warrick Wynne read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Warrick Wynne wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet With three published books to his name, Australian poet Warrick Wynne has had his poetry featured in various Australian and international magazines and journals, including Walleah Press and Varuna, The Writers House Blog . Warrick lives and writes on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. His most recent collection is The State of the Rivers and Streams . the poems Hands 00:00 / 00:39 Level 3 is 'Hands': the swathed palm, the unhinged fist, the fingers fractured black or twisted, suspended in slings wrapped in gauze. We all face each other mute as moons. This is what happens when pressure is applied against the grain, this is the flaw in the great architecture what a piece of work ... how easy it is to break this hold we have on things, we can hardly grasp it. Spider Crab 00:00 / 01:08 Above the Victorian Fish poster, (vivid illustrations of the edible denizens of the deep) a white spider crab mounted on a wooden board pinned to the wall as it was in my childhood. I mean, this exact crab, legs now blackening with age was in a (different) fish and chip shop of my youth, brought here, no doubt, with the goods and chattels from some former enterprise, and I recognise it: one giant claw open wide to snap, the other retracted shy, evasive punch and counter-punch. At Hector's Seafood now, the staff wear light blue tops emblazoned with a yellow marlin rising from a vividly tropical sea. I wait for my flake below fading ivory claws, one outrageously enlarged, one curled inward gently like an invitation, or an imploring gesture to the past. At the edge For Harriet 00:00 / 00:27 We walk to the edge of the bay drawn, it seems, to this great dish where you played and swam and now, stand here, with your own baby strapped to you. Could anything be stranger? the three of us beside the sea, the submerged beach where you played a stone wall, the city in the distance whatever next? Publishing credits Hands: The Best Australian Poems 2013 (Black Inc.) Spider Crab: exclusive first publication by iamb At the edge: Love the Words Anthology 2022 (Infinity Books)

Hear poet Helen Calcutt read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Helen Calcutt wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Helen Calcutt is the author of two volumes of poetry. Her first, Sudden rainfall (2014), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. Helen's second work, Unable Mother , described by Robert Peake as ‘a violent and tender grapple with our cosy notions of motherhood’, appeared in 2018. Helen's poetry, journalism and critical writing have been published widely, and she is the creator and editor of acclaimed poetry anthology Eighty-Four – published in aid of leading suicide prevention charity CALM. Her newest pamphlet will be published in 2020. the poems Pale deer, soft-footed 00:00 / 01:33 The water is silk. She sings to me. The cold wind, the streets, the people flicker and shut off when the water falls, and I am naked within – singing of my dirt, how to know it. My eyes close ... in these few sacred moments when my daughters sleep and my loved one reads about Vikings and flayed skin. The water is like a pattering of milk. I want to stoop, and lick, and taste life again. I ask, did I give too easily today? was I good? baring my throat to the sky, the lit tiles reflect a deer, pale, and soft-footed. I run my fingers down my hair in St Water – I pray to her, choose me flow over, and over, and over me, touch me, heal heal until I am no longer meek or mild and I can run with my sins again. Grief is like a miracle 00:00 / 01:02 like opening your mouth for water, and finding rain. You stand for days outside the body of a silent church. Snow touches the stillness of the windows and you long for their acceptance, a few tears. You tell yourself the door isn’t closed: it’s open and weeping. Like the orange rose that never bloomed all spring then one day in autumn opened atriums of colour. Now all the roses gather and the door is open-armed. People think I am strange touching my lips to the wood, but ice is thawing to love inside my body: I don’t know how else to show my gratitude. Mytilini 00:00 / 01:12 Oldest of Seas, old friend, no one hears you slink back no one hears his own music anymore. Morning, soft heart, warm and unstartable expands from her threads at the earth's edge, unfaithful at last, brushing the ferns the anemone flowers. Light is longing to come home. In other worlds women tie knots in their bodice strings, sing songs, hang flycatchers from the moon. But here, where the sun hums in her socket where searoot and bloodroot insist on their comforting where the fire in the mountain wall torches our hands – like a bead of clear light the sea revolves through morning wind, and recognises us. Publishing credits Pale deer, soft-footed: The London Magazine Grief is like a miracle: Wild Court (April 8th 2020) Mytilini: Sudden rainfall (Perdika Editions)

Hear poet Jane Robinson read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jane Robinson wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Jane Robinson is an award-winning Irish poet with a doctoral degree in biological science from the California Institute of Technology. Her books are: ‘ Journey to the Sleeping Whale ’ (2018) and ‘ Island and Atoll ’ (2023), both published by Salmon Poetry. Jane has taught poetry workshops in libraries and outdoor settings. In recent months she was the invited reader at Green Sod Ireland’s Biodiversity Summer School in Kylemore Abbey, and at the IMMA Earth Rising Festival. Listen here: Music for the Atoll, 2023 (SoundCloud). the poems Fairy Castle Two Rock Mountain, Dublin 00:00 / 00:57 After a long, slow climb from the road, calling out the names of bramble, foxglove, ling and furze, we left the flies behind when we turned from the wood’s edge, bending our bodies to the sandy granite track, to the bog-water pools and slender rushes. But a drone hummed over. All of a sudden it owned the hill, flexing mechanical insect-legs. Whose gadget filmed us tilt our moon-faces down to the mica path? A thin, pixilated sliver of mind let loose on the raised bog made skylarks crouch from their songs to cover nests hidden by heather stems. We threaded our way on up to the cairn. Coastal Forest Fragment ‘Go with the process, go with what you’ve got!’ ~ Breda Wall Ryan ~ 00:00 / 00:52 Your feet are unshod, grassy-toed, horn-hard on wandering paths to a paradise where humans did not ever learn to wield a flint or turn a thread. Imagine the mossy temperate forest grazed by giant deer, phosphorescence haloing their upheld heads and antlers. Hear chuckles from a family of rooks who gossip on the topmost branches of oak trees lining a path from strand to dreaming bed. A pocketful of sand from Magheramore. Sprigs of water-mint. Heathland Observation After a photograph by Tina Claffey 00:00 / 01:06 The landscape’s sharp details are sprung up close by macro lens. On one of the seven heathers stands a grasshopper who resembles a horse in medieval armour. The insect’s breastplate, green. Brighter, the nets of her compound eyes as she watches from her temporary rest on St. Daboec’s heath. Hummocked beside the peaty water, this heather’s named after a saint who raised both his hands to the sky as he walked the mountains and scattered huge clouds of insects with each step taken. Few grasshoppers still sing in the fragments. In wilderness we’ve shopped out, car shaken, light slain. Earth’s future saints will be the ones who help all forms of life and hold them sacred. Publishing credits Fairy Castle: Island and Atoll (Salmon Poetry) Coastal Forest Fragment: Poetry Ireland Review (No. 144) Heathland Observation: exclusive first publication by iamb