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Hear the poets of wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for autumn 2022 . wave eleven autumn 2022 Charles G Lauder Jr Daniel Hinds David Butler Heidi Beck James Nixon Jan Harris Kittie Belltree Lauren Thomas Lisa Tulfer Lydia Kennaway Maggs Vibo Nichola Deane Rick Dove Sam Henley Smith Susan Fuchtman

Search A-Z by first name for any poet in online literary poetry journal iamb. poets A-Z a # b d c e f g h i j k l n m p o r q t s v u x w z y A R Williams summer 2024 wave 18 See this wave Aaron Caycedo-Kimura spring 2021 wave 5 See this wave Aaron Kent summer 2020 wave 3 See this wave Abigail Lim Kah Yan autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave Adam Cairns autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave Aki Schilz spring 2020 wave 2 See this wave Alan Buckley winter 2023 wave 16 See this wave Alan Kissane spring 2021 wave 5 See this wave Alexandra Citron spring 2022 wave 9 See this wave Alice Stainer summer 2023 wave 14 See this wave Amantine Brodeur summer 2020 wave 3 See this wave Amelia Loulli autumn 2020 wave 4 See this wave Andrea Small spring 2025 wave 21 See this wave Andy Breckenridge autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave Andy Nuttall summer 2021 wave 6 See this wave 1 2 3 4 5 1 ... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ... 26

Hear the poets of wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for spring 2021 . wave five spring 2021 Aaron Caycedo-Kimura Alan Kissane Brian Bilston Emily Blewitt Jemelia Moseley Jill Abram Joanna Nissel Katie Stockton Khalisa Rae Mariam Saeed Khan Maxine Rose Munro Nicola Heaney Pey Oh Robin Houghton Stewart Carswell

Hear the poets of wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for autumn 2023 . wave fifteen autumn 2023 Abigail Lim Kah Yan Adam Cairns Andy Breckenridge C Daventry Dominic Weston Elisabeth Sennitt Clough Emma Lee Gaynor Kane Grace Uitterdijk Julie Easley Lesley James Luke Palmer Lynn Valentine Özge Lena Wendy Allen

Hear the poets of wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for spring 2024 . wave seventeen spring 2024 Carol J Forrester David Pecotić Eilín de Paor Helen Kay Ilisha Thiru Purcell Iris Anne Lewis Jonathan Humble Lesley Curwen Margaret Dennehy Nina Parmenter Sarah Holland Steve Smart Sue Spiers Thomas McColl Tracey Rhys

Hear the poets of wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for spring 2025 . wave twenty-one spring 2025 Andrea Small Bob Perkins Fred Schmalz Gillian Craig Jane Robinson Joe Williams Kelly Davis Maggie Mackay Marie Little Mark Carson Moira Walsh Perry Gasteiger Robin Helweg-Larsen S Reeson Theresa Donnelly

Hear poet Holly Peters read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Holly Peters wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Holly Peters is a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Plymouth. She held the position of Plymouth’s Young City Laureate from 2019-2022, and had her poem Artificial Moons featured in the Moths to a Flame: Art and Energy Collective installation at the Glasgow Botanical Gardens during COP26. You’ll typically find Holly hiding somewhere between the covers of a book, or out walking her crazy spaniels, Dotty and Booby. the poems Building the River a Bed 00:00 / 01:12 a river skitters in the dark wriggling like a lullaby’s shh I take the first rock; it weighs the same as the peach pit in my stomach. Clay rolls in the canyon of my palm, squishing between fingers, then shuddering back to shape. An audience of stones, I deliberate, the choice all mine. nothing falls fast in the waves, settling down for its final rest The second breathes dust, hot to touch, singed syllables filling my throat. You don’t have to ignore the craters: use your nails and crack them open. The river shapes beds from burdens: kneel down, whisper them gently. water ages slow, sighs as it swallows my offering Crumbling. I’d avoided the river for years – it no longer able to relieve me – yet I still gather the third rock that slices through the sand timer’s neck. The bank cuts into the hard white behind my shins and I cry as I litter what’s left like ashes. soft drops melt like they were never there at all The Bread Affair 00:00 / 00:53 Her teeth grind in time with the knife that slathers butter over his slice of bread. His dinner steams, fragrant with turmeric and all the time she has spent stewing over it. Not that he takes any notice. Whatever plate she presents him with – matsutake mushrooms, moose cheese, wagyu beef – his mouth waters only for the ample half-wheat bread. Her arrangement of lip-pink tulips has already been extracted from the table’s heart, so his bulging loaf can fill its centre. He takes his time massaging butter into the bread’s porcelain cheek. He cups his hand, its back arching, then spoons his dinner inside, letting the slice envelope it like skin. He chews it, mouth opening wide, tongue slopping. The crumbs cascade, shredded like the last slivers of her patience. I Want to be a Forest 00:00 / 00:49 You won’t know which part of me you hold in your hands: my lower lip, a worn-down heel or knobbly elbow – because it’ll look no different to dirt. You’ll be given a watch-sized box filled with two palmfuls of what’s left of me, and even though I’m only saying it, those flakes, like tree bark, are my heart. All the rest, enough to fill a wheelbarrow, will be mingled with the remains of others. What was once kneecaps, earlobes, eyeballs will become part of the damp woodland floor. But in that forest, it will always be a part of me you hold in your hands. It will be earth, and worm food, a home for tentative tree roots, a world unravelling in the planet of your palm. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Fidel Hogan Walsh read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Fidel Hogan Walsh wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Hailing from Ireland's County Cavan, Fidel Hogan Walsh has seen her poetry appear in many journals, including Poethead , Pendanic , The Irish Times , The Storms Journal , and in the University College Dublin Archives. She's been heard reading her work on the Eat the Storms poetry podcast numerous times, and was a featured poet on A Thousand Shades of Green . Fidel's poem What Peace Feels Like made her a winner of the inaugural Enlighten Prize (with Hambly & Hambly), which she won again in 2021 with her poem for you . Her first collection, Living with Love , was published in 2020, while her second – Time , a collaboration with photographer Julie Corcoran – launched Ireland's Culture Night that same year. the poems We Are the Night Lovers (save our souls) 00:00 / 01:00 A canvas showing off on a sweeping splendorous indigo sky crowded in bright twinkling trailing stars Waning nightmares seek solace in the silver crescent of a moody moon Nocturnal shift ends on a peeking pink sunrise whisking away dreams Death itself wanted part of A river lullaby lulls sleep on a meadows lush green grass in the dark shadows of love — we are the night lovers Travel Through Time 00:00 / 01:07 We are born of water in a white mist of sea & of everlasting memory Where land & ocean touch wild wind storms sing in a whistle of waves Loud natural eerie sounds erupt from ancient callings of man & of beast On a rough morning tide with poor visibility I see you out of reach You adrift of free movement wandering aimlessly where memories have no meaning I now must travel through time to bring you back to our sacred beginnings Surreal ~ 22nd May 2024 ~ The life you know, is no longer known. 00:00 / 01:08 the mountains half in shadow & hues of deep blue they beckon only then do i whisper out your name quiet quickening echoes take you to my outstretched arms nonexistence reality were we of this world & of our time the sea we dip down to those stormy crashing dreams the end we are no more / you / me / & of now what remains deep green lush mountains & a calm sea Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet J L M Morton read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. J L M Morton wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Winner of the inaugural Laurie Lee Prize for Writing in 2022, J L M Morton is a writer and poet whose work has been published internationally in journals including The Poetry Review , The Rialto and most recently in the multidisciplinary ethnography Living With Water: Everyday encounters and liquid connections . Her latest book is Glos Mythos – a collaboration with satirist Emma Kernahan and illustrator Bill Jones. Her first full collection, Red Handed , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024. the poems An Inheritance of Water 00:00 / 01:15 When I die the chemical signature in my bones will tell of Thames and Severn, Churn and Frome, marrow of upland pastures, mill race and outflow. An ancestral line of dockers loading and unloading cargo. A spring-fed apple tree that transpires deep in a valley sheds fruits that only wasps will feed on. And I want to close my ears to the endless sound of buckets emptying and refilling on the wheel. Is this what we call beauty? Is this a place my hand can hold, still reaching for the world? None of this is clean but it connects. Big enough and continuous to contain all of our lives, our deaths are carried in my blood and breath is carried by water. Rain is another name for love. Life Cycle of the Cochineal Beetle (c.1788) ‘ … it is worthwhile recalling that from the medieval era, one of the colours most prized by the crown, church and nobility in Europe for their finest fabrics was that of carmine or deep crimson.’ ~ Carlos Marichal Salinas ~ 00:00 / 01:51 An egg breaks on the pad of a prickly pear somewhere in Oaxaca where the scale insects’ livid bodies mass and crackle in the sun. Emerging, a crawler nymph clusters with the softness of her siblings to feed in the downy blanket – explorers edging to the brink of the known world. Nymph throws out a long wisp of wax, a thread to catch a ride on the wind, lifting and landing on the terra incognita of a new cactus pad. Her claim is staked with a stab of her beak. Cochineal sups the juices, sees off predators – lacewings, ladybirds, ants – with the bright surprise of her body. Fat, fierce and full of poison. She has detached her wings. Has no need of legs. Holding her colour quietly in trust – she waits for the male to eat his fill, to mate and die. Scraped away at ninety days, her body is laid out and dried, then pulverised. Destined for dominion. On Doubt / A Pair of Blue Eyes After Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford 00:00 / 01:16 Meeting changed our strata, the way only a storm at the edge of an ocean can do. The way a slump of salt water in a black cliff hole is a wet metronome for desire and regret. Blue milk sea and yellow gorse – it is possible to be ambivalent and beautiful at the same time. Everything becomes an image of our disharmonic foldings. You hanging from the clifftop in search of my jewels. I should have guessed the houses were crappy behind the waterfront where the old lanes run deep, away from the wind, under the pines. Stacked tyres, fly-tipped white goods. We are here for this moment and we fuck it up. Instead of making like gregarious worms in a world of Sabelleria reefs, honeycombed in our detritus. Publishing credits An Inheritance of Water: Raceme (Issue 13) Life Cycle of the Cochineal Beetle (c.1788): Poetry Review (Vol. 112, Issue 4) On Doubt / A Pair of Blue Eyes: Dust Poetry Magazine (Issue 9)

Hear poet Sinéad Griffin read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sinéad Griffin wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet Sinéad Griffin has been published in Poetry Ireland Review , The Irish Times , Under The Radar , The Four Faced Liar , Hog River Press and elsewhere. One of her poems was recently included in the Poetry Jukebox installation at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Thanks to an Arts Council Agility Award in 2023, Sinéad is now working on her debut poetry collection. the poems View from the Dunes 00:00 / 01:06 Run hip-high through seagrass to the hollow, lie on the slip face of dunes, perfect angle to observe heaven. Hear breakers hush, windward side, by the hole for Australia dug with an orange spade. Fern plumes in place of daises, hands sticky with forest scent, intoxicated by the shape of some boy’s name, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, we never stop on not, crave feelings we can’t fathom, dream one day we’ll walk other realms. Castletown days of tide, not time, we don’t know the Wexford shore will tumble, the slope of illness to come. For now, all the world seems nothing, but a few big thoughts away. Letter from Dublin 00:00 / 02:14 Remember us as city schoolgirls, brown uniforms, scratchy gabardines and knee socks on the Quays. I’m in Dublin this late June evening, the footpath all bar stools and al fresco food, so continental even the seagulls curse in three languages. Burglar bars still gird low-level glass, metal shutters rattle closed at dusk, only the charity shop window invites with a teapot, cat jigsaw, jade skirt, a snorkel and flippers green as Liffey wall scum. Do people still river swim? A string of rosary beads makes me think of O’Connell Street Mad Mary, she’d dance, sing, proclaim, our traffic island Doris Day. We never crossed at her spot, scared off since she tried to talk to us about God. As per usual the Quays are insane, elbow-out-the-window taxi drivers shout blame up Ormond Quay. The traffic flow opposite to how it was in those days. Sure look. Buses of assorted colour, doors flush to pavement, not like our navy and cream old favourites, bubble-nosed, open rear platform and pole, no door, years before health and safety was born. You taught me where to grip the pole, swing on once the bus left the stop, dodge the conductor if we were lucky, scamper box steps at the back, sit and stare like we’d been there forever. Capel Street, tonight I join the boardwalk, bounce timber planks, feel the suspension. Rewind. Reverse flow. The 26 is leaving Aston Quay before time, you leap the platform turn and smile. Figment or a memory, now I’ll never know, but you pull away and I have to let you go. August 00:00 / 01:07 I sit with my parents, drinking hot coffee in the strong sun of their back garden. My father in T-shirt and shorts, welcomes the warmth, my mother is shrouded in cotton, doubly shaded with a parasol and floppy hat, since medication makes her sensitive to the light. They tell me about a neighbour’s dementia, a cousin’s husband’s angina,   they tell me they bought Lotus biscuits in Dealz. We don’t mention my sister, how August was ours, a year minus five days apart. All the while I watch a white butterfly turn in flight, zig-zag the grass, like a slip of white paper, a note that flits away, like something I meant to say. Publishing credits View from the Dunes: The Waxed Lemon (Issue No. 2) Letter from Dublin: South Dublin Libraires Online (May 2023) August: The Four Faced Liar (Issue No. 2)

Hear poet Darren J Beaney read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Darren J Beaney wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Darren J Beaney cuts his own hair and loves punk rock and Marmite. He's one half of Flight of the Dragonfly , which hosts regular spoken word evenings on Zoom and in Brighton, produces the Flights e-journal, and recently expanded into independent publishing. Darren is the author of three poetry pamphlets: The Fortune Teller's Yarn , The Machinery of Life and Honey Dew . His newest chapbooks – The Fall of the Repetitive Mix Tape (Back Room Poetry) and Citizenship (Scumbag Press) – will be published in spring and summer 2023. the poems I was created without innocence 00:00 / 01:03 the philosopher named me lazy love child of tyranny. Conceived of invasion and rage. At my birth historic dreamers clustered around the womb only to wince at the struggle. A foolish cleric anointed my brow with sorrow, branded me radioactive and resistant. Nurture came with provocation and accusation as infancy turned battlefield. Playful years were slaughter and I grew into travesty. Indignation matured, associations curdled, I lived life wretched. I am little more than chronic, my own enemy. I look to scald the preposterous, denounce the bastard, punish false evidence, destroy the offensive. Now unbound I seek a new heart. I am not acquainted with angels, but I believe I am here to be loved. Love 00:00 / 00:30 on acid tastes like it looks vivid chaos blinding shimmering like sherbet overwhelming with glycerin whispers which vibrate the air as touch becomes hyperactive and the world smells demerara senses on acid in love warp and wrap each other into playful cat’s cradles knotting until rice paper lips eventually find a way I like this place 00:00 / 01:48 and could willingly waste my time here even though it smells of hospital corridors and the walls are balding as paint decays and plaster peels and the brickwork reveals clay intestines. Derisory light pinches though a ceiling sprayed with holes crafting a dingy prospect, somewhere suitable to commit crimes. Window frames nurse broken panes and a latch scalped from a swinging door lies like a fake island in a lagoon of impossible to dredge grime covering floorboards all but conquered by rot. The air has a taste resembling a cave, the description clings to my tongue as my mouth waters like it’s a dripping acid bath tap. I scrunch my eyes closed and catch a smeared breath to stop me taking a bite. I perch, painted into a corner by cobweb tusks. I purge with primeval ivy, flagellate with waning lost feathers. I whistle like an uncomfortable outsider looking for a sign to relax in damage. I imagine … and the obscurity of my thinking invokes an alternative picture, a chamber, a cell, a byre, a stable. An uninhabited room in a tower fit for young princes. I perceive possibility and space. I tell myself I make hollow history as I waste each minute, but I snub my meaningless words and sing to the shadows 'fuck off with your time'. I consider one more squandered hour as I unwind. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jill Abram read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jill Abram wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Director of Malika's Poetry Kitchen, a collective encouraging craft, community and development, Jill Abram grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton. She's performed her poems everywhere from London to the Ledbury Poetry Festival, as well as in Paris, the USA and online. Jill's poetry has appeared in The Rialto , Magma , Finished Creatures , Ink Sweat &Tears , And Other Poems and Harana . When not writing poetry, Jill produces and presents a variety of events, including the Stablemates series of poetry and conversation. the poems Stepping Out 00:00 / 01:01 His tight hold and strong lead send the calendar backwards. I shed half my lifetime, my weight as we quick quick slow across the grass. This stranger saw my winces at every kick of the drum, tish of the hi-hat, chose to rescue me for a foxtrot around the garden. Evening sun stretches shadows – our heads bob among apple trees. I move at his command – can hear the melody playing in his head. We flow over the lawn: chasse, turn, promenade. A burst of laughter could be at our expense. His step never falters, he does not loosen his grip. Dive 00:00 / 01:38 Tanks checked, mask on, I topple in backwards, descend. I approach your feet, count ten little toes, as there should be. I want to check fingers too but only have enough air for one full scan. They’ll have to wait until I’m halfway. Your legs are plump, a dimple on each side of chubby knees, as yet no sign of patella bones. There are folds at the top of each thigh to be checked carefully at every nappy change. And now I can see you are a boy. You should be my boy. A fat little belly, umbilicus trailing, wafting in the swell. Two functionless nipples but you’d look wrong without them. Now I can fin along an arm from your shoulder to the relief of thumb, four fingers, and across to the same on the other side. I swim away to see your whole face then back for the detail; teeny round chin, lips surprisingly full and a perfect bow. The cliché button nose, your eyelids fringed by blond lashes, closed. I want to see the colour of your eyes, for you to see me. Marriage Vow 00:00 / 01:11 Mum says Dad was brought as a date for her sister by his friend who said, This is my friend Leo. Mum says Dad would have asked out whoever answered the phone, but he only rang at dinnertime when she was nearest. Mum says Dad took her to dinner and concerts, If I wanted to have fun, I’d go out with one of the others. Mum says Dad said, I’d like to marry you, but I only earn £4 a week. Mum says Dad went away, so when he came back she said, I suppose we’d better get married. Other people said she could give up work once she was a wife, but Dad said, Not bloody likely! After more than fifty years and two more generations, Dad says, Turn the radiator up, I can’t hear a word! Dad says, Have I had my dinner? when he’s just had his lunch. Mum says We’ve had the better, now’s the worse. Publishing credits Stepping Out: exclusive first publication by iamb Dive: The Fenland Reed Marriage Vow: Cake Magazine Author photo: © Naomi Woddis

Hear poet Rowan Lyster read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rowan Lyster wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Bristol-based poet and physiotherapist-in-training Rowan Lyster is currently living with Long COVID. Her poems have been published widely: most notably, in Bath Magg , Magma , Poetry Wales and The Rialto . Rowan is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective 2022-23. Her pamphlet, We Will Be Fine , is forthcoming from Little Betty. the poems It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar 00:00 / 01:08 I am having a flare-up of brain fog. In the heat, the nurse said many patients report feeling a weighted blanket on their limbs. There is no timeline for recovery. Everything is always the hardest thing. I am having a bit of trouble with my breathing. A flare up of weighted blankets and elephants standing on my head. The nurse said sometimes your brain is cornflour mixed with water. It is important to live inside the fatigue diary. Actions causing fatigue, like completing a diary or self-blame, should be listed in the fatigue diary. The air is exhausted, a weighted blanket. Sometimes it is cornflour mixed with elephants. There is nothing new to offer here. The sofa and I resent each other. I have been referred to an app for patients and sucked all the sugar off the ibuprofen. Once again he has been pulled from a sea 00:00 / 01:03 the barnacles on the harbour wall have taken his hair and part of his scalp he is vomiting on my coat we both apologise then laugh the ocean recedes uncovers pieces of him I hadn’t noticed he is carrying my shoes for me lemon cake is arriving for his birthday the middle is full of poppy seeds people singing we are riding the dodgems when he drives straight into a metal spike it protrudes between his shoulder blades while he keeps asking me why they’ve let the signs get rusty a sound like fingers through lentils beneath us the ground is becoming thinner I stack shingles to resemble a beach it would be easier without his hand pebble-dry and cold in mine Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy 00:00 / 01:18 I suggest a fun night out, in which we will visit and destroy a series of homes. It seems proper to begin with the mansion, which, of course, we burn down. From below the ha-ha, we watch inhabitants flee in dressing gowns. Despite the flames reflected in your eyes, you lack a certain zeal. We move on to more conceptual methods: ant eggs in the curtain linings, floodlights installed outside bedroom windows, disheartening messages daubed on walls. We deal with colleagues, and then friends. You sleep with someone else’s husband; I steal a newborn and exchange it for a cabbage. Our family homes are less of a challenge than might have been expected. Through the letterbox, a manila envelope containing a warning note and new passports. At dawn, when nobody else is left, you bundle yourself into a cupboard, duct-tape your own mouth and ankles while I take a clawhammer to the fuse box, block the sink and leave the tap running, finding a little peace in the knowledge that I did everything I could to help. Publishing credits It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar: And Other Poems (November 8th 2023) Once again he has been pulled from a sea / Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Mari Ellis Dunning read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mari Ellis Dunning wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Mari Ellis Dunning is an award-winning poet living and writing on the coast of West Wales. Mari’s debut poetry collection, Salacia , was published by Parthian Books in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award in 2019. Mari is a Hay Festival Writer at Work and PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University, where she's studying the relationship between witch-hunts and reproduction/fertility. Her work has featured on The Crunch Poetry Podcast and the BBC. the poems Lingering for Catherine 00:00 / 00:57 I couldn’t stand the cedarwood stench that grew in your absence, so I migrated to the smaller back bedroom. Each night, I hear your shallow breath seeping through the thin wall, picture you, one leg cocked, reaching for me through darkness. I found your keyring under the sofa, gathering dust, forgotten, and on it – that photo of us, of you, a bearded stranger, and me, girlish and unsure, cloaked in a vintage dress awaiting assurance of my beauty. With oversized marigolds and an old tea towel, I bleached your skin cells from the skirting, swabbed your residue from the foundations. You clung like smoke to the wallpaper. The Bees Part i. The Queen 00:00 / 00:46 When I couldn’t recover the self that flaked like dust from paper-thin wings, my children turned against me, they pummelled my body like ash, suffocated by song. Face first, my daughter waxed from her peanut-hollow cell, crawling through its open hinges, a ghost, a crook, I saw her coming, that tiresome usurper; the virgin Queen, swift as an intruder at my mantel, honey-sweet and baby-eyed, her allure so strong, they let me wilt, let me starve – matricide on the edge of a comb. relapse 00:00 / 00:55 i wake to your emaciated form, your smile smug and self-sure even as you pale and weep, your serpent’s hair maps the pillow, body quivering, rocked by sticky tentacles. i could have sworn i’d shaken you off years before, dislodged you with a hard gulp and a strapped wrist, nevertheless – here you are again, the same dead form, the same shirking shoulders, damp with river-water, lemur eyed, splintering bone, your features a mirror of mine even as your ragged breath sucks air into rotting lungs. You roll smoke around your tongue, lean back – the mattress hollows for you, an old lover welcomes you home. Publishing credits All poems: Salacia (Parthian Books) – winner of the Terry Hetherington Young Writers’ Award, and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2019

Hear poet Ramona Herdman read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ramona Herdman wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Ramona Herdman lives in Norwich and is a committee member for Café Writers. Her most recent publications are her poetry collection Glut – one of The Telegraph’s 20 best poetry books of 2022 to buy for Christmas – A warm and snouting thing and Bottle . the poems Prosody nil, Athletico nil 00:00 / 01:43 There’s something about the boundary of a sport (the edge of snooker’s baize and the audience in the dims beyond, the mere line that marks the end of a netball court mid-playground) that’s so bathetically hypothetical, so sillily literal. So little. You have your umpire in his high chair, with a picketty ladder, that makes him look pyramid-topper-tiny as he ascends. Perspective makes your Grecian diver shrink into a hoppy fly as he rises effortfully to the highest board. What’s the point of your immortal stats, your gyre of rules? For your outside ones there’s always rain to rain it off or the sun in your eyes. It’s background noise: a briefly disturbing mobby roar over the rooftops, interrupting life. But then again, sometimes it’s winter midnight at 4pm and the stadium’s flooded full of its own self-importance of light and it’s the one cube of the world left, looking in on itself like a ring-road supermarket or a late-night garage in the desert or a UFO landed on a world stalled in the era of bicellular worms. And if you know you’re one of those worms, what can you do but play? Crawl/hop/vault best as you can to worship at the altar of the line. What else is there? Waitrose, Church Lane, Eaton 00:00 / 00:49 I’m always reminded, amidst the carpark’s Porsches, of the prof in Cardiff who keyed his neighbours’ Benzes, custom SUVs and Audis with Latin phrases. I skulk teenagerwise by the doughnut peaches. I hate Duchy everything. But my heart is ashes as I cruise the deli counter’s Atlantis of cheeses, the up-lit liquor shelves’ stained-glass riches. This place is on my list, for when everything crashes: you’ll find me in the dairy aisle’s furthest reaches, dream-deep in clotted cream, heavy as Christmas. A house always wants to sit down 00:00 / 00:38 The stone wants to be sand. The timber wants to be soil. It wants to slump into swamp. To subside through the cycle. To lie down in a puddle and breathe water beetles. It loves the larvae blistering under its soffits. Home-tending is a constant exhortation: Stand up straight, goddammit! A lifetime position as Generalissimo Admin. Publishing credits Prosody nil, Athletico nil: Magma (84) Waitrose, Church Lane, Eaton: Raceme (Issue 13) A house always wants to sit down: Spelt Magazine (Issue 6)

Hear poet Dorian Nightingale read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dorian Nightingale wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Dorian Nightingale has always been fascinated by the musicality and textural sounds of words. He draws inspiration from an eclectic range of artistic influences: everything from Caravaggio to Radiohead. A graduate of New Writing South (Creative Writing), the Open University (Psychology) and the London School of Economics (Comparative Politics), Dorian was nominated in 2022 for Best of the Net for his poem you. He's also had a number of his poems published in print and online. Dorian lives with his family in Sussex, England. the poems spellbound 00:00 / 01:03 forgive me. for if you were to ask what were my dreams and my goals, they’d remain undisclosed, all holed up, left untold. for i fear the fact that when they are spoken, if they should dare pass my lips and be there in the open, the merest hint of their uttering would prevent them from happening (or at least puncture ambition to the point of abandonment). the attainment of aims, it seems, spellbound by admittance. so i’ll tell you almost wants and nearly desires. the fire in my belly coming across not so hot. careful not to craft too particular replies – answering imperfectly, all seemingly unwise. and therefore don’t be surprised if my style seems apathetic, that i’m somewhat distracted, slightly compromised. i’m just protecting myself from some predictable fall. keeping in thrall to make the endgame, my prize. you 00:00 / 00:28 and i lock you in a box that i occasionally open, with that key i still pick up by the tip not the bow. a place where i stow your hair clips and your tutus, pairs of polka dotted socks and shiny buckled shoes. your name on tags, a name i’ve known since i was six. patterns saved of dresses that i was going to sew and stitch. day at the beach 00:00 / 00:55 dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying. my mind confined on this shoreline of mine. i’ve been here before, many times, many more. the brine in the air assaulting my senses, lining my gut with that same salted feeling. the same sort of feeling revealing my shy endeavour. a spoiling reminder that whatever the weather i’ll always foil the very first step, the very first dip in the saltwater wet. Fearful i’ll slip on the undersea flint and slit the tip of my toe or cut the side of my foot. i know, i know … biding my time, still afraid of that slice, never holding my nerve, never turning the tide. Publishing credits spellbound: Flights (Issue 10) you / day at the beach: Flights (Issue 5)

Hear poet Mariah Whelan read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mariah Whelan wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Mariah is a poet from Oxford, UK. She is the author of the love i do to you (Eyewear, 2019), while the rafters are still burning is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is currently based in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester where she is completing a PhD and teaches creative writing. Mariah has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the PBS Student Poetry Prize and won the AM Heath Prize. She also co-edits online poetry journal, bath magg . the poems Hefted 00:00 / 01:24 One by one the black-faced ewes file through the gate. Up and out of the field over the burned heather to lamb where their mothers lambed them. I try to pull a map around the stories: I know here is where my father was happiest— if I sit on this rock and let the same cold enter my body can I say I’m part of it? Plates of ice across the mud crack under weight, catch light like the light is something good enough to frame and hang in a hall where guests first enter. His maps were always like that— half an advertisement of character, half a mirror to hold the face that looked square in its white mount. On and on, the hundred or so ewes file through hefted to the particular slope that bore them. Muscle memory, DNA, where do their bodies hold the bone-hunger that leads them back, precise as a compass point finding its way through layers of tracing paper and folded map to hold its beam-arm straight, making the distance between them measurable. In the Archive The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford 00:00 / 02:05 When the door closes we let the quiet of the archive settle around us. The chilled air from bales of frozen film comes to a stop and the room begins to fill with the hum of the corner unit rinsing air clean of contaminant on our clothes, proteins in our breath. The curator lays the album on the foam cradle. We stand shy of each other like friends at a christening unsure of where to stand or what to do with our arms, not letting our voices drop to break the silence. The curator begins with the facts: Mr Phillips reported how the Juju City reeked of human blood. Sir Harry mustered a force of 1200 marines, Mr Bacon had reason to believe enough ivory would be found to pay all expenses removing the King from his stool. I have come to understand there are various kinds of violence. A boot in the mouth, a ring of bruises around an upper arm, the way that inside this archive each fact slips so prettily beside the next like a horse’s bit lies across its tongue. History is the things that have happened, the facts of a body and its breath that come to us through the records and lists, the photographs and their captions curling in neat, even script. In the silence of the archive, all I can hear is the hum of the corner unit rinsing air clean of the dust and acid I bring on my skin, my hair, and the white space, page after page of it— the absences still bearing the administrator’s mark. The Coach Station, St James Boulevard, Newcastle upon Tyne 00:00 / 01:05 Bright station and all around soft dark. Toothpaste and sleep, coffee and the white crunch of salt on the concourse. The headlamps snorting – boarding as the first gull caws began to ricochet. That’s how it was the morning I left, too cold for snow, hills thick with February sloped black-backed and low to where the Tyne bloomed in the wake of a boat. I was less going somewhere than getting out, away from the terraces and rain, tower blocks – the yellow Metro stops that took me in loops, out into the waking-up day. But mostly I was getting away from you, the river below breathing as all rivers do. Publishing credits Hefted: the love i do to you (Eyewear Publishing) In the Archive: exclusive first publication by iamb The Coach Station, St James Boulevard, Newcastle upon Tyne: Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear Publishing)

Hear poet Phoebe Gilmore read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Phoebe Gilmore wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Originally from Devon but based now in London, Phoebe Gilmore has work in And Other Poems , Propel Magazine , Seaford Review , The Shore and eggplusfrog . She was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2024, and is currently working towards her debut collection. the poems Gynaecology Ranch 00:00 / 01:00 Giddy up leather filly there’s no use in lying down like a dead book our appointment opens me to the hills the secret once found is grainy and black buried under gut and a disposable mini- skirt of blue paper doctor in the field give me an answer clear and thick as cold lubrication so I may slip prescription into my filly’s mouth a brilliant metal knocking against teeth when I squeeze left and right dig my spurs into her bloated belly knickerless animal on animal when home I’ll sleep off the long ride like shrugging out of a winter coat Turning King 00:00 / 00:47 When I attempt to atomise, when I’m a ball of spine and flinging small dogs from my throat across bathroom tile, figure womb before as a light membrane of a forgotten sock, transformed to a pale fist of mud night beginning and with it a fire engine in my underwear, in my blood pills spinning their wheels, I open to the toilet bowl, turn king, it’s my castle. Here comes the big one After Hase 00:00 / 00:55 Godspeed big pink bunny you appeared brief and accidental but five years of hands made you and assembled your gangles like you fell from the sky cartoonish slide whistle a dropped clown apple covered in hiker ants on Colletto Fava the weather ate you in the end and in the end the weather ate you into a greying gym sock I’m trying to find your ghost on Google Maps I too will deteriorate before my predicted time of deterioration lying on the floor of my hallway assembled like I’ve fallen from the ceiling Publishing credits Gynecology Ranch: And Other Poems Turning King: Goldfish Anthology (Goldsmiths University) Here comes the big one: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Vismai Rao read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Vismai Rao wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Vismai Rao's poems have appeared in several journals, including Salamander, RHINO, Indianapolis Review, Rust + Moth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and SWWIM. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Orison Anthology. She lives in India. the poems Pursuits 00:00 / 01:55 Mother says she hasn’t found herself yet and there’s little time. She holds an old ceramic mug in one hand a drill bit in the other and is intently watching a man on YouTube put holes into things: it’s how you make vessels suitable for saplings, apparently. Her windowsill is a long row of wine bottles with no wine, all sorts of ivies and ferns pouring out her bathroom mirror a bay of newly acquired post-its with little messages to self— beyond is where she looks to put on her day cream. Afternoons she trades sleep to sit with her sketch sheets & HB pencils bent over houses and fruit, hillsides stark with shadow & light, drawing herself out of a canvas of abstraction. From old photographs she copies faces & hands, draws tall vases with still dahlias, seashores and roads— miles & miles of roads, it’s how she masters perspective— all her roads pointing to dimensionless dots at their respective horizons: here on paper, how easily they reach their ends— Roots 00:00 / 01:30 When I think of you I think of a goat tethered to a pole, you inside your cubicle leashed to the spiralling end of a long chain of events. Hello you say, day after day. How may I help you? On Sundays I bake and philosophize on how breath trapped inside a reed sings when freed. And we deconstruct freedom on the kitchen counter, on the three-seater couch, on bright satin bedspreads— down to its last molecule. A pinprick in a dream— is what we conclude it is. And you wake into another dream with arms covered in pinches. My yoga instructor says Exhale and Release while I knot myself into impossible poses. And then unknot. In December the flamingos fly down from north and drop anchor until the rains. Wings too, can only take you so far. Banyan trees alone are free, going where they will, making bridges out of roots. Constellations 00:00 / 01:23 All night we try to pluck out constellations from our feeble knowledge of astronomy. There is no moon but there is light enough— The sky: black the mountains, blacker. I am certain this isn’t a dream, even though you can no longer corroborate this memory. Even though I’m left too many uncorroborated memories— I don’t recall a single word we spoke. My neurons are firing things at me now: interstellar travel, our latest loves, maya: the mother of illusions, but I know these are from other nights— Of this one I remember close to nothing. Stars jigsawed against the night. And us, acutely aware of them— Publishing credits Pursuits: The Shore (Issue 2) Roots: Salamander Constellations: Parentheses Journal (Issue 8)

Hear poet Lydia Kennaway read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Lydia Kennaway wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet Lydia Kennaway's debut pamphlet, A History of Walking , was published in 2019. Her poems have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including The Rialto , Raceme and Poetry & Audience . Lydia won the Flambard Prize in 2017, and is Walk Listen Create’s Poet-in-Residence for 2021-22. A New Yorker living in Yorkshire, Lydia gained her MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University. the poems A New and Accurat Map of the World Drawne according to ye truest Descriptions, latest Discoveries & best observations y.t have beene made by English or Strangers 00:00 / 01:11 I have made landfall with a mouth full of sand, tossed from the sea with splintered fingers and a barnacled belly. I will eat nameless fruits and hope against poison. I will watch the moon rise while the turtles hatch and make their flappy way to water. I will scrimshaw a comb for a sweetheart I never had and sing to longfeathered birds shanties of blood-red roses. I will find passage on a passing caravel. I will return to the town I once called home. I will draw maps but make no claim that they are true, only that these are the things I have seen and the places I believe I have been. Inuit Anger Walk 00:00 / 00:54 I am a furnace in the snow. I have been given my anger-stick and told to go plant it where and when my flames have turned to embers and so I walk past my people who know to look away. I walk past the Place of Drying Fish, past the Place of Catching Fish, past the Place of the Seals who do not know to look away. I walk beyond the place called The End of Places until the heat spills from my eyes. Here I drive the stick into the yielding snow and turn to face the cold walk home. The Invention of Walking 00:00 / 01:32 Feathers, tails, claws, fins and fur, antlers, paws and scales: these are your creations. Now you take a lump of clay in your big tired hands to make another. You are weary but roll and pinch and pinch and roll the clay and start again. Out of habit you make four limbs, stick them to a blob of body, add a head. Oh hell, not that again. But then you lift the forelimbs, set the head so it doesn’t hang but balances, tricky, on a slender neck-stem. For locomotion it will stagger, shifting the weight from one hind leg to another, a constant fall and recover. With its forward-looking eyes it can want. With spare limbs it can carry, possess, and – being upright – it displays its sex but doesn’t know this yet. You make it to crave the having and dread the losing. You will teach it shame and blame Eve and a serpent and a tree while its fate is to fall always fall and recover, fall Publishing credits A New and Accurat Map of the World Drawne according to ye truest Descriptions, latest Discoveries & best observations y.t have beene made by English or Strangers: Any Change? Poetry in a Hostile Environment (Forward Arts Foundation) Inuit Anger Walk / The Invention of Walking: A History of Walking (HappenStance Press) Author photo: © Simon Wiffen Photography