Hear poet Sarah Connor read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sarah Connor wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Poet Sarah Connor lives in Devon, England, and is a past nominee for both The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and she's published two full collections of poetry: The Crow Gods and The Poet Spells Her Name . the poems Stumbling on Beauty 00:00 / 00:50 That summer, I became adept at finding beauty. I reached out for it – the clean-scrubbed nails on the nurse's fingers. They were beautiful. The green flesh of an avocado; a spider's web, caught in a hedge – all beauty. I held it like a trophy. I was so greedy for the loveliness of a child swinging in a playground, of a light caught in water of a bird turning on emptiness – I collected it, collated it, I held it tightly, threw it high, up into the air, like cherry blossom or confetti, like the light that shatters through the branches of a tree. The Red-haired Girl 00:00 / 02:20 Bobby Sands died. That's how old I am. Bobby Sands died, and the red-haired girl died too, two days apart – so now, when I discuss the hunger strikers, I still feel that gush of anger, that someone could just die. We'd been in a school play together, her and I, the Redhead. As if her hair defined her. Perhaps it did. I think now, that hair might have been her mother's first loss, the first thing she mourned. Somebody dropped out, so we both moved up a notch, theatrically. I became the mother, and she became the governess. A comic part. I wanted to play tragedy back then. The father was a guy called Tim. He wore white jeans. Went off and joined the Met. The Metropolitan Police – so that maybe when I was down in London, doing all that student stuff, making my way in party clothes at daybreak through the empty city streets, and knowing this was how my life would always be, if I'd been picked up for some minor crime, or been the victim of an unprovoked attack, so guileless in my tawdry party clothes – it could have been him that I dealt with. And maybe he was at Orgreave. So while I was layering on my eyeliner and putting change into the miner's tin, he was up there, sticking in his boot. So far apart we drift, just spiders, really, riding threads. When my hairdresser shaved my head, she cried, and an old lady sitting next to me reached over – ‘You look just like that Irish girl’, she said, and we all laughed, smiling and sobbing. That was my first loss, but nothing like her mother's – that great cloud of Titian red, those curls, she must have sighed and cursed that hair so many times, and then wept at the losing of it. The Generosity of Birds 00:00 / 00:42 By which I mean The way the robin throws his song out to the world The way the herring gull carves the sky The way the starlings create dreams The way the wren calls from the hedge The way the pigeons swagger across the city square The way the goldfinch embroiders a line between tree and sky The way the blackbird melts the world into music The way the cormorant opens its wings its arms its heart to the wind The way the lark sings only of summer The way the buzzard reminds us to trust the sky Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Louise Machen read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Louise Machen wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Manchester-based Louise Machen has an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester. Nominated for The Forward Prize (Best Single Poem –Written), she's had work in The Poetry Bus , Acropolis Journal , The Morning Star and Cape Magazine . Louise has been a featured poet at East Ridge Review , and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. Her work has featured on BBC Radio Manchester, and she was commissioned to write a poem for FC United of Manchester , celebrating their twentieth anniversary. Louise wrote a collaborative pamphlet, The Words of Others Are All We Have , and has published her debut collection, I Am Not Light . She's also a member of the poetry collective behind the audiobook, Which Way the Words Grow . the poems In Need of a Closer Shore After the MV Princess Victoria Memorial, Portpatrick 00:00 / 01:12 Granite-bolted above my wind-torn head, her greenish hands hang from iron history above a sharp and steely sea – fingers splayed and clinging like a mother’s desperation to recover the awe of infancy. Flogged by the air, I edge broadside and the picture becomes whole where pasts erode like sea stacks falling in on themselves – a short crossing, a solitary shift from which returning will always mark disaster. Gusts form abrasions like a scolding from her matriarchal tongue, whipping this child who is too close to the abyss – a daughter distracted, peeling feet from algae, unwilling to let go of her fractured vessel, as water floods the deck of attrition sluicing legs of broken timber. Do not drown me now in their loneliness. A Burnt Child Dreads the Fire 00:00 / 01:21 I dare to get out of bed each day, wash my face in troubled waters, rough flannel, tender cheeks – skin aflame from the fingertips of yesterday’s reluctant ownership. I keep my breathing shallow, beneath a square of sodden cotton, as though this room is smoke-filled – made safe by makeshift blindfolds and a thin but bolted door. I souse the canvas of my flesh, hot water pooled in porcelain, the slop and slough echoes – a rhythmic meditation made orange in the dawning light. I recite the rules by rote by heart, by practise, practise, practise by trial and by error, so quietly the hum of my voice is a vaporous elegy to rebellion: a softly spoken slander. I have been taught the right way and my way are not always the same. I pat the notes of my learning dry – water drains away. There is breakfast to be made with clean hands for glass smiles. Remains 00:00 / 01:06 Pulling up floorboards in the back room, we saw a green checked tea towel tightly wound – years hoarded in folds of bruised yellow, incongruous with copper pipes in cavities and the tedium of Sunday morning DIY. Fatherly hands unfolded the cloth – we watched as he brought to light the fragile skeleton of a tiny bird, phalanges curled and consenting to this almost-ceremony of the dining table – a not-quite final rites for our cotton-bound hand-me-down. My eyes widened like the orbital rings of that small skull, emptying their disbelief across its featherless frame. A hollowed relic of care wrapped as though old bones could fly away. Turning to my mother, he said, People are strange, aren’t they? In the room where, now, he keeps her ashes. Publishing credits In Need of a Closer Shore / A Burnt Child Dreads the Fire: I Am Not light , (Black Bough Poetry) Remains: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ben Ray read poems for wave 6 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ben Ray wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Poet, reviewer and workshopper Ben Ray is a patron of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, and a winner of the 2019 New Poets Prize. His most recent collection is The Kindness of the Eel , and his writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including Poetry Wales and The Oxford Review of Books . the poems Epska pjesma for a new millennium 00:00 / 01:19 You wanted to be an epic poem in the drafting to sit with Marko, Branković, Crnojević but our palimpsest homeland had forgotten poetry gifting us only hoarse voices, bloody footprints. We stayed at your house, frustrated we could not make history: but you had inherited from a vanished world distant stories, new borders that tightened round the neck and a rusted can of tear gas from some atrocity. Like good citizens we shut the doors, pierced the cap and inflicted our country upon ourselves pushing / staring / turning / running / choking / children vaulting over chintz sofas in desperation then outside, gasping laughing – you tore your chest open found three hearts: around the third, the snake was still sleeping In October 2000 huge protests broke out in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, against the perceived authoritarianism of the Serbian government, resulting in the overthrow of President Slobodan Milošević. The protests saw a high level of youth engagement. Sinning with Captain Birdseye 00:00 / 01:04 It really wasn’t necessary. They were just two fish fingers left sulking in soggy packaging. But that was the point. An act of Antoinette extravagance, a hubristic vote of confidence in modern society. Was there ever a better expression of disaster capitalism than turning on a whole fridge freezer just for them? No shame: only God can judge their private fishy palace for two, heated with North Sea oil to help them feel at home (Even Anthropocene bad boys have a heart). Then, of course, the breathless question on the crowd’s lips: to eat one and leave the other alone in that icy void? The act of a maniac the act of a daredevil. But look at them now. So settled. So happy. Do you not believe in redemption? Joke’s on you I have a tiramisu in my chest freezer I am a market square after everyone has left 00:00 / 01:16 I am a market square after everyone has left all made of loose veg and plastic wrapping, that pervasive pioneer of untouched spaces. My breath invigorates paper bags across slabs rustles drain-locked receipts into chorus: I am the one who pulls up the cobbles to trip the cyclists. The heart of a lettuce has never looked so lonely nor the leaves of an artichoke so fragile than when I wear them, dressing down in casual wear that would melt your heart. If carrots had eyes, they would be Disney-round and doleful as they roll down the orphanages of roadsides fulfilling tragic character arcs as they’re pulped underfoot. I am a market square after everyone has left grand words like desolation and loss are too big for my ordinary leftover onion-skin self, this paper-bag floor-level life – where dashed organic-grown hopes are swept up by street cleaners and next Sunday always seems so far away Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Angela Dye read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Angela Dye wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Angela Dye is a writer, editor, podcaster, teacher, reviewer, interviewer and radio broadcaster. She runs many literary events and projects in Kent, England, and has worked for various magazines and businesses creating audio content. Angela's work has appeared in several print and digital magazines. She's currently writing a novel, as well as her second poetry book. the poems The Ruby and the Con 00:00 / 00:50 Oh you patriarchs who regulate the calyx vase, who decree the mix of wine, milk and honey, who place me on the shelf to admire, to tame, to spill. Know this: I possess myself. I hug my curves tight, I vibrate myself within my jar. I unsteady the shelf. I smash the walls. My mother’s chambers no longer constrain me. I escape as viscous perfume, filling all the cracks. I, woman, am so wonderful and vast, I will fill boots, books, beds, babies, benches and brains. We shall run the Rubicon. We shall fill the Earth. And that shall not constrain us. The calyx is the female reproductive part of a flower. A calyx vase holds the mythical wine, honey and milk – different combinations of which denote women’s purity and immortality. Soup 00:00 / 01:33 Before the baby sun had been hurled hot into an unmade bed of sky, before earth was made, compliant and lush, we were dreaming the world, cooking up ideas, where nothing matters – he coerced me. Just once. Asked for soup. Just soup. Soup? Yes! I want it without humans in! Just a refreshing bowl of soup for the soul. Little things matter. Soup matters. Matter's in the soup: illusion and dreams, hopes and art, his dark materials to stir the soul. Season with love. So much love. Love to be made. There are many ways to kill a man. One could harm with charm, cut, drown, crown, disown, dismember, diss, hiss, piss take, mistake, disarm, cut, drown, burn, spurn, tickle, taunt, tar and feather, strap with leather, hail, nail. But remember this … the easiest way, by far the surest method to kill a good man, once and for all, is to slowly, ever so slowly, keep ... him … alive. The Borderline 00:00 / 02:11 We live in another world now, where forgiveness is no longer a magic spell, where potions are stolen, cannot be wolfed down, and Lupin cries to the moon. He wants to be good but he has this suit ... They say six foot is the best depth. This is so the stench doesn’t arise and the body is not taken so easy – for cannibalism, or even necrophilia. But five inches in, and we have hit hard strata. At first we thought we knew what we were looking at – two bodies at most, possibly, lying atop, a third. But after a while we needed the experts, the archaeologists, the social diarists and the film crews. The first cut was the hardest: that slice through still warm sinew and the gleam of bone. And now ... I cannot go any further than this. The spade has hit the denying rock that yields no more. Please say no more. I would have met you half way – I even wanted to hide the murderer in the cupboard, feed him warm milk from these old breasts. I thought that knowing we were monsters would keep us safe, our brushes with death keeping us alive. You didn’t tell us where the bodies lay. Keen senses of smell led us, dogs baying, that spotting of the perfect lawn perturbed, the fountain in the patio off kilter and the water killing the birds, the keepsakes shining in a window display. But she is a forensic expert – she will find them all. Although destroyed and with their souls sucked out, we have set them free roaming in a street near you. There can be no forgiveness now. It isn’t even needed. A monster can’t help but devour, doing what it is made to do. All one can do is run and hide. Publishing credits The Ruby and the Con / The Borderline: exclusive first publication by iamb Soup: The Echo Chamber (Whisky and Beards)

Hear poet Moira Walsh read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Moira Walsh wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Originally from Michigan, USA, Moira Walsh now calls southern Germany home – her poetry finding homes in a variety of Austrian and German journals. She's the author of Earthrise , and with Wilfried Schubert, Do Try This at Home . A founding member of Kollektief Dellgart, Moira has co-translated contemporary poets such as Olja Alvir, Ken Mikolowski, Halyna Petrosaniak, Maë Schwinghammer and others. the poems White noise, they say 00:00 / 00:22 as if it’s all one color. But then there’s the Lake: a rainbow of sushing and loshing and ashing and flishing and sething and hayshing Apology to local vegetables 00:00 / 00:36 Sweet corn – hours old, stalk to table! Oak-leaf lettuce, garlic scapes! Beet greens, basil, cucumbers! I’m sorry. On days like these nothing can squeeze down my throat except, after dark, some good cheese and a weird combination of transportation starches. Removed 00:00 / 01:09 Small room, only the right twin bed mine, half the bookshelf, half the table and one chair so half time chair sitting I miss those tranquilisers sometimes wish I’d kept the ones they slipped in a small paper envelope for my test night at home when the ward went up in smoke someone set a bed on fire and I missed it Two weeks later the next arsonist nurses changed the sheets too soon fine ash everywhere home again for a night I missed that too If I were still delusional seeking connections at all costs I would feel responsible for incendiary absence Publishing credits White noise, they say / Apology to local vegetables: exclusive first publication by iamb Removed: [kon] (Issue 10)

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 Nicole Tallman read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Nicole Tallman wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet Nicole Tallman has authored three poetry collections – Something Kindred , Poems for the People and FERSACE – as well as co-writing the forthcoming collaborative work Julie, or Sylvia with Beryl Cooper and Ibrahim Sofiyullaha. A Michigan native, Nicole now lives in Miami, where she's the official Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County. She's also the editor of Redacted Books , and poetry editor of The Miami Native , South Florida Poetry Journal and The Blue Mountain Review . the poems Montréal 00:00 / 00:54 I book us a room in a hotel named after a famous poet. It reminds me of an ex I thought I’d forgotten. It has a balcony that faces the street. In the morning, the sound of plates wakes us. You bring me a coffee in bed and an apple. We watch the city wake up below us. A man carries a bushel of hyacinth. A woman cries to someone on the phone. We dress and go downstairs for breakfast. I speak French to the hostess and remember I have another voice. It’s the one I use when I pretend I’m someone else. She seats us next to a couple in love. They drink out of each other’s glasses. We move to a table closer to the window to forget ourselves. Tulips After Sylvia Plath 00:00 / 01:12 The tulips are too excitable, it is summer here. Look how yellow everything is, how loud, how sunned-in. I am trying peacefulness, lying by the pool quietly As the light stares at these concrete walls, this float, this face. I am somebody; I have everything to do with implosions. I have given my name and my night-clothes up to my work. Nobody watched me before, but now I am watched and recorded. The tulips have turned me in, from the window beside me Where once a day their lens slowly widens and slowly zooms in, And I see myself, exaggerated in the papers and on the screens Between the eye of the public and the eyes of the seen, And I have only a cartoon face, I have effaced my real self. Before the fame the day was quiet enough, Then the tulips filled it up like an explosion. Now the air blares and flares around me the way a trumpet Blares and flares around its bright-yellow bell like a bee. Chicago 00:00 / 00:54 We spend Christmas in Chicago. We fly bundled up for a blizzard. It never snows while we are there. We take a walk before the sun comes out. We drink jasmine tea and watch our breath form in the air. The elms are lonely and naked without their winter coats. We head back to bed and watch TV. Later, we walk to get some ramen from this place the concierge recommends. We buy a bottle of our favorite wine to share in the room. This is the point in our trip when I’m tired of dining out. I imagine you are back home in our kitchen cooking. Cutting vegetables with precision. You play jazz. Why do I always want to be somewhere else? Publishing credits Montréal: River Mouth Review (Issue No. 14) Tulips: Cultural Daily (August 9th 2023) Chicago: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Aysegul Yildirim read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Aysegul Yildirim wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Aysegul Yildirim's poetry has appeared in various international magazines. Most recently, she contributed to Anne-thology: Poems Re-presenting Anne Shakespeare . An academic working at the intersection of environmental humanities and sociology, Aysegul has published a poetry pamphlet titled Plants Beyond Desire . the poems uproot 00:00 / 01:10 Her only childhood memory about plants is picking up flowers. Dahlias from grandmother’s garden; a tiny medley of purple dead nettles, camomiles, vervains, brought home from park visits with mum. By the end of the day, they’d always be in the rubbish bin. Years later, she got put in a tiny medley of humans packed in an aeroplane, never to come back. Those left behind are still tired from grief, even though the plane has not crashed yet. By the time the purple on the hands was cleared, dead nettles flourished. Nobody had cried for them, ever. Later, the idea of home has gone for us all, tiny corruptions magnified. Except for the roots. The Long Stay 00:00 / 01:52 I follow the threads of the dark grey carpet for some time. ‘Fix it before moving out,’ I answer myself. Something creeps through. I start measuring the cold surface of the confined space with my flesh, at once, and wear it. Fits me perfectly, I think, except for the spiders who want to escape. They breathe surprisingly loud. I spoil their fantasies by staying fat and awake. The love-hate relationship. Includes giving space and pesticides. I need to go out. Putting on my coat, doing up the windows, on the doorstep I calculate: if I leave now, the performance. Unforeseen contacts. Time is kaleidoscopic in this stone-built body. I have the eyes of a housefly. The carpet’s cleaning will be reduced from my deposit. My only connection with the anthropocene. My solitude is my image. If vision requires distance, I must have been doing it all wrong. Let’s start again: I need my coat when it rains. I need water too. I can’t unlearn the language of solitude, I can’t speak two languages at a time. It’s real. And it’s dark. I take off my coat. Feel the soft feel of the carpet. The grubby, quiet softness. re-root 00:00 / 00:46 Someone told me to burn sage indoors but the true magic is that no two leaves are identical. And the fact that I took a dry leaf from where it waits for me in the mud. It was the beginning of winter in Falmouth and sometimes you need that moment of acknowledgement of your image by the assemblage of the holy cliff. I’m not able to speak their language. I was receding endlessly. The leaf stayed with me nevertheless. He just fell down, he thinks. But he only had to leave himself gently to the ground. No two fallings are identical. Some- times you need to root faster than you can fall. Publishing credits uproot / re-root: Plants Beyond Desire (Broken Sleep Books) The Long Stay: exclusive first publication by iamb .

Hear poet Lisa Tulfer read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Lisa Tulfer wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet Dutch-to-English translator Lisa Tulfer is a UK-based writer of non-fiction articles, poetry and reviews (as well as an occasional blogger ). Her work has appeared in The Pilgrim , The Cardiff Review , the Earth Pathways Diary , Redemptorist Press , Green Ink Poetry and as part of The Poetry Archive's Poetry Archive NOW . Lisa is also a poetry submissions editor at Full House Literary Magazine . Exploring ideas of identity, belonging and home, Lisa is currently working on her first book. the poems Telling the bees 00:00 / 00:54 We told them because we knew it was something that had to be done. Trying to speak the words out loud our voices broke, fragments swept away on our tears, so instead we whispered the words, standing by the hives holding hands, the ‘she is dead’ barely louder than the buzzy breath. Did we imagine that the bees paused for a moment in their vibrating lives? Afterwards, it felt not better, but that the worst was behind us. We had told the bees, said the words, made it real. The average human body is 60 percent water After We’re All Water an art installation by Yoko Ono 00:00 / 01:30 we’re all water and DNA and cells, dividing shared genes and history we’re all blank canvasses and memory intuition and reflexes synapses and electricity we’re all cruelty and pain, potential unrealised or twisted energy discharged in violence against ourselves or others we’re all creative makers of bread, words, art love or babies makers of mischief, belief war, peace we’re all alive, dead fear, hope past, future we’re all strong, weak holding hands and killing clinging to life and dreaming nightmares and visions we’re all hate, fear and othering we’re all love, surprised, consumed we’re all water Blue 00:00 / 01:53 There is a certain kind of blue that happens at six o’clock on a February evening, when the sun has slipped off the edge of a clear day, trailing strands of candyfloss clouds – improbably pink – leaving behind a grey dullness that feels like a bereavement. Then paradoxically the sky begins to brighten, gains a depth not only of colour but of dimension, and as the colour shifts from grey to blue it begins to glow, luminous, greenish at the horizon, indigo overhead, striped with lines of cloud now darkest midnight against the cerulean blue. The bluest blue, bluer than a Cornish bay, bluer than the skylark-thrilling sky of summer, lying in the grass, squinting sunwards, bluer even than my lover’s eyes. Backlit blue, achingly fleeting, the blueness reaching a climax, unbearably intense and then suddenly dying, fading, becoming flat, two-dimensional. Now Prussian, darkening, dark. And into the darkest blue a sickle of silver rising, cold and clean, scything across the stars to gather the last blueness and leave the sky black. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Holly Bars read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Holly Bars wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Known for her work on surviving CSA, Leeds poet Holly Bars has been published in The Moth , Stand , The London Magazine , Ink, Sweat & Tears and elsewhere. She was one of six New Northern Poets in 2024, as chosen by the Ilkley Literature Festival , and published her debut, Dirty , with Yaffle Press. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds. the poems Rewriting my Mother’s Death 00:00 / 00:59 The Moon kissed my mother, came in through the front door, to her room, to her bed, and it fitted perfectly; the Moon was all cream and sugar that night, and my mother was coffee. Moon kissed my mother like mercy: the awaited home after a journey; smoke in the chimney; the warm teacup. Kissed my mother, and I can see how the Moon filled the room with the opposite of alone. Moon kissed my mother when my mother could barely hold herself up; the longest night. The Moon kissed my mother, Alicia, and she kissed back. Breathing in stardom 00:00 / 01:32 with all the glamour of a maisonette in Bramley. Our coke is cut with crystals of Persil, paracetamol, gunpowder. Someone’s mum’s kitchen is our dressing room whilst she’s sectioned. Someone else fetches a mirror, CD cases, rolls up five pound notes which probe our nostrils, fills them fat till our amethyst veins crack. We stream onto the red carpet of the living room, clamour in 60-watt light, and not even beetling mould can dampen this. Everyone wants us. Someone plays bassline and it beats down our arms, pulses in our nipples and clits and cocks. And we hang off fire, white and obvious, lips releasing, talking the rabbit off the moon. Even our blood is noisy, itching with wishes and achievement because we’re seventeen, bright and brilliant in this beautiful snow blanket we dress ourselves in for a night; kiss and talk, fuck forever. Before morning dusts us, sun steals our starlight and blood becomes black. The Magic Circle 00:00 / 01:11 Magicians keep their methods in a ring, wear ordinary clothes, ordinary faces, have ordinary jobs. Some people tell you that magicians are old men with a pension and no hobbies: this is a trick. Magicians love tricks, especially that one; it helps them, makes them mythic. Magicians love getting away with it. They love their stage and apparatus, their wands, pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Magicians pick their assistants carefully. But most of all, they love the hoodwink. Magicians love showmanship, to flaunt. They love the awe of the audience, the round of applause. Magicians love the climax; the white dove disappearing; a body sawn in half. They live for the wonder in a child’s eyes. A good magician never tells their secrets. Publishing credits Rewriting my Mother ’s Death : Black Nore Review (Nov 28th 2024) Breathing in Stardom / The Magic Circle: Dirty (Yaffle Press)

Hear poet Erik Kennedy read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Erik Kennedy wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Erik Kennedy is the author of There's No Place Like the Internet in Springtime . He's co-editing a book of climate change poetry from New Zealand and the Pacific which will be published by Auckland University Press in 2021. His poems and criticism have recently appeared in The Moth, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, Erik now lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. the poems The Night Before the Barn-raising 00:00 / 02:04 It was the night before the barn-raising and our son told us that he wasn’t going to be participating. He no longer believed, he told us. I asked him if he meant that he didn’t believe in barns, and I pointed impatiently to the wall and a print of a lovely old barn in DeKalb County. It wasn’t like that, he said. He no longer believed in community, in cooperation. And I said oh, wasn’t that convenient for him to give up on community just when the Flowerdews needed his help with their barn. And I asked if he didn’t remember when Mrs Flowerdew bought a subscription to Pigeon Fancy Magazine when he was fundraising for his school choir trip to Paraguay. And I asked if he thought that Mrs Flowerdew gave an everloving faff about pigeons. The woman is allergic to birds. Allergic. She did it to help him, and I said that I shouldn’t wonder that she’d do it again even if he’d become a thankless heartbreak to his dear mother and a disappointment to the town and a threat to a cohesive society. He said he was sorry but that’s just how it was, and we needed to respect his beliefs, and he was going outside to get some air and he hoped we’d understand some day. So I told his little sister to wait ten minutes then go upstairs and cut all his shoelaces with the kitchen scissors. Georgics 00:00 / 02:45 A lambent light it is that fills the pasture, but it’s too dark to read. The wise farmer rises early to get the best broadband speed. As shepherds watch their fleecy care, they see claggy-arsed, beady-eyed billows of wool. A full house is a pair of Cheviots and three of a kind of Karakuls. ‘Pneumatic nipple suck-fest’ is a quaint term for the morning milking! Gervase Markham writes of a cow that filled sixty buckets. You can ride a tractor from, as the Italians say, the stable to the stars. The tractor’s GPS is more powerful than the computer on the ship that, some day, will take men to Mars. Fifty miles south of here it’s green-yellow. Fifty miles north it’s green. Here, brown trout are scooped from the drying river in nets and trucked to the sea. They wrap hay in plastic now, another processed food. ‘They’ are the farmers. Making hay is a pleasant interlude. The last lightning-strike fire was put out by passing farmer Alan MacHugh. The superstitious among us say that he threw the lightning himself. I’ve asked, and my duty is not to protect the weak. It is to make the weak strong. May they use that strength to make their own peace. At night, from a car, sheep’s eyes look like the ghosts of snooker balls. The dew falls in orbs and rises in a vaporous pyramid. That’s the water cycle, kid. The half-sun on the evening hill is a great aunt’s hairy kiss. Around the manger the animals sing ‘What Version of Pastoral Is This?’ Where the glow-worm creepeth in the night, no adder will go in the day. The ways things are going now, it’s cheaper to throw the crops out than to give them away. Annual Self-evaluation 00:00 / 02:40 I misunderstood what the gig economy is. It is not, in fact, driving people around in a gig, a light, two-wheeled sprung cart pulled by a single horse. My mistake! And now I suspect that I don’t know what ride-sharing is, either— not if it means something other than budging up in the carriage so another lady or gentleman in muslin and starch can share the seat with you. It makes so much sense now that no one ever mentions horses in relation to the gig economy or ride-sharing. They’re big animals—can’t miss the neighing— and if they were involved you’d think they’d come up. But I do know that cars are part of the conversation, and I think to myself, Now we’re getting somewhere. Like the golden car of Helios drawing the sun across the sky, these are the vehicles of our lives, bringing light and wisdom and clarity to both the meek and the proud so we may realise mutually our destiny to be one people, bound together imperfectly but happily in struggle and earthly love! But no, I’ve got that wrong, too, that is not what a car is, and I suddenly grasp that I am three hundred years old, my ideas are as fashionable as falling down the stairs, as relevant as the social contract or nostrums for scurvy, and I apologise humbly for not bettering myself in the last year, or in other years, and for taking a place in the economy that might be better used by an eager unit, an operative of the now who would privatise the past and mortgage the future for the right to say ‘I am here today’ and who wouldn’t waste your time with self-accusations like mine. Publishing credits The Night Before the Barn-Raising: Minarets (Issue 10) Georgics: Landfall (No. 230) Annual Self-Evaluation: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Charlotte Oliver read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Charlotte Oliver wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Charlotte Oliver lives in Yorkshire. She's had poetry commissions from the BBC, as well as from Scarborough’s South Cliff Gardens Restoration Project. Her work has appeared in various publications including Dream Catcher, Green Teeth, Ice Floe, Black Bough Poetry, Cape, Spelt and Fevers of the Mind . Charlotte's debut chapbook, How To Be A Dressing Gown , was published by Dreich Chapbooks, and she's currently working on a radio ballad funded by Arts Council England. the poems How To Be a Dressing Gown 00:00 / 01:11 Your role is that of a hug in clothing form, you must channel the softness of a lullaby and the gentleness of true love. And, of course, have big pockets with a tissue inside. A valuable source of warmth you must be a mobile retreat in times of illness, heartbreak, a good Saturday book after a hard week or a crisp Christmas morning. Be always ready, lurk in unexpected places (the bathroom floor? the dining room? Monday lunchtime?) and your greatest gift: the trump card the un-ignorable siren to the world and uninvited visitors at the door, that the wearer is OFF DUTY and no questions can be asked (but this must only be used in extremis or its force will fade). You have the power of an unexpected sponge pudding with custard but stay humble and keep yourself together – lose your belt and you will probably become dusters. Nothing Happens But Everything Happens 00:00 / 00:40 Like the imperceptible inhalations of rising bread. Like bare soil in winter. Like Mondays in Lockdown when the earth scrapes round with grief. Like when I cook dinner, everyday. Like a feeling you didn’t ask for. Like a yes or a no. Like the silence when you ask if they’re okay and the words in their throat crumple up like a paper straw sucked too hard and you can’t straighten it out for them. Hope 00:00 / 00:45 I want the belief of an ant with a giant leaf, of the Alsatian that escorts its owner down the street, of a herring gull leaving land behind, of a wasp. I don’t remember what it used to be like, just the clatter of freedom like waves on a pebbled shore, and eternity’s breath on my bare neck. I don’t remember how it felt just the early taste of you – fresh water from a quiet stream. I don’t remember much except the view that embraced me from all directions: a thousand greens, stitched together with hope. Publishing credits All poems: How To Be A Dressing Gown (Dreich Chapbooks)