Hear poet Faye Alexandra Rose read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Faye Alexandra Rose wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Faye Alexandra Rose is the author of four chapbooks: When Memory Fades , Incognito , Mortal Beings and Pneuma – the last of these shortlisted for the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Faye's forthcoming release, Wild Women , is due out with Sunday Mornings at the River. the poems A Force of Nature 00:00 / 00:28 We are Earth’s daughters, hips like rolling hills, moss-laced breasts quench your eternal thirst. We contain the ocean, unpredictable beauty, one pull of the moon creates a ruinous storm. We weaponize life’s sting like the blazing sun —even wildflowers can survive barren lands. We grow lungs like the roots of a birch tree, and nest fragility out the reach of beasts. Womb of the State TW: SA 00:00 / 00:33 Humanity is no longer human when people dig out their souls with coat hangers. Fearful of others with needles for hands waiting to thread their bodies to a backward piece of legislation. Two lines on plastic equate to a cross, righteousness woven with power like thorns in the skull. Wombs are crime scenes wrapped in yellow tape, for conceiving from brutality and not from being raped. Whilst stained white flags sway in limp hands, cursed tongues pray for their bodies to be cut free. My estranged father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 00:00 / 01:12 Dad, if I can still call you that, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt entitled enough, for your silhouette has always stood empty within photographs but your presence has always lingered, like a punch in the gut, as I’ve lived my life mourning a man who has never been and never will be. For I heard whispers through grapevines that your brain is a ball of yarn, your memory unravelling, forgiving you for all past sins. And I’ve spat bile at empty pages since I read that news, but each time it only ever seems to poison me as I pull at my skin to prove to myself that I’m real, trying to fathom that you no longer remember I exist. And I clung on for dear life Dad, I did, I never lost hope that I could hear your voice for the first time, an apology. But I must continue living with the pain of being forgotten, You don’t know I exist; I didn’t exist; I don’t exist. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Elizabeth Loudon read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Elizabeth Loudon wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Elizabeth Loudon is a novelist and poet living in southwest England. Her debut novel A Stranger In Baghdad was longlisted for the Bridport Prize, and won the 2024 International Fiction Book Award at the Sharjah International Book Fair. Her poetry has appeared in Blue Mountain Review, Amsterdam Review , Saranac Review , Whale Road Review , Southword , and Sho Poetry Journal , as well as in Best New Poets 2025 . When not writing, Elizabeth likes being outdoors as much as possible. the poems Fireflies 00:00 / 01:26 We’d made lunch-time love against your kitchen wall and I’d sat at my desk all afternoon gutted and gloated, unable to turn a page. I wanted to show you the riverbank fireflies at dusk, their morse code flashes of desire. We were ankle-deep in stars, my shoulder-blades a crescent gleam, a floodspit of driftwood flamed paraffin blue above the river’s easy, repetitive flow, but our timing was ragged. On my thigh you tapped a sonata whose syncopation you still had to master. An inch can drown us. You unwrapped your legs from mine and we left the theatre of high jinx empty-handed, crossing one lamplit island to the next until we reached my moth-spattered porch. You told me once it’s bad form to linger when they switch on the houselights and lower the lid on the piano. Performance is never personal. I didn’t look back when you left. The grass was dark and unintelligible. I Put My Life To Bed 00:00 / 01:57 You know what I’m up to. I’ve come to tell you a bedtime story, and then I’ll turn the lights off. We sat on a wall in Toronto, leaf litter at our feet, and you said there’s nobody else with whom I could have come back to this place. We drove to a lake under a heartless winter sky and you showed me the narrow bed where eighty years ago you slept out the war. Remember? You shut your eyes, alarm pulsing at your throat as I burrow into the hard soil of your past. Little life who used to cartwheel over cut lawns, where are you now? On a hotel balcony, snow streaming off a mountain’s wings? Or once more in the cold room where you cradled your baby, Victory confetti swept away, your teenage arms too weak to hold her? They gave you four days to feel her heat and suck. Afterwards, so what. So what a velvet sash at my waist, the bitter spritz of Italian lemons. So what other small hands to hold, pale and curled as slugs. It’s indecent to dig this deep into somebody else, but here’s my last chance to hear the secret name you stitched into the hem of every dawn. You ask me to turn off the overhead light. I can’t, I say. It’s the sun. Money 00:00 / 01:44 Now we are old we like to remember how we carried you home from the hospital, strapped into the back of our shiny blue car in a seat designed to protect you from the worst, how we feared everything, from the sluice of rain on the windscreen to the mailman strolling from door to door, how we cradled you against our bodies and tested your bathwater with our elbow, your temperature with the flat of our hand. We invited friends to admire you. They arrived with armfuls of flowers in emerald, ruby, the colours of abundance. In their eyes we detected the skitter of envy. We said, Our money is sleeping, tread softly, although only a bomb would awaken you and we worried when you slept. Oh baby we said, fly east to the saltwater bays where storms are cooked and splay your great-feathered wings like a cormorant on the pilings of abandoned docklands, a thrash of silver-fish in your beak. Let us admire you! You described a vanishing wheel in the sky as we watched from the bridge, keeping company with skateboard dancers and mystic drunks. In the tidal mud below lay bottles and shoes, reminders of when we too were wild, our wanton lives unborn. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Pey Oh read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Pey Oh wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Pey Oh (she/her) is a Bath-based poet from Malaysia. Her first pamphlet, Pictograph , was published by Flarestack Poets in 2018. Her recent work appears in harana poetry , Butcher’s Dog Magazine, Long Poem Magazine and The Scores – A Journal of Poetry and Prose . the poems Penang After Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XXVII (from Cien sonetos de amor ) 00:00 / 01:53 I do not love you as if you were the rasp of heat on my shoulder blades, or the endless cicada song in the night. The hush of humidity is as strong as a hand over my mouth I would lick the salt from. I do not heed the call of your secrets, as if from a distant city with its lure of neon and sweat. The loneliness of 2am stalks me, dark doorways with rusted postboxes, whose sentinels are worn men with bony limbs. I do not find hope from small altars on cracked pillars, ash dusting gilt letters. The burning spirals of incense do not carry the whisper of my prayer between us. Fire everywhere, wicks flare on oil and wax. I do not visit my ancestors' bones to hear the chanting of monks kneeling together on the marble floor, or to see the temple snake dazed by smoke make prophecies, lowering its double eyelid and tasting the air. I do not love you as if you were a mosaic of dragons or those filial tales on florid tiles. Distant hills call me to dusty steps of duty, winding around the tall spire. English is my Second Language? 00:00 / 02:20 Whispers, restless meanings, rocking the cradle. Sleep now, a lullaby of pictographs. Dancing with the seagulls in my first Encyclopaedia of Birds, white wings, black tipped, flashing in the blue sky, white dress, baby feet, flashing in that blue heat – flight and dreaming yoked together as the many-names-of-things. Second language, the ladder to my escape; the way out, the other world – I wrestled for it, asked for blessing; Exile is an English name. In banishment, a faint music still follows me: a bamboo scaffold, wobbly but strong, to build new rhythms in a journey – not home . I go to China, place of my ancestors; I clamber around and wind its golden dragons round my thumbs. Master its ways, gallop the horses of the steppes – on a high plateau, dance with Generals drunken and fat, in gold braid and red caps. I dream in tongues varied and few; in none, come the power of commonality – lonely fragments like us, seeking to be held close. First language follows me like instinct or a beautiful abstract; entirely open in meaning – a stricken mute maiden at my heels. I’ve learned to jump through the hoops now; I am my other tongue, whether right or sinister – bound like a confident wave to the sea. I feel the power and the draw of it; the sensual limning is a careful adornment of bare bones – talisman and relic for dissecting the myth: making it new. The Fox Fairy 00:00 / 01:12 Appearances are deceiving. How do you know I’m not one of those women with secrets. You know the kind – ones who take husbands – then slip out at night to run in the fields; dew wet and odorous after the passion, to hunt for mice. How do you know I don’t relish the crunch of small bones, the death snap, the warmth of raw meat? They’ve always said Fox Women have long black hair and never look in the mirror. How do you know I mightn’t have a fox mate in some mountain lair? His instinct cannot tell him I am fey. His is the innocent way of courting this tawny piece. A moon maiden dancing in the dew. A woman with secrets. Publishing credits Penang: harana poetry (Issue 4) English is my Second Language?: Pictograph (Flarestack Poets) The Fox Fairy: And Other Poems

Hear poet Elizabeth McGeown read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Elizabeth McGeown wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Elizabeth McGeown is from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and is the current All-Ulster Slam Champion. Winner of the 2019 Cúirt International Festival of Literature Spoken Word Platform, Elizabeth has been a finalist in the All-Ireland Poetry Slam and represented Northern Ireland at the Hammer & Tongue UK Slam Finals 2019 in the Royal Albert Hall. She has received funding from Arts Council of NI and The National Lottery to work on her first full-length spoken word show. Her poetry has featured most recently in Banshee, Abridged and Riggwelter. the poems SUFTUM 00:00 / 03:06 Ulster Rugby have a slogan: Stand. Up. For. The. Ulster. Men. Stand up in court. Stand up for 8 days detailing, and detailing, and detailing their triumphs while they get half a day each, in their delicacy, for their delicacy. You are a delicacy, not-so-gently roasted over an open fire. Liar! Stand up as underwear is passed around – yours – while they hmm and haah and examine: 'These are a bit showy, aren't they, Jennifer? Almost as if you wanted someone to see them, Sadie.' Stand up and explain VPL spoiling an outfit and dressing for yourself from the inside out. Sarah/Lynn/Sue cries. Classic victim! Stand up while they debate the merits of certain bloodstains, the consistency of menstrual blood versus trauma blood and stand up while they tell you you don't know the difference. Don't know the difference between a lot of things. All fingers and thumbs. Just fingers and thumbs. No harm done. Stand up. Stand up explaining why you wanted to go to a party, why anybody wants to go to a party, why parties exist and the evolution of humans gathering for friendship and celebration. It seems they have never heard of parties before, not met a woman who seeks out company for conversation. Stand up when they accept the party, grudgingly, other middle-class girls were at the party but aren't sure why you went as you're not middle class, aren't sure why you went into the room. The room! Theroomth eroomt herooooooooom thero ooooo oooooooooo m Stand up while there's a giggling babble from the gallery, faint sounds of popcorn munching. Stand up check your phone *new messages* because word gets around. This is why you don't go to court. Lie low, hide, be proud, be honest, just the facts, you're lying This is why you don't report. STAND UP. Stand up and explain that a room can just mean a kiss, a room can often mean a kiss, in the past a room was a kiss on its own merits. A room is not a promise and a kiss is just a kiss. Stand up and explain you didn't know you were going into a room with a top shagger, with suemepaddy. You didn't know it wasn't a room but a merry-go-round. You just thought you were going into a normal room with a normal person. Singular, not plural. It's hard to stand up when the whole room is spinning and you are a carousel horse. But stand up. Stand up for the Ulster ... women? Everything You Could Ever Need i.m. Comfort, Praise-Emmanuel and Gabriel Diya (d. December 24th 2019) 00:00 / 03:17 We have everything you could ever need. Welcome to your home away from home! We provide you with luxury, we are full board, we are an undisputed hotspot, we are whatever you want us to be. A romantic getaway? Our beds are the best beds, the finest, you will sleep on feathers and dream away. You will watch beach sunsets with panoramic views, you will dine by candlelight. Explore, please, our lush tropical gardens. A family break? We have daytrips: visit Malaga – the home of Pablo Picasso. We have golf! Your children can come with us SCUBA diving, or painting, or to the fun fair. Our complex boasts twenty-one swimming pools and of all the pools in all the world, she had to d i v e i n t o ours. I know an old woman who swallowed a fly, who swallowed a spider to swallow the fly, who swallowed a rat to swallow the spider, who swallowed a cat to swallow the rat all the way up to a horse. She's dead, of course. A girl is drowning. There are no lifeguards but we offer such luxury here! Such candlelight, such silk sheets, such a wondrous buffet, no lifeguards. Children struggle in water all the time. An older brother sighs. In the absence of a lifeguard, he will fix this. Pauses his game, puts down his tablet and gets wet. A boy is drowning, trying to swallow-save his sister-fly but it is just a coincidence. We have tested the water and examined the drainage system. We boast twenty-one pools in our complex! We know how to pool safely. An increasingly concerned father tries and tries his best as he has done his whole life; to protect his children, to open large embracing arms, to be the horse, to swallow the cat to catch the rat to catch the spider to catch the daughter-fly. His wife and other child, dry child, still breathing child pray loudly, pray screaming as defibrillators are employed to no avail on girl, brother, father. We have everything you could ever need! We have retrieved her swimming hat from the filtration unit. After the investigation was declared complete, we reopened the twenty-first pool. We need no lifeguards, we have twenty-one pools, we know how to pool. We are so delighted you chose to spend your Christmas Eve with us. Flesh 00:00 / 01:47 These sacks, these bags of flesh we live in; they expand, beyond what one could ever comprehend. Would you sit and eat chocolate naked watching your nudity grow? Thinking about what you used to be: whip-thin. A boy laughs and tells you you are both sticks; rub together would create fire, would burn out. You find this romantic. Hip bones crash flintily, sheets appear, on next day examination, to be scorched. But what is this compared with whale? Glorious whale. So many curves of you that you have lost track of which island your hands rest on. Is this breast or stomach one or stomach two (lesser stomach) or a buttock or a back roll? It all forms a melange and you know you could create more of it and yet more (no intellect needed for this creation; to simply eat with gluttonous abandon). Skate fingers across the pink-coloured more of you, twisting and turning to admire the new excesses. Thigh dimples smile and wink at you. Tiny purple cracked lines of lightning express your power. Raise hips and thighs and thunder them in time to the music. You are all weather conditions. Droplets of moisture gather between mounds as you consider your next move. It will be colossal. Publishing credits SUFTUM / Everything You Could Ever Need: exclusive first publication by iamb Flesh: Abridged (0–58 Kassandra)

Hear poet Nichola Deane read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Nichola Deane wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet Nichola Deane’s first collection, Cuckoo , followed on from her pamphlets Trieste , a Laureate’s Choice, and My Moriarty , which won the 2012 Flarestack Poetry Pamphlet Prize, and was The Poetry Book Society’s Autumn Pamphlet Choice for 2012. Nichola’s poems have appeared in Poetry London , Archipelago , Magma , Oxford Poetry, The North and elsewhere. Michael Mackmin describes her work as ‘amazing’, while Carol Ann Duffy says Nichola is a poet who is ‘sophisticated and lyrically charged, precise and daring.’ Douglas Dunn goes further, calling Nichola ‘a future English Elizabeth Bishop.’ the poems ‘Hotel de la mer’, ‘Hotel de l’Etoile’ After Joseph Cornell 00:00 / 00:44 I have arrived here with my suitcase, full of the sea wind. I am unpacking, laying out on the bed, Black Rock, Port Madoc, Rhos Neigr, Caldey: small hotels of my childhood, rickety static caravans, the last pinks and purples in the west, the tracing of lines and faces and first names in darkening sand. I am looking at all that I made with mere pebble and shell in those fading oases. I am looking at my hopes and can smell salt. Cuckoo 00:00 / 00:34 When the buds on the birch disappear I appear so spooked, het-up, heaven-fretted, bejesused, souped up with all the may- bees in May, the new plight of the new ( Cuckoo , Cuccu ) to haunt us back, to the sleeping greenwood ( like that? how so? ) with a – wake for a voice, my loopy echo, a bit of locus pocus Anubis January, 2015 00:00 / 00:22 The heart will weigh – what after all its watching? Less than a sparrow’s, and then, then nothing at all: heart-in-the-branches, heart-in-the-split-bark, heart-in-the-nodding-wind. Publishing credits 'Hôtel de la Mer', 'Hôtel de L'Étoile': The Rialto (No. 84) Cuckoo / Anubis: Cuckoo (V. Press)

Hear poet Hilary Otto read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Hilary Otto wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Hilary Otto is an English poet based in Barcelona, where she reads regularly in both Spanish and English. Her work has featured in Ink, Sweat & Tears , Popshot , Black Bough Poetry , The Blue Nib and elsewhere. Hilary was longlisted for the Live Canon 2021 International Poetry Prize, and her first pamphlet, Zoetrope , will be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2022 . the poems A dream of flying 00:00 / 01:54 At times the locust prefers to be alone. Until one day when it’s too hot, food is short and there are too many saw-clamp jaws scissoring shut. When those spiny hind legs rub together it all revs up. A sex switch flicks. They’re chock full of guaiacol, buzzing like a floor of clubbers, bingeing on lush leaves, fat grain. They get high on grazing, flush wheat-gold, and rise. In their striped masks, they terrorise the locals who cannot swat them in such numbers, can’t control the swirl and swarm. So many wings whirring in the corn, so many antennae waving in the furrows, weighing down the stalks until they split. Like remote-controlled drones they fly as one murky swathe, moving on the breeze in careless decimation. They gorge before the spray can settle, then flee long skies away, their wreckage strewn in hard and yellowing husks. Far from here, the upsurge will finally recede just as hormones do. Somewhere, among the stumps of a ravaged field a locust wakes alone, its head buzzing. It has no scent memory of this place, or its arrival here. All it remembers is a dream of flying across deep water, its mind heavy with gold. What the data about migration told me 00:00 / 01:01 We are incoming packets discrete, carrying our own context. Our aim is to pass through without being stored in a session. We choose the optimal path for delivery, clustering at the interface between nodes. When we encounter a closed path we redistribute, or use a broker for dispatch and settlement. The broker makes decisions based upon current demand. If the load is well-balanced we are outgoing, our movement is invisible to the receiver until we reach choke point we have not yet reached settlement we are asynchronous threads pooling we are stateless, but we persist Black star Scientists recently examining a victim of Vesuvius found that the extreme heat had turned his brain to glass. 00:00 / 01:09 This is no ordinary stain. Here lies a cluster of black stars, a spilling of ideas; the spectacle of dreams on fire. Inside this many-faceted mirror there is a man, exploding from his own head in a shower of thoughts. Vitrified, he shines, his secrets burned dark in the pit of a flame. This is birth itself smothered in sharp death. One catastrophic jewel spreads its brittle offering to Vulcan. Shards of energy cooked in the kiln of a skull are pressed cold across our consciousness in a bribe. This is what you could be, Death whispers. Look how beautiful you are! Publishing credits A dream of flying: The Blue Nib (Issue 44) What the data about migration told me: Ink, Sweat & Tears Black star: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Joe Williams read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Joe Williams wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Joe Williams is a writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is The Taking Part : a pamphlet of poems on the theme of sports and games. His other work includes the pamphlet This is Virus , a sequence of erasure poems made from Boris Johnson’s letter to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the verse novella An Otley Run , shortlisted for Best Novella in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. the poems On Platform Zero 00:00 / 01:29 On platform zero, the next train departing is the 08:26 to Oblivion, calling at Emptiness, Nihilism and Existential Dread. This train has no carriages. Please mind the gap between illusion and reality. If you require assistance, stand on a chair and scream. On platform zero, a man has been waiting for the 10:44 to Scarborough for 87 days. To pass the time, he has grown a beard and memorised the names of every Secretary of State for Transport since 1919. The information screen says On time. On platform zero, the 12:15 to London King’s Cross has been replaced by the 16:22 to Inverness. The Tannoy says they apologise for any convenience. Please wait for the doors to open before boarding the train. First-class passengers are advised to go somewhere else. On platform zero, you can view the plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail and the HS2 extension, which will definitely be completed by 2048, latest, unless it is delayed by planned engineering works or llamas on the line or societal collapse or unprecedented coastal erosion. On platform zero, they are building platform minus one. In the Lounge Bar of the Comrades Club Ashington, 1984 00:00 / 00:43 The bairns play under the tables, waiting for Lisa to finish her sweep of the room that tastes of tab smoke and last year’s graft. Lisa gets to Denny, head down, checking the bingo in the Daily Star. She lifts her bucket, delivers a practised line: It’s for the miners . Denny hoys in a pound coin, bright from a nylon pocket. You can ha’ this, pet. Ah divven’t like them. Tha wus nowt wrang wi’ the nurts. When Lisa’s done working the room she takes the bairns outside, where glass from a stoved-in nearside window catches her palm, drawing blood. Glastonbury, Parts 1 & 2 00:00 / 00:55 The first time was magical, baked in psychedelic sun, a third summer of love. Sat outside the dance tent, passing smuggled spliffs, our skins scraped the parched earth to sounds curated by Massive Attack. On stage, someone broke the news: John Major had resigned. Raised the biggest cheer of the day. The second time was Biblical, rain-slapped, mud-soaked. We didn’t see the papers that compared it to the Somme. Pre-mobile, we had no means of contact over ravaged fields. I never found out why I ended up in the rescue van. Might have been something in the whizz. I waited for you for hours. Publishing credits On Platform Zero: The Poetry Supertram (Chapel FM, Writing on Air Festival 2022) In the Lounge Bar of the Comrades Club: Oluwale Now (Peepal Tree Press) Glastonbury, Parts 1 & 2: Green Fields: Sorted for poems (Maytree Press)

Hear poet Katrina Naomi read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Katrina Naomi wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Katrina Naomi’s poetry has featured on Poems on the Underground, as well as on Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Country. She tutors with Arvon and the Poetry School , and has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. Katrina’s fourth collection, Battery Rocks , won her the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors, and was Daljit Nagra ’s Collection of the Month on Radio 4 Extra’s Poetry Extra. She's also received the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry, and with fellow poet Helen Mort, a Saboteur Award. the poems Fickle Lover 00:00 / 01:33 Ours is not a relationship of equals. You’re passionate, rough, violent. So much is an act – you’re always on display – I want you all to myself. Of course, you’re unfaithful, you swim with anyone, moshing their thighs, their breasts, knocking them out with your rush. At one time, I could choose whether to be in love with you. I do my best to ignore your conquests. Instead, I think of when you’re away, how you leave me gifts – razor shells, man o war, jags of glass – fragile reminders of your own tough love. I need your chill; can’t help myself. You swoosh round my brain, frolicking with neurones, make my skin fit me, tighter, tighter, after I’ve plunged right in. I’m going deeper. I can’t consider what you want – pinning me, scraping my limbs along rocks. I’ve learnt to say no. Despite your allure, I won’t go to you at night. But sunrise, I’ll be waiting for you, having shifted my day around your tides; my primitivism seduced – loving how you run, spuming, towards me. And if there were no sea? 00:00 / 00:55 no shushing of the pull / no shimmer of summer / no knowledge of splash / no repetition of clouds / no clouds / no splendour of kelp / no fish / no study of scales / no silhouette of oystercatcher / the moon on repeat / no islands / no need for ships / storms would laze in their beds / no Speedos / no coastal erosion / all of us living inland / no salt / no shells / no need to row / no Jaws / no glamour of rock pools / nowhere for the sun to swim / no rivers / rain unknown / no place to drown in the kelp forest 00:00 / 01:40 the first time she finds herself among brown strands between fear and wonder floating in this other world of upside down a place a person could wed herself to so much dank silence beyond her breath the gentle murmur of limbs in suspension their arc and splay there’s no peace like this in the dry country she’s like a body in a jar at the lab but keeps her Dutch colours sliding her mind through slender lengths of weed fabric-like plastic-like part translucent part shine like nothing else but kelp her restless hair goes on its own pulsing journey she forgets for blissed moments she can’t breathe here this isn’t air waves nudge overhead it’s like any place almost visited say a city say Seville and she talks half-seriously half what-if of how she might live here the kelp wafts in welcome displays its tentacles as she refuses neoprene longs for kelp’s beckon and touch longs to pass as a local a strange fish for sure but one who could belong Publishing credits Fickle Lover: Same But Different (Hazel Press) And if there were no sea?: berlin lit in the kelp forest: winner of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry 2021 All poems: Battery Rocks (Seren Books, 2024)

Hear poet Charlotte Knight read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Charlotte Knight wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet British-Ukrainian poet Charlotte Knight is a 2021 New Poets Prize winner , and was commended in the UK National Poetry Competition in 2019. Her work has featured variously in Magma, SPAM, Lighthouse Journal , Perverse and elsewhere. Charlotte is studying for a Masters at Goldsmiths College. Her pamphlet, Ways of Healing , will be published by Smith|Doorstop in June 2022. the poems [Insert Sappho Reference] 00:00 / 01:03 pour wine over this white goat or like hunt me for sport oh baby love a long fusillade of mistakes burning holes in my new purple furs love a frenetic chasing why do i have four legs or love a fecund horn sounding and me and my pheromones so very tangible you can smell them in the cheese like the things you awoke in me your head a bunch of violets my lap a goat’s lap can i collect this as a sadness can i carry this hurt in a basket specifically woven for the occasion can i be exiled is there an island for heartbroken goats why am i bleating when i say [insert sappho reference] i mean i get it we have all loved somebody with the knowledge that they won’t love us back i mean i don’t get it i am a goat why am i crying Hell is Real 00:00 / 01:02 Travelling southbound on Interstate 71, motorists pass a sign which reads HELL IS REAL . It stands in a plowed field and serves as a reminder to all God-fearing farmhands that they must indeed fear God. I am not so easily influenced, I could never be a farmhand for the Lord. In fact, I frequently shoplift and have thoughts about holding hands with you in public spaces. The HELL IS REAL sign is one of many roadside prophecies erected in the midwest. Amongst others, there is Jesus Saves , Jesus save My Soul , I Need u Jesus . I do not believe in Jesus, but I do believe in believing. And though I could never be a farmhand for the Lord, I have to love Him. Look at all the signs He gave us. Singing Before I Drown in a River in Denmark 00:00 / 01:03 mermaid-like and incapable of my own distress i collect flora from the riverbank looting a natural ecosystem hoping to one day be framed in gold i carry my losses with me every flower a symbol how foxgloves are death how cattails innocence how pansies are love in vain how you you held me always obscured in dark corners like with nature how easy to say we are separated tall grass wildflowers no waves no waves a tributary husband we were subject to bursting banks breaking boughs overseas mad with grief singing for you till my muddy death how easy to say gone Publishing credits [Insert Sappho Reference]: runner-up in the Outspoken Prize for Poetry (Page category) Hell is Real: Ink Sweat & Tears Singing Before I Drown in a River in Denmark: Neutral Spaces (Issue 2)

Hear poet Rishika Williams read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rishika Williams wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Rishika Williams started writing poetry after COVID-19 lockdowns eased in London in 2021. She writes trauma-based, long-form narrative poetry centred on gender-based violence, Partition, and activism in Sindh – both her families having left Hyderabad around Partition. She was shortlisted for the 2022/23 Malorie Blackman Scholarship, and longlisted for the UK's National Poetry Competition in 2023. Her work appears in Third Space , Between the Lines , Form Lab and Hyderabad & Beyond . Rishika performs regularly at open mics, online, and at events, including at the World Sindhi Congress’ 36th Annual Conference in 2024. the poems on the bald hill 00:00 / 02:46 I press my palm to brick touch a familial laugh with the metre of forgive I press my ear to stone listen to the river walk I recall the game thurra with small flecks of flint with the rhythm of return I recall that havaa, that wind a tourist on the bald hill I tell the windcatchers my got~ra is Kashyap with the Haridwar scrolls I tell the land grabbers nukhs D~umba and T~evek I find your initials in my mehendi Khudāwadī script on my hands with the search for sat~a suhagan~ I find my hair is wet with oil a red thread wraps my wrist I count seven fruits on my lap nine planets, a swastik, a betel nut with the invite to the departed I count two pieces of misree conjoined a red line in my parting I throw the clothes from my old life ghari pots laden with water with the many shapes of fire I throw ghee and spice in the flames the mandap is one umbrella  I walk in front for moksha mangal sutra chains my neck with the priest facing north I walk east for liberty dancing girl is there to protect me I let you step on my foot a dholee brought me here with the camels and the horses I let you step on my land my parents wash your feet I give salt for loyalty exchange datar with the slope with the tilak from the incline I give salt for peace and unity the grains sigh in my blood I fast for your long-life in search for the T~eejr^ee moon with the light I catch in my thali I fast to remain your wife there are seven widows’ shrines I look straight in the eyes of a crow the kawa know my face with the directions of the caw I look straight at my front door you take a knife to water Indus, 00:00 / 00:48 there is already bhukha amongst the hari in Bukhari droughts in my home in Mehrghar and so many whistle blows in Manjidak the farmers need your emeralds from the ruby red of Lal Qalander and Guru Nanak must ride the Phuleli on a fish send the white horse to warn of floods so families do not sell their daughters and in the brackish waters of the triangle at your mouth if the salinity increases you will need to swallow it as the yogis’ cleanse of Vamana Kriya but the lobsters netted off the costal stretch of Clifton Beach might get too salty for the chi-chi my parents come from a place that no longer exists 00:00 / 03:50 and in the ‘o’ of exodus I hear my father as a boy, ‘just take your hands’ I hear him say and I had not heard that he had said that before but I know him so well he does still tell me things things that had no language before, as his memories get younger, the further Dad goes, he ages closer my Dad is always closer than ever before and my families left Sindh as the British penned a long line of a couplet their lawyer came to strip off our linens to unmake our beds to make us leave without a pot or a pen, to turn our backs on Lalibai’s garden, leave the walks we had taken, our books and our businesses, as they gave away our river, the very one that named our land: aj raat the navy separates, the fabric rips, I spill some of my indigo as that part of India went am I supposed to feel better Cyril that you said ‘I nearly gave you Lahore’ the largest mass migration of human beings as animals scrambling to cross a line for survival, over the amputated shoulder of Mother India, her pallu cross-stitched wet red as her border embroidered millions in massacres of threads un-woven warp of the Indus with the stench of departure lingering as Yardley’s English Lavender in torn cashmere is rape not enough: bullets still land in cargo trains my five-year old mother sleeps clutching a biscuit tin gold coins are inedible the new scars indelible invisible ink of my genes smudged in the parting sindoor in a hair line is to consecrate a wedding, to live in sin is to live together as if married, yet Sindh has been ashed in vermillion, dakoon at Marwar Junction bang on the carriages my Uma starts bleeding; she must change trains to a hospital fugitive paints run in ajrak, must they or must they not be rescinded, my twelve-year-old father has been left to fend for himself; he cuts logs for a torn piece of bread, to break with his siblings, an unbroken promise to his mother right up to no end Dad, I don’t understand what I’m writing: how can I hear the sitar's lyrics caterwauling, the tabla beats reverberating as history migrates our tanpura I hear now as violins, as I tiptoe amongst the neem, golden shower, peepul and moringa trees what is this strange tense that we find ourselves in I sit with you to listen to the ghazals of Anup Jalota I watch you in the garden, I see you talking with Dada I deal us a hand of rummy, time to play cards with Uma I reach for a mango near the rose bush, I choose you a flower I will feed you your breakfast, yes I know you’d like some seyun patata I do hold your hands Dad and rewhisper ‘we are all safe as we re-member’ Publishing credits on the bald hill / Indus,: exclusive first publication by iamb my parents come from a place that no longer exists: Third Space (Renard Press)

Hear poet Marie Little read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Marie Little wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Living near fields and dreaming of the sea, Marie Little has published poetry and flash fiction with Acumen , Ink Sweat & Tears , Black Bough Poetry , Retreat West and many others. She enjoys unpretentious poems, twisty flash and the challenge of a writing prompt. Marie is co-creator of The Swadlincote Festival of Words , and runs writing groups for adults and children. She's best known for her children’s poetry as Attie Lime, and her debut children’s collection is Blue Jelly and Strawberries . the poems In the Sunday Garden Club Hut with Dad 00:00 / 00:44 Underarmed up onto the bench beside you pondering your bad back, too much flesh above my knees I absorb the morning like a dry seed. You chat easy with customers most already friends hand them smiles in paper bags forget the price of things. I play shop with the black iron weighing scales, palming the cold weights, testing the brass bowls for honesty. You hand me boiled sweets, tidy jars, curl twine, lift the stink on the fish, blood and bone bin to make us squirm, laughing. I measure myself carefully in scoops. Dusk 00:00 / 00:42 Six o'clock draws its curtains, twists the dial on chemicals keeping me sunny. The mood over the field is indigo blue, heavy with sooty clouds in waiting. I have no need of litmus paper. I know my score. Bottles in rows wink at me, each emptied to a different level, each a slightly different chime in the tune of dusk. I shun them all, flick the kettle on. Slide something herby, caffeine-free from a purple box, steep it so long it might understand. Drink it in sips, watch the soot spread. Later the bottles will sing. Parents, 1982 00:00 / 00:26 She is milk of magnesia, camphorated oil (warm to the touch). She is petroleum jelly, sodium bicarbonate, cream of tartar. He is the berry-stained wooden spoon as long as my arm, the sticky muslin, dripping. He is the jam-saucer, nestled in the ice box. He is pectin, like quiet magic. Publishing credits In the Sunday Garden Club Hut with Dad: Ink, Sweat & Tears (March 2022) Dusk: Acumen (No. 103) Parents, 1982: Molecules Unlimited Anthology

Hear poet Holly Singlehurst read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Holly Singlehurst wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Holly Singlehurst lives and works in Cambridge, England. Her poems have appeared as part of And Other Poems , while her fiction has been featured in Banshee literary journal. Holly was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize, and commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition for Hiroshima, 1961. the poems Love song from a seaside souvenir shop 00:00 / 01:42 Instead of telling you how much I miss you, I send a small, funny magnet with a crab and a bucket, a bouncy ball, sun warm stones from an empty beach, sand sticky fingers from a soft, ripe peach and the glass clear water to clean them. I send you a fat, heavy parcel of fish and chips, steaming in damp paper, buttery flakes in crispy batter and just the right amount of salt and sauce. I hand wrap the bath warm evening, write something short on a postcard with pastel houses, and cut grey cliffs, and a first-class stamp. For a moment, I’m torn between a wood carved seagull with your name on it and the whole ocean, so I get you both. The blinding glint of sun on its surface, the tight squinting smile of your eyes when you look right at it. It’s not on display, but I ask, and they have it – that secret sound the stones make underwater; a solid bubble of your breath, so you can watch it rise up to the blue sky and break; the best jellyfish, so small and domed and perfect that when you open it you’ll say, It’s so pretty, it belongs in a bakery, and I’ll laugh and say, I know just what you mean. Hiroshima, 1961 After Yves Klein 00:00 / 00:39 In the street, I am warm past my summer skin, the pavement is burning the soles of my feet. My shadow copies me as I open my arms. When I jump, it jumps, but it doesn’t leave the ground. The light through my closed eyes tells me a secret, that I am the most beautiful red. And another, that it has travelled millions of miles, unobstructed, to touch only my body. On Agate Beach 00:00 / 00:40 A blue whale has fallen belly up on the sand, and crowds of people stand round with wet hair, hushed voices, in their jewel bright shorts, and the first woman I loved split herself open from wrist to elbow and bled out in the bath, up over its lip, slipped under the heavy wooden door, and the floor beneath my feet is tiny stones, and bones, and broken glass worn by water, and a whale’s heart is as big as a car and far more magical. Publishing credits Love song from a seaside souvenir shop: exclusive first publication by iamb Hiroshima, 1961: The Poetry Society – commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition On Agate Beach: exclusive first publication by iamb – a winner of The Pushcart Prize 2021