Hear poet Michelle Penn read poems for wave 6 of literary poetry journal iamb. Michelle Penn wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Michelle Penn’s debut pamphlet, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing , won the Paper Swans Prize in 2018. Her poetry has appeared in Perverse , MIR Online, 192, The Rialto, B O D Y, Poetry Birmingham and other journals. Michelle plans innovative poetry / art / music events in London as part of Corrupted Poetry . She’s also a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen . the poems In air 00:00 / 01:58 She sees only the flies, flies flitting about the bed in the operating room, Field Hospital C, Danang, the name echoing like two bells, chiming then fading to stone, replaced by a distant beep and the flies, flies and a slurred recollection of her daughter's voice on the telephone, something about after, something about Thailand and the flies, their wings like rotors, a strange sound for flies but maybe Vietnamese flies move in a different language, and they’re flying while she lays still, encumbered by strings or wires, trailing from her nose, her arms, something beeping, and the flies with their rotor wings, darting squares in air, landing on the tray where the scalpels are spread, then taking off again, and why do they trace hard squares while their wings are rotors and rotors are round, none of it adds up and maybe she’s also a fly, somehow snared in wires and strings, a fly tethered to a bed or maybe the earth while the others beat their wings, the steady rhythm of rotors but then the flies all land at once, their feet tickling her face, her hands, no more rotors, just a soft buzz and a distant beep then she is lifted, hot air, a deep cool, a cloth brushing away the flies, flies fluttering silent wings and disappearing into a clean white wall, then a white bird surfaces, a featherless bird, whispering, you're in Thailand now, your daughter is flying over, and her daughter, flying from far away, she hopes her daughter will wear her feathers. talking philosophy 00:00 / 00:40 we were meant to discuss eternal return but the fires were blazing again & the riots & it all felt — the sunshine a bit too bright & the last time we said this has to be the last time we’re all in the same storm but not in the same boat, not in the same ghost things have to change, we say & take to the streets yet again but I've heard how sometimes firefighters join the flames, how they become so entranced, they burn Hotel October 00:00 / 01:21 the woman has become her blue-tint portrait another autumn in this room season oblique as the underside of a chin, the hard corner of a table, October tricky-sweet, like liquorice on the tongue outside, the gentle mobs dissect her life ten-second censors, all of them and yet she longs to believe in the attraction of thing to thing, life to life, each drenched in some god’s love another October in this room, another fall fall , that Americanism, so blunt, no Latin gymnastics, just fall , from the Old English for fail, decay the Old Norse for sin gravity always feels strongest in fall an apple tumbles from a branch, the moon plummets towards Earth, space and time collapse into one another withering leaves sink in conspiracies, autumn the moral to summer’s fable, October asking questions to which she is the ghost Publishing credits In air: The Rialto (Issue 94) talking philosophy: 192 (Issue 2) Hotel October: The Alchemy Spoon (Issue 1)

Hear poet Andy Breckenridge read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Andy Breckenridge wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Andy Breckenridge is originally from Oban, Scotland, but now lives and works in Brighton, England, as a secondary school English teacher. He writes about self-imposed exile, place, relationships, cultural identity and memory, and his poems have been published widely in print and online journals. He's been a featured poet with Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word, and with the Northern Poet’s Society. His first poetry pamphlet The Liquid Air appeared in 2021, followed by an illustrated version in 2022. Andy's debut full collection, published in 2023, is titled The Fish Inside . the poems Tartanalia 00:00 / 01:55 I stand outside your window at night waiting for you to open the blinds and see my tartan face the whites of my eyes shot with blood lines – green irises popping see how the plain silver kilt pins jawbone my skin together in the wind see how symmetrical and intricately blocked I am – each sawtooth of green dovetails with dark blue in a precise matrix see how the straps and buckles fit so neatly through the slits in my waist – hold fast I was that night bus that snagged on departure from Glasgow Buchanan Street and unravelled en route to London Victoria to help you find your way back – now I frown at your lack of fealty and the accents of your kids and yours – while you sleep, I’ll slip sliver after sliver of tablet onto your tongue until your teeth pop like lightbulbs see my gridlines keep everything in check stretch to infinity like a spreadsheet weighing up the debits and credits (you are in the red) that’s me peering in right now, an arrow slit of borrowed moonlight that’s my breath – that’s me hanging lifeless in your wardrobe – following you in the car lurking on shortbread tins and tea towels as you scurry past gift shops at airports avoiding eye contact – weigh me Is my cloth too rich and heavy? Morning light slides past the blinds again and the first trains shake me out of the air. You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature … 00:00 / 00:45 Dizzy astride the rope clump on the swing in the Hazel Woods, you pendulum above the roots exposed on the earthy floor. Cool air wrings your eyes, adrenaline runs its fingers through your gut; the branch creaks out a rhythm like rust. You are still unable to identify a hazel or the bare bushes at the head of the loch whose silver fingers tug at your jersey where ticks hitch rides on your blood. You pluck away their bodies and legs, leave the buried mouthparts to grow out or dissolve in the flesh. Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter 00:00 / 01:21 You both always knew exactly what to do and set about your play in earnest knowing your time there was finite. Fine sand and cold February air pinched your small fingers, as you crouched, burrowed and shaped a friable cityscape of roads, tunnels, bridges, stairs and squat buildings. You never saw the low winter sun pool shadows in every dip. Or the tyre tracks beside you twist like prehistoric spines that stretched down towards the footprints and pawprints, the hieroglyphs left by birds, the careless signatures of lugworms or the blackened lines of dry seaweed marking tide lines like shed skin. Or the snow retreating to the peaks on Mull. Later, by your feet in the back of the car there are peeled off parking permits empty hula hoop packets discarded and dated. Rain flecks the shop front windows of the real town empty and holding its breath for the season. Publishing credits Tartanalia: Flights (Flight of the Dragonfly Press) You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature ...: exclusive first publication by iamb Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter: The Fish Inside (Flight of the Dragonfly Press)

Hear poet Rae Howells read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rae Howells wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Rae Howells is a poet and journalist from Swansea, UK. She's won both the Welsh International and The Rialto poetry competitions, and her work has featured in a wide range of journals including Magma , The Rialto and Poetry Wales . Rae's poetry has recently appeared in anthologies including The Result is What You See Today and A470: Poems for the Road , in which she also translated her poem into Welsh. She was one of ten poets selected for a digital residency and exchange between Wales and Vietnam, resulting in the collaborative trilingual multi-media showcase, U O | suo . Rae co-authored the pamphlet Bloom and Bones with Jean James, and her collection, The language of bees , is out in 2022. the poems Merchant Vessel Defoe, 1941 00:00 / 01:51 Moon nights were the worst like being on a ruddy stage with the spotlight shining in your eyes the audience somewhere down there in the oily stalls beneath your feet you couldn’t look them in the eye but they saw you all right unblinking periscopes with the waves clapping. we’d clank across the water a band a moving factory waves riddling on the rivets and the machine of the ocean grinding they knew exactly where we were of course they did we were the great flywheel rattling over and they, iron whales, waiting in the tide’s deep belt. So we kept our backs to Brazil and breathed our hope to Swansea. We were bananas tucked in our skins sweating in boxes in the tin stomach of the hull our hands worrying black spiders in our sleep I couldn’t swim a stroke y’know kept my steel helmet on so I could drown the quicker I hated the watch all that starless black stretching out like a long ear listening our convoy was the world we could have been the only people alive the others wavering candles alongside lamps and smoke the cigarette ends flaring and then – BANG! you always saw the white flash of death before you heard the whump of it before you retched at the cordite stink chlorine fire and oil burning on saltwater and the shouts of tiny men flung into the moonroad you couldn’t help but wonder when your turn would come I’ve still got my medals somewhere, y’know, tucked up in a tin box round as faces. The swing 00:00 / 02:02 Six years on but still, sometimes, I wake and find you in the dawn, the woman from the mother-and-baby group, pushing the swing, still there, in that playground – do you remember? both of us in the park: your older daughter is straddled into the safety swing, her legs flying up towards the sun as she leaves you and comes back, leaves you, and comes back and I am with you, the wind insisting itself into everything, the row of boats along the foreshore with their metalwork ringing, crying out, my own baby snug in the hull of her pram, and her small, reliable, heart working, winging in its chest so that when I gull myself next to you – squawking too noisily about motherhood – I almost miss your daughter’s eyes, locked onto you, airborne tight, as she reluctantly leaves you, and leaves you, a series of small griefs, her swoop, her snag of delight, each time caught uncertainly in that belly-drop moment between soaring joy and parting. I was too slow to notice you were a cracked egg, albumen leaking out of you, the way you forced yourself to push the swing away, willed your muscles to obey, each push a wrench of the heart. I presumed you had simply left your baby boy with your mother. But of course, there are your daughter’s eyes, fixed on you as you slowly implode – you, with your heart strung up on a pendulum – transfixed, watching you caught in that terrible moment between: oscillating, flying away, hands outstretched for the miraculous return. The winter-king 00:00 / 00:52 little-word bird little wren feathered lung only built for singing purifying freezing air through a feather ball chitter chatter piper little wren little brownleaf keeneye built for singing round like a minim little wren pink wire feet gripping winter’s branches holding on to cold little bird only built to pipe built to whistle keeneye watching snow fall crowning the holly little thornbeak feathered bauble hanging on the pine only built to sing turning cold air into arias too quick for the ice to catch little keeneye raised eyebrow jingling the dead leaf bells surely too small to be – but they say you’re the winter-king only you can sing us into light Publishing credits Merchant Vessel Defoe, 1941: Magma (Issue 74) The Swing: Please Give Me Your Heart to Hold – longlisted for the Winchester Poetry Prize 2019 The winter-king: The Rialto – winner of The Rialto Nature Poetry Competition 2018

Hear poet Jen Feroze read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jen Feroze wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Former Foyle Young Poet Jen Feroze has had her poetry featured in a wide range of publications – from Magma , Poetry Wales , Spelt , Ink, Sweat & Tears and Stanchion to One Hand Clapping , Dust Poetry Magazine , Atrium and OneArt . She's also edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press. Jen was a winner of the 2022-23 Magma Editors’ Prize, and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming from Nine Pens. Jen likes chunky knitwear, turquoise things, and cheese you can eat with a spoon. the poems Gorge 00:00 / 02:46 Whenever there’s an icebreaker about where we come from, my answer always elicits the same smile: ‘Oh yeah, that’s where the cheese is made! I’m pretty sure I went there with my school once.’ So many kids bussed in to stare through cloudy glass at curds, nonplussed, craning their necks upwards at the cliffs. It’s funny the way hormones can flatten even the highest cliffs, can make centuries of river-worn limestone a stage, from which we played out our teenage dramas. Raise a glass to the breathtaking arrogance of middle school. Smile at the fact that we never stopped to take stock, not once, we assumed these caves, these dripping stalactites, came ready made. There was the time our history teacher made the front pages, connected by strands of DNA to the cliffs, to the ancient bones found there, to the man that once inhabited their skin. 10,000 years, and he’d not moved a mile from the dig site, was drilling us on The Iron Curtain, smiling at the sudden smallness of his concept of history, polishing his glasses. Some summer nights we’d smuggle blankets and cider and glasses over the stile and onto Black Rock. Fires were lit, pacts were made breath was snatched. Some things were lost, others found. The sky split in a smile, loosing meteors like teeth. We lay on our backs, knees mimicking the cliffs, until the shadows of our friends became indistinguishable from one another. I felt drunk and happy and sad and too old and too young, all at once. Then limestone stained siren blue brought us up short, for once. We hugged our own ribs close, carried our bones like glass. He was the brother of a friend’s friend. There were painful verbs to choose from: To fall? To jump? Was it worse if a decision had been made? For a short while, we looked with reverential gaze and sweaty palms at the cliffs, then the flowers died, Christmas came, and he was buried again under forgetful smiles. After school we scattered to the winds, city-bound, throwing smiles over our shoulders. So sure of our futures, and never once pausing to give thanks or even glance back to those cliffs. So desperate were we to be grown, to be skyscrapered behind glass, to be able to say we got out, we did it, we made something of ourselves, away from that shadowed small town we came from. And as they have always done, the cliffs stand silent, a knowing smile carved from water and rock into the landscape of so many childhoods. Only once we left, did I see how we’d been shaped, hot as freshly blown glass; forged, gorge-made. Self-portrait at 35 Weeks 00:00 / 00:36 Not the moon, but her reflection caught in a pond. My tenderly planted bed, latticed by slugs – a seemingly overnight silvering of this pungent earth. Something you’d find glazed on the bottom shelf of a bakery. A bag thrashing with fairground fish. An upturned bowl of porridge. Oh, you slow-punctured water bed. Oh! You magnetic globe for strangers’ hands, the unwelcome and the minuscule, pushing as if against a curved pane of glass. Moving Day 00:00 / 01:44 For weeks now, the house has been haunted by the suits and shoes of zealous estate agents. The dark hush of the trees – excellent allies, excellent secret-keepers – was felled a long time ago in the name of the city’s loud expansion. Now there is nowhere to hide. Hard candy smiles pass through each room, looking out through sugar-glass panes they convince themselves are dusky and bubbled with age alone; running their hands over mantels and recoiling at the layer of dust on their fingertips. The house holds its breath, waiting for someone to touch their lips, to taste its sweetness. Then this afternoon, a truck yellow as sherbet lemons arrived and spilled four bright, warm lives out and inside. So much noise and so many running feet after so much gnawing emptiness, so much guilt. The boxes smell like hope. They make the house ache. There are two children – a boy and a girl, curls soft as candyfloss. They delight in choosing their new bedroom; they fall asleep without a story, without a nightlight. Downstairs, their parents clink glasses of cheap wine as night arrives at the windows. They discuss where to hang the family photographs, who they should call to look at the old oven that didn’t want to light this evening. If the house could talk, it would tell them to buy a new one, shamed by the wicked pile of ash that still covers the grill. If the house could talk, it would press upon them the wisdom of keeping breadcrumbs close at hand, even in the absence of trees. It would feel a slow tide of sugar rising unstoppably in its walls at the sound of young laughter, at the thought of those little, darting tongues. Publishing credits Gorge: Spelt Magazine Poetry Competition 2021 (Highly commended) Self-portrait at 35 weeks: Poetry Wales (58.2, Winter 2022) Moving Day: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Ami Robertson

Hear poet Bob Perkins read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Bob Perkins wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Bob Perkins is 81 and married, with two 40-ish kids. Once a boxboy, submariner, handyman, typist, lawyer and teacher, he's none of these professions now. Bob reads and writes with the Manhattan Beach Poetry Circle, and has had poems published in The Los Angeles Review , Consequence and Delta Poetry Review . the poems Drafting 00:00 / 02:02 Coasting down this California coast, we’re twenty or forty pelicans in a loose line, riding each other’s coattails, taking turns as leader till, spying a friend or careless fish, each goes its own way. This is co-operation, not discipline: no goosestep, no chorus line. You flap when you want to, I’ll station keep for lift, my flap lifts the next guy. We see, we use, vortices, whorls, forces invisible to the grounded. Is this survival of the fit? Sort of. We practice prosperity of the team, but it’s understood: anyone can dive any time. Till then, you stir the air for me, I for you. It’s not quite communism, but it isn’t capitalism, either. Call it community. It worked for eons until a different thought, call it DDT, call it domination, call it human, dealt death to us last century. They thought, 'Let’s control the fields, let’s exterminate the bugs, let’s make more profits.' It worked, too. But turns out it isn’t the economy, stupid, it’s the ecology. You start killing, bugs will die. So will bees and birds and boys and girls. They got smarter that time, banned DDT. Did it again with the ozone layer. But now, they’re flying high with carbon, greenhouse gases, global warming. We we can’t tell how this will end, but you might see us as birds of good omen, soaring since the eocene, never ruling, always getting by, sharing the work and the world. Trigger Finger 00:00 / 01:32 My middle finger, dominant hand, pauses when I open a fist, then springs into place. It’s a caution: that finger has done my bidding for a long time, but now is considering rebellion. 'What,' it asks, 'is in this for me?' It’s not alone. Eyebrows are restyling themselves, peeing is a sometime thing, my hair left town a decade ago. But somehow this gesture – my own body giving me the bird – speaks to me. It reminds me this will end, will not end well, will end soon. I won’t get the last laugh; I will write my last poem. This might be it. And yet, it’s kind of fun – a new trick to do with my body, stepping from the gliding analog world of youth to the binary future I don’t understand. I, starting with this digit, am becoming digital, robotic, reducing to two states. Open or closed. Up or down. Alive or dead. I’m glad it’s happening slowly enough that I can watch the show. You can, too: here, look – it’s open. Shut. Open. Shut. Hey, presto! The Archimedes Palimpsest 00:00 / 02:37 1 They killed the lamb for dinner and for profit, flayed it, split and stretched its hide, sold the parchment to men who rewrote Archimedes there. Someone scrawled an Aristotle critique over the parchment. Later, medieval Christian tastes cut, folded, scrubbed it clean (almost clean) and twisted the sheep’s skin for a prayer book. Just last century, some Frenchman faked illuminations to increase its market price. Now, sheepskins upholster sports cars and the digital palimpsest is on the net, a Google book. Oh, lamb. 2 Above Tom’s Place, off 395, I sit beside Rock Creek and watch the flow. Holy, hypnotic, the motion distracts from displays of standing waves and eddies, leaf and sky reflections flashing on the stream’s stretched surface. If I look at them I cannot focus on the creek bed’s rocks or shadows, and whichever avatar I choose, the clear water itself slips by unseen, almost absent unless some trout swims there. 3 First I sought your pink, your so-white skin beside my brown, your unpainted lips, eyes, breasts, hips-- tried to know you in sex. The fluid years drift by, draw tighter. The mass of your kindness leaves its mark. So do our quarrels and congruences. Sometimes I see flickers deep within, sometimes I hear our humdrum babble; sometimes your body grips me once again. Sometimes I am distant. Lives are too large for telling. I say, 'Ink. Fish. Love. Skin,' one word at a time. I should shout all my words at once like a creek, like a bleating beast. Publishing credits Drafting / Trigger Finger: exclusive first publication by iamb The Archimedes Palimpsest:The Los Angeles Review (Vol. 8)

Hear poet Jonathan Humble read poems for wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jonathan Humble wave 17 spring 2024 back next the poet The poetry of Jonathan Humble, a retired deputy head teacher who lives in Cumbria, has appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies. He's published a short collection of his work – Fledge – and is editor of the much-praised, much-admired children's poetry website, The Dirigible Balloon . As well as delivering poetry workshops in schools for Wordsworth Grasmere, Jonathan was Poet in a Fridge for Radio Cumbria's Poetry Takeaway during the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in 2020. the poems Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles 00:00 / 00:51 Einstein phoned the other day. Wanted to speak quite urgently with my dog, Derek: said that Derek’s theory of quantum stiles was interesting but lacked empirical evidence and wasn’t supported by the mathematics. Derek disagreed: described the process of walking with me, taking the early morning river route along the side of the Kent under Cumbrian skies. Every gate and stile a quantum barrier, separating countless possibilities of constantly branching parallel universes: facts on the far side of each wall blurred, until the stile is crossed with a new reality created through observation … and sometimes, rewarded with a biscuit. Red Pencil 00:00 / 01:36 I am six years old, my pencil breaks mid-word in Mrs Foster’s class. So I turn to my friend Martin, show him the pencil and whisper, ‘Martin, Martin, my pencil has broke.’ ‘Use this,’ he says and passes a substitute, secretly under our desk. ‘But it’s a red pencil, Martin,’ I say. He smiles a smile. It is an ‘it’ll all be okay’ sort of smile and so I carry on, copying lines of words I cannot read, but which I try my very hardest to replicate, as neat and true to the original as I am able, at six, to do. At the finish, I look down at my page of writing; my teacher’s lines above, with mine in red below, and I wonder about the words I have written. I am happy with the result of my effort; especially the esses, which are smooth and curvy, and flowing and lovely. They are the best I have ever done. So, I walk twenty paces to Mrs Foster’s desk, clutching my paper with pride, and return ten yards with a slapped leg, my work in shreds in a basket, having a brand new perspective on the way of things, and on the reliability of my friend Martin. Early Morning Effrontery 00:00 / 00:59 I fear porcelain is not your milieu and your persistence in performing eight-legged running man dances up sheer white bathroom edifices under the gaze and malevolence of the attentive cat bastard flexing its tail on this toilet seat will prove an effrontery too far. Darwin’s theory of natural selection will happen well before adaptation occurs. Before the hairs on your scopulae develop greater adhesive powers and you are able to ascend unharmed, I suspect you will become terribly broken. So here I am again, 6:30 in the morning, offering toilet paper ladders in the bath tub, before I can shower in peace and the furry purry assassin, so beloved in our household, can be persuaded out of the bathroom to wander off and find something else to murder instead. Publishing credits Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles:Tyger Tyger Magazine Red Pencil: Atrium Early Morning Effrontery: Fledge (Maytree Press)

Hear poet Mark McGuinness read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mark McGuinness wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Bristol-based Mark McGuinness has had poems in Ambit , Anthropocene , Brittle Star , Magma , Oxford Poetry , The Rialto and Stand . He was awarded third prize in The Stephen Spender Prize 2016, and commended in the Ambit Poetry Competition in 2021. Mark hosts the poetry podcast A Mouthful of Air , where he invites poets to read a single poem and discuss the inspiration and process behind it – as well as reading classic poems and talking about what makes these work. Mark also collaborates on concrete poetry projects with the sculptor Sheena Devitt. the poems The Opening Lines of Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer Translated by the poet from the Middle English 00:00 / 03:38 Before we part I want to speak about Prince Troilus, son of Priam King of Troy, And how his destiny in love played out In double sorrow: from misery to joy Then out of bliss once more. Lend me your voice, Tisiphone – help me to compose These woeful lines, that weep as my ink flows. To you I call, you goddess of sharp torment, You cruel Fury, eternally in pain: Help me, who am the sorrowful instrument That helps all lovers, voicing their complaint; Because it suits, to speak the matter plain, A wretched man to have a gloomy fellow, And a tragic tale, a face that’s full of sorrow. For I, who serve the servants of the Lord Of Love, daren’t pray to Love for my success On pain of death; I have so many flaws And languish so far from His help in darkness. But nonetheless, if this may bring some gladness To any lover, and advance his courtship, Give him the thanks and leave me with the hardship. But all you lovers bathing now in gladness, If any drop of pity be in you, Remind yourselves of any former sadness That you have felt, and also of the woe Of other folk; recall the times you too Felt Love affronted you with misery Or that you won Him far too easily. And pray for those caught in the same condition As Troilus, more of which you’ll shortly hear, That Love will bring them heavenly salvation; And also pray for me to God so dear, That I shall have the skill to make it clear Through Troilus’ own unfortunate adventure What pain and sadness all Love’s folk endure. And also pray for those left in despair Of love, with no chance of recovery, And all those lovers, whether him or her, Whom wicked tongues have done great injury. Pray thus to God, from his great charity To grant them passage from this earthly place Who lose all hope of Love’s redeeming grace. And also pray for those who are at ease That God will grant their love shall long endure And give them all the gift to please their ladies According to Love’s honour and His pleasure. For so I hope to make my soul more pure: To pray for those who wear Love’s livery, And write their woe, and live in charity, And feel for each of them the same compassion As though I were their own devoted brother. Now listen to me with your full attention For now I will go straight to my main matter In which you’ll hear the double sorrow suffered By Troilus when he loved the fair Criseyde And how she left her love before she died. Lockdown 00:00 / 01:22 We’re cooped up with ourselves. Alone together for weeks or months until it’s safe to breathe. The virus crosses continents like weather. For now we’re stuck here, wondering when or whether we’ll get back to our everyday routine. We’re cooped up with ourselves, alone together, the death toll rising, falling, like a feather at the mercy of an idle breeze. The virus crosses continents like weather. As days drift by we find new ways to weather boredom, frustration, solitude and grief. We’re cooped up with ourselves, alone together, and some of us are at the end of our tether, and some of us are sinking week by week. The virus crosses continents like weather. Has life as normal vanished altogether? Once locked up, can we ever be set free? We’re cooped up with ourselves. Alone together. The virus crosses continents like weather. The Illusionist 00:00 / 03:57 The theatre’s gilded like a music box. The lights go dim and someone takes the stage. ‘Good evening everyone, I’m Arthur Fox.’ We know he’s not. The real one’s still backstage. The lights go dim and someone takes the stage. He looks the part; we gingerly applaud. We know he’s not. The real one’s still backstage. ‘And here’s the man you’ve all been waiting for!’ He looks the part; we gingerly applaud. The curtains part. The curtains close again. ‘And here’s the man you’ve all been waiting for!’ ‘Thank you all for waiting in the rain.’ The curtains part. The curtains close again. We troop back slowly to our starting spots. ‘Thank you all for waiting in the rain – ’ ‘Sorry Arthur – the pillar blocked the shot.’ We troop back slowly to our starting spots. The cameraman walks sideways through the crowd. ‘Sorry Arthur – the pillar blocked the shot.’ ‘I know. It feels a bit disjointed now.’ The cameraman walks sideways through the crowd; we part and close behind him like the sea. ‘I know it feels a bit disjointed now. The whole thing will look seamless on TV.’ We part and close behind him like the sea. He reappears behind the left-hand door. ‘The whole thing will look seamless on TV. I know the repetition’s such a bore.’ He reappears behind the left-hand door. His eyes are covered; both hands firmly tied. ‘I know the repetition’s such a bore. Please take your time, examine every side.’ His eyes are covered; both hands firmly tied. The dazzling spotlights keep us in the dark. ‘Please take your time, examine every side and let the camera see it, clearly marked.’ The dazzling spotlights keep us in the dark. The volunteer does everything he’s told. ‘And let the camera see it, clearly marked. That’s right. Just there. Now cut along the fold.’ The volunteer does everything he’s told. We half expect to see him levitate. ‘That’s right. Just there. Now cut along the fold. The time has come. Let’s hope it’s worth the wait ... ’ We half expect to see him levitate. A moment’s pause that seems to take an age. ‘The time has come. Let’s hope it’s worth the wait ... and look whose name is written on that page!’ A moment’s pause that seems to take an age. He takes the sheet and holds it up as proof. ‘And look whose name is written on that page! I’d like to ask you all to raise the roof!’ He takes the sheet and holds it up as proof, although the mechanism isn’t clear. ‘I’d like to ask you all to raise the roof: please give a big hand to our volunteer!’ Although the mechanism isn’t clear, we’re still transfixed by what we’ve all just seen. ‘Please give a big hand to our volunteer! Just wait until you see yourself on screen!’ We’re still transfixed by what we’ve all just seen: a show that never actually took place. ‘Just wait until you see yourself on screen. The stops and starts will vanish without trace.’ A show that never actually took place will be assembled in the cutting room. ‘The stops and starts will vanish without trace. When Charlie gives the signal we’ll resume.’ We’ll be assembled in the cutting room. ‘Good evening everyone, I’m Arthur Fox. When Charlie gives the signal we’ll resume.’ The theatre’s gilded like a music box. Publishing credits The Opening Lines of Troilus and Criseyde: placed third in The Stephen Spender Prize 2016 Lockdown: first appeared on author's SoundCloud The Illusionist: The Rialto (No. 80)

Hear poet Sarah Frideswide read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sarah Frideswide wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Teacher, soldier and marketing manager Sarah Frideswide is a lifelong poet and fiction writer with a varied career. She was first published at the age of 17, and would go on to achieved a distinction for her MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. Sarah's poetry has been published by the Oxford School of Poetry Review and Dust Poetry Magazine , and she was selected for the 2025 Poetry School/TLC Free Reads Scheme. As well as writing for Pen to Print, Sarah is among the speakers for the 2026 Bournemouth Writing Festival. the poems Erosion 00:00 / 01:52 In your kitchen, the planes of your face remind me of a cliffside, stories worn into the rock, soft where it has crumbled. Wrinkles that shine like sun on the sea at dusk, eyes a wave moving in and out of the light, they have trapped laughter and song. Every line of you splits me apart. “A person who’s dying is the greatest source of life,” you said, as though the loss of you wouldn’t rip a hole in my sky. Your falling cliff, eroded by time; your empty shell buried on a beach; your raindrops, only ripples on a pool after they cease to exist. You were an antiques dealer. You restored each piece, touch by careful touch, with a magnifying glass. You cradled universes. Resurrected history with your hands. Later, you taught me how to draw, all neat orderly lines. Then you tore up the page, tumbled scraps of me to the floor. You took me to a mansion with windows into a closing world, Said this was where you used to live. You did it up yourself. Wide pebbled drive, sculptures on the walls, granite fireplace. All I could think about was a home without you; empty rooms, furniture frozen under dust sheets. You say you feel lucky to know in advance, to live every minute, but I am disintegrating. The cliff looks solid until water pulls it apart. Stone worn to rubble, sunk and tossed, sand dragged over beaches. The white chalk of you slips in to the sea. Segsbury Fort 00:00 / 00:34 This is not death, this is a crescendo. At the top I sit, legs over the drop, a train rattles across the valley, the hedge is bright in low light, drooping with fullness, mottled with bronze. Downhill, the smell of mould and dung follow. Broken tarmac shines, glowing cobwebs span the road. Darkness falls as winter enters, light lost, waiting. 20th Birthday 00:00 / 01:41 My prayers had all dried up, I knew there was no mercy. The floor was slick with bile and mother begged for Jesus who showed up naked, body of criss-crossed scars that wouldn’t heal, tied my hands behind my back so I couldn’t save her from herself, stood to watch the end. She yelled at me, I saw parts of her no daughter ought to see, then she pissed herself all over the bed, gave up her mind, became a wired machine, full of pipes, liquid fed the mass of her while she slept. I couldn’t eat, I spent that whole week in hospital nurses said what a devoted carer I was, but I was just a body with no mind, when I took her home, still in torn pyjamas, You’re useless , she said, You haven’t done the washing up. You haven’t done the washing up You’re useless, she said, I took her home, in torn pyjamas, a body with no mind, nurses said I was a carer, because I couldn’t, spent all week feeding the mass of her she slept in liquid pipes, a wired machine, gave up her mind all over the bed, yelled displayed parts of her no daughter could save watched the end, hands tied behind my scars that wouldn’t show naked, body full of criss-crossed mother slicked with bile begged for Jesus, my prayers had all dried up, I knew there was no mercy. Publishing credits Erosion: Dust Poetry (Issue 14) Segsbury Fort / 20th Birthday: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet John Glenday read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. John Glenday wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet John Glenday is the author of four collections of poetry. His most recent, The Golden Mean , was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year and won the Roehampton Poetry Prize, both in 2016. His Selected Poems appeared in 2020. John runs a weekly 'walking and writing' workshop for men with mental health issues. the poems The Walkers 00:00 / 01:47 As soon as we had died, we decided to walk home. A white tatterflag marked where each journey began. It was a slow business, so much water to be crossed, so many dirt roads followed. We walked together but alone. You must understand – we can never be passengers any more. Even the smallest children had to make their own way to their graves, through acres and acres of sunflowers somehow no longer pretty. A soldier cradled a cigarette, a teddy bear and his gun. He didn’t see us pass, our light was far too thin. We skirted villages and cities, traced the meanderings of rivers. But beyond it all, the voices of our loved ones called so we flowed through borders like the wind through railings and when impassable mountain marked the way, soared above their peaks like flocks of cloud, like shoals of rain. In time, the fields and woods grew weary and the sea began – you could tell we were home by the way our shadows leaned. We gathered like craneflies in the windowlight of familiar rooms, grieving for all the things we could never hold again. Forgive us for coming back. We didn’t travel all this way to break your hearts. We came to ask if you might heal the world. For My Wife, Reading in Bed 00:00 / 00:49 I know we’re living through all the dark we can afford. Thank goodness, then, for this moment’s light and you, holding the night at bay – a hint of frown, those focused hands, that open book. I’ll match your inward quiet, breath for breath. What else do we have but words and their absences to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart; to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny and significant? Whatever it is you are reading now my love, read on. Our lives depend on it. fluorescent sea After M C Escher 00:00 / 00:48 Some sort of perturbation on the other side has leached into the visible. The lower sky worn grey by whatever is going on behind. As with contentment, the sea forever pretending to arrive but never actually here. Even as we speak dark waves are foundering into voice and light. Remarkable how even beauty can grow tiresome, given time. Eventually we’ll have no option but to look away. Meanwhile, the north stars point to somewhere next to north. Publishing credits The Walkers: The Golden Mean (Picador Poetry) For My Wife, Reading in Bed: Off the Shelf – A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse (Picador Poetry) fluorescent sea: 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 Vanessa Napolitano read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Vanessa Napolitano wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Vanessa Napolitano is a British-American writer with three pamphlets to her name and a fourth due from Stanchion Press in May 2026. She was among six writers selected for Word Up North's 2025 New Northern Poets , and has seen her work appear in Humana Obscura , The Interpreter’s House , And Other Poems , Porridge and Clarion . Vanessa writes about grief, place, nature and the domestic. Her first collection, I’ll know I’m home , will be published by Black Cat Press in 2027. the poems Tell me again about your theory of change 00:00 / 00:55 Tell me what it will do for us here at the level of moss and woodlice. Tell me again how it’s like the stages of grief, strata of sand and eggshell, fossil and soil. Tell me how it’s better for everyone to absorb losses and gut punches, clearing away deadwood to break new light onto the forest floor – because the stems of our minds are like the roots of trees, flourishing, eventually, after the storm-drench. Tell me how you saw your activities and outputs landing like blackbirds on perches from up the hill in your shelter, where all the landscape unrolls miniature as monopoly. Tell me again about impacts, collateral damage, like slate in the quarry crumbling paths, like blackberries, staining your fingers, like the duckweed choking the banks. Tell me again how nothing lasts. Tie-dying outside 00:00 / 00:44 The tie-dye was frozen in its tub no ice forecast, a sudden plunge like leaving significantly like leaving for somewhere new or moving no warning and here is a hard bucket of brilliant purple ice I expected some whorl of it in the cloth some scar that told the story there’s none no wax batik-like scorch we rinse the ice till it remembers it was water in a previous life we go about our business we leave chance drying on the radiator the heat, the heart, the hearth. Faint 00:00 / 00:41 Did she make the shape of a cloud on the ground? Concerned words like taffeta or trifle cream. Luxury. Blood disperses back each side of the scale, each chamber of the heart, a tepid hand checks her pulse at the wrist. Does she make the shape of a cloud? Dispersed on the ground. Drawing a crowd. Her skirt long, thank goodness, pooled like blood around her. Her heart weighs heavy on the scale, this long, dangerous day. Taffeta-blue sky. A sudden hand helps her up. Luxury. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Kerry Trautman read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kerry Trautman wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Ohio born and raised, Kerry Trautman has served as a Northwest regional judge for Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud competition since 2016. In 2024, her one-act play Mass was a winner of The Toledo Repertoire Theater’s Toledo Voices competition. Her poetry collections include Things That Come in Boxes, Artifacts , T o be Nonchalantly Alive , Unknowable Things and Irregulars . the poems To the NYC Fire Escape Mannequin 00:00 / 01:16 Whoever placed you there must not love their own Mama, knowing how yours would have a heart attack—you perched so high, hard ass teetering on rusted iron railing. Your nude sisters inside—posed bare to windows like bodega hoagies— must envy your demure drape of arm across left breast, your waist-cape granting some dignity, some hint at flight, your sunlight unfiltered by high window glass grimed with breath of streetsidedness, the purity of your unmuffled noise. I hope they let you in from rain, or when October chills through to your metal armature, your smooth scalp. I hope no pigeons nest in your wig or if they do—because they probably will— that they shit elsewhere, that their fledglings alight off your shoulder, soar down through the alleyway in the rose-gold wash of post-drizzle June, that they flap harder than they thought their sparse new wings could, that your sisters envy them, too. Commandments For we walk by faith, not by sight. ~ 2 Corinthians, 5:7 ~ 00:00 / 01:48 My eye doctor’s office blasts Christian rock louder than I play music I like. Today will be 90° like each this week and next, sweat by 9am. On walls are crucifixes, Ohio State football ephemerae, American Flags, Bible verses scorched into wood planks. It’s the only office that takes my insurance. Louisiana voted requiring the ‘Ten Commandments’ be posted in classrooms. I dread my hot car when I’m done here. The doc scopes my eyes, says look straight ahead . New Orleans could be underwater by 2050. The radio sings give me your eyes . Air conditioning rumbles, ruffles his white beard. He covers my eye, says read the chart across the room. Hands me a card, says read tiny print. Commandments posters must be in a ‘large readable font’. Did I crack my car windows? He opens my eyelids with a thumb and finger. I have no way to not see. Look up —ceiling panels blocking godless sky. Look down —green carpet, basement, earth with only today’s inferno. The radio sings you are my vision . The doctor says look straight at me . We see so little the same. Singeing a pyrography quote on a wood block takes a steady hand, patience, the desire to burn to be certain everyone sees what you believe. Reservoir 00:00 / 01:34 This is drinking water, right? my son asks, watching wave-lets swish the boulders’ seaweed tutus. Yes , I say, not knowing how it works. Not knowing how much of anything works. A mower cuts the high grassy incline holding all this water in, its blade apparatus angled along the steep slope, its cab with head-phoned driver inside remaining plumb. So many machines and systems engineered for real purpose. Then there’s me, sitting on a rock trucked-in to create a fake lake’s berm. I wouldn’t know how to fish here if we were starved. Could I save us both if we fell in? I can only write about cloud cover obscuring sun that aches to glint off water. I can sit here and conjure worthless words while my son wonders how long his phone might last if tossed in. He answers his own questions better than I could. If an earthquake split this miles-around wall that never should have been here, how far into town would waters keep swallowing? How much of this could we drink? Sometimes what looks like a lake is just a construction, not ancient at all. Sometimes a woman is incapable of being anything more than a scratcher-down of words, symbols, glyphs. It would be too easy to tumble off this cliff. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Alexis Mitchell Photography