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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hear poet Laura Theis read poems for wave 19 of literary poetry journal iamb. Laura Theis wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Writing in her second language, Laura Theis has work in POETRY , Oxford Poetry , Magma , Rattle and elsewhere. As well as being nominated for a Forward Prize, she's been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize , the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize and the Hammond House International Literary Award. In addition, Laura's collection, A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things , won the Live Canon Collection Prize. She has two new volumes of poetry due out in 2025: a collection with Broken Sleep Books, and her debut children’s poetry book with The Emma Press, Poems From A Witch’s Pocket . the poems in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing 00:00 / 01:00 in my mother tongue words can be feathered which turns them into old jokes or proverbs owning a bird in my mother tongue is sign of great madness: you can accuse someone with an outrageous opinion of cheeping and chirping if you want to convey that you are flabbergasted or awed in my mother tongue you might say: my dear swan which is what I think when I first hear you play as your fingers move over the keys I wonder what gets lost in translation between music and birdsong whether both soar above our need to shift between words then I remember in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing Medusae 00:00 / 00:59 Do not lose faith on the day you wake up with spiders instead of hair. Do not cry as you look in the mirror. Remember: They may stay. They may not. They are here for now. If you must, take pains to cover your head. Hide their crawling under your most elegant hat lest people recoil from you in the streets. Or don’t. Remember Medusa and her snakes. She’d turn anyone to stone if they looked at her frightened. She was a monster and proud. All hiss, curse and scorn: danger. And yet to think someone must have loved her enough to name half of all jellyfish those moon-glowing blooms of floating fluorescent umbrellas and bells after her. miðnæturblár 00:00 / 00:47 we have to look up when we search for our dead even though we buried them in the ground but the dead like to call to us from the moon they try to spell out their wildering words in clouds or meteors they try to wave at us through murmurations and other such avian patterns in significant moments they do this to teach us to make lifting up our eyes a habit remember   they say once every day for a couple of  minutes the entire sky turns your favourite colour: the very darkest shade of blue Publishing credits in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing: won first prize in the Poets & Players Poetry Competition 2023 Medusae: how to extricate yourself (Dempsey & Windle) winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Pamphlet Prize miðnæturblár: POETRY Magazine (April 2022 'Exophony')

audition for iamb AUDITIONS REOPEN 20th-26th Sep 2027 Thank you to all 160+ poets who auditioned in 2025. The standard of writing and reading was impeccably high. Come back to this page on Sep 1st 2027 to see how you can submit your audition next time around. There'll be more than 115 places available across eight waves spanning 2028/29. See you in 2027!

Hear poet Stephanie Clare Smith read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Stephanie Clare Smith wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Stephanie Clare Smith is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, whose forthcoming lyric memoir, Everywhere the Undrowned , will be published in spring 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press. Stephanie's poetry and essays have been published in various journals including Bellevue Literary Review and Xavier Review . She currently lives in North Carolina where she's a social worker and mediator for families in crisis. the poems Small 00:00 / 01:18 Sleep is my friend, I tell myself. I don’t believe myself. I need more friends. What I have is Joni Mitchell songs stuck in my head. I really don’t know love at all. I make shapes with my body under the covers as though I am falling from a plane in the sky – a fetus, a windmill, a steak knife. Which shape survives a long-distance drop? The Times said a fetus – survivors fall small. In the morning, I wake like a clock. A chopper’s overhead beating the air. But this is not Nam or Afghanistan. The radio reports cops up above. A man dumped a woman out of his truck onto the avenue that feeds the heart of the city. Or else she jumped to escape the not-Nam/Afghanistan war in that truck. He fled on foot when the chopper hovered over. All day he’s at large like a storm in the sky. All day she’s out cold in a hospital wing. I feel all small; how she jumped or was dumped in the shape of log that rolled across the road that feeds the heart of the city. When a Horse Smells the End is Near 00:00 / 00:28 nostrils flare fist wide eyes shoot sideways halfway white a bad blows up bigger there nothing left to blind the view a storm stares through a round black sky a moon cut up a crack across the back of night and gallop gone to the edge foul the way it’s over Whereabouts 00:00 / 01:14 I dream I’ve gone missing. Wake up still here in this adopted state, out of place, nothing new. I throw back the comforter, count ten friends from home, lost or gone. Mostly gone. Mostly dope. They follow me to the sink like prayers. I cup my hands underwater. Wash my face, dress up my past, miss ten laughs. I drive to work, clip on my name. Be here for now. If I didn’t stay, if I’d kept on driving, someone here would call the cops, at least by Thursday. But it’s not a crime to just get gone. All I’d take with me is mine, low-key in my little car. I’d drive to other towns, all gone grey. Adopt every state. Take on new names. Hope, Mercy, maybe Shame. Maybe Eleven. The ten gone missing ride along with me and sing our songs. I stay put for now, feed feral cats, work overtime, eat out on Fridays. My little not-disappearing acts. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Yvonne Marjot read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Yvonne Marjot wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet Yvonne Marjot washed up on the Isle of Mull in 2001 after a varied career that took her round the world. Her poetry, inspired by her surroundings, often links mythology with the natural world. She's been published online as well as in anthologies – the most recent of which being In Flight . Her debut collection, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet , won Yvonne the 2012 Brit Writers Prize for Poetry. the poems Workshop Inspired by the exhibition at An Tobar, Tobermory, Isle of Mull (August 2021) 00:00 / 00:54 How small a space is a mind, to track and trace our place in this landscape. Old stories retold, folded and pressed; pieces sliced and plotted, conjured in gold or barely guessed. Fabric as palimpsest: stone set on stone, dense with ink, tense with meaning. Complexity bounded, a nexus of time and intent. Tree shadows, courtyards, a village traced and lined, a vision confined, a vestige, a moment: a world unfurled. A tight-woven fastness – a limitless vastness: this place, so small a space to hold a mind. Artist Eve Campbell spent lockdown creating textile art arising from memories of the landscapes and places that inspired her – unfurling the world within the walls of her home. The Smith 00:00 / 01:44 In his hands the smith is holding light, his face caught in its glow, thought bent on his creation. Focused, calm, intent, with all his skill he brings it into life. His grasp is confident, fingers deft and sure. Fluent in his clasp, the tongs coax a fine, subtle spiral from the glowing rod of iron. He wipes his brow on his arm, bends to endure the flare of the forge: hungry, its red mouth roars as air wakes the coals. The living metal twists and writhes, vivid in the shimmering heat. His wrist transmits the impulse. He hefts the weight, pours his strength into the stroke, one with the force of each blow; the hammer knows its task. His neck is a molten column, his face a mask marked by the heat, lit from within like the forge. The anvil is rooted deep in the earth, the coals are the world’s furnace, igniting the heat that hides in the planet’s core. Sinews tighten as he shifts his grip, seeing the work whole. The hot iron smells like blood, like sex. Like life. He straightens, observes, moves it gently into water. Steam tempered, the lucent surface, beaded with droplets, gleams in the light. Outlined in crimson, his hammer lies still. He stands, annealed in the fires of his own skill. Harespell 00:00 / 00:16 The hare lies so calm in her form of grass, but she trembles still in the wind from the hill. For the wind is a spell, and the spell is a word, and the word is the weight of a world. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Seanín Hughes read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Seanín Hughes wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Seanín was first published on Poethead and featured on the inaugural Poetry Jukebox, based at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, in 2017. Her work has been published widely online and in print – everywhere from Banshee and The Stinging Fly to Abridged. Seanín was shortlisted for the 2018 Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and published her debut chapbook, Little Deaths , with Smithereens Press in 2019. She's currently studying literature at University of Ulster and working on her first full collection. the poems I Want You To Know That You Are Alive 00:00 / 01:43 The natural law is that sometimes, this must hurt. You will find yourself hurled headlong into a mound of salt, skin raw, inside out. And you will know, then, what it means to be the wound— what it means to learn how to breathe through it all. Know that it is a bravery to live at full capacity; fill each lung with equal measure of dark and light. Drink every cup dry. Know that nothing is ordinary, and all things are temporary— we can never outrun this bittersweet truth. But here’s the secret: we can stop, for a moment, and taste it, unafraid of the sting. It’s easier when you know it’s coming; when you lean into the fall, go limp, and let the cushion of your knowing absorb the impact. You will heal again and again, until. You will. The Long Bones 00:00 / 01:15 Bring to us your blackest dog, your tightrope mania, your voices and visions; lay them on the table lengthways. We'll measure your madness, convert it to voltage. Be still. Bite down. Listen when we tell you, we’ve come a long way from fractured femurs, cracked vertebrae. Here. This holds the chemistry to heavyweight your limbs from within; no restraint necessary. Bite down, now. Be a good girl. Slight risk of trauma to teeth or tongue while you sleep, but we promise, this will eat the pain. Yes— on waking, you may forget your name, the year, or how you came to be here— but your bones will remain intact. They’ll hold you together safely until the world comes back. The Birds Are Silent 00:00 / 00:45 & then the lights go up to reveal it all— the beat of fist-deep purple in every chest a tremolo, each knot of bone wet with blood, bodies upon bodies sharing the same wild shake, a writhe of hot molecules. We know the truth now on this godless tilted spin around the sun, dancing ourselves into frenzied circles: the end is here, and all the birds are silent. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Eleanor Holmes read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Eleanor Holmes wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Eleanor Holmes is a writer, doctor and educator living in Valencian Country, Spain. Her poem yolk was nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize by Black Bough Poetry . Her debut digital chapbook Born in a Pandemic was published by IceFloe Press in May 2020. Eliot was commended in the National Poetry Competition in 2014 for her poem The Crab Man , and her work in various forms has appeared in Firewords, Structo, Acumen, Re-side, Dovecote, The Broken Spine Artist Collective, Perhappened and Ink Sweat & Tears. the poems Moonrise over the candyfloss hut Bordeaux, France 1994 00:00 / 02:15 I wander through Aqualand at night, muggy evening, Bordeaux-sticky. The place is closed to the general public, choir off-duty. Thirteen years old in my saggy blue Speedo suit, arms hugged tight to my budding chest. Inside my own head most of the time, I enjoy conversation with myself. Silence wraps me in a bubble. I stand on the edge of the high-board, toes curled over the ledge, naked urge to make the jump: an unobserved leap into dark. Emboldened, I climb metal stairs towards the death slide, bare-footed, alone with fear. I sit with my hands crossed at the top, stare down the vertical drop. Senses alive to cicada wings, pine resin, cold starlight. I lean back. Nobody is there to witness my fall, that weightless feeling: knowing I might leave the confines of the narrow black plastic, smash into French grey concrete or fly. Then the rush of water, it cuts me in two. The pain only adding to my sense of triumph as I walk, legs shaking, towards the main pool. Sit on the water jets, one by one. Watching moonrise over the candyfloss hut, I soak it all up. Waves of pleasure rippling my flush pink face. Granny Loved To Squeeze It 00:00 / 01:10 Grandpa Freeman was as tall as he was round. I remember his neck the folds of flesh, that huge blackhead nestled at the join. How Granny loved to squeeze it. For years she’d been trying to pop it out, puffing on her cigarette, sweat beaded on her brow. We used to encourage her, watch in awe as she tried, their arguments always ending in a squeeze. A punishment he seemed willing to endure until the day it came out, that plug of grime. Years of dead skin and dirt gathered in one expansive pore. WHOOSH! It flew across the kitchen, left a crater as big as my thumb. But after that day, there was nothing left to do, Grandpa seemed deflated, their arguments less heated. And not long after, he died. On the day they let the children out 00:00 / 02:05 On the day they let the children out it was a Sunday towards the end of April. Nature had taken over the intervening weeks: swallows raced along narrow streets, house martins nested under every eave. Butterflies danced in pairs, on pavements, decorating the path to the river unabashed and blousy. Bees hummed a new tune, saddle bags full of pollen as they tumbled past waving flower to flower. Dazzle of dragonfly keeping pace with our pram, parakeets squabbled in giant palms by the old Muslim wall. Familiar rustle of silver birch leaves shivered down the city’s spine, two heron slipped past the repurposed police station, hawk-drawn circles overhead. We couldn’t help but look directly at the sun, similar to the crows, worry melting in the uncorked springtime air. Wood pigeons cooed to us like newborns from struts of the old iron bridge, the opal Xúquer river, gurgling below our feet. Sugar canes creaked and cracked birdsong so loud, it seemed nature had been dialled up especially. A white dove, branch in its beak flapped overhead. We scuffed our feet, the hour allotted over too soon. On the day they let the children out peals of laughter joined in joyful riot, their animal selves unlocked, at last, parents blinked, all startled deer: a safe two meters from each other. The Spanish government relaxed lockdown on 26th April 2020 so that children were allowed outside for the first time, for one hour, accompanied by one parent. Publishing credits Moonrise over the candyfloss hut: Perhappened Mag (Issue 1) Granny Loved To Squeeze It: exclusive first publication by iamb On the day they let the children out: Born in a Pandemic (IceFloe Press)

Hear poet Louise Longson read poems for wave 19 of literary poetry journal iamb. Louise Longson wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Widely published in print and online, Louise Longson is the author of Hanging Fire and Songs from the Witch Bottle: Cytoplasmic Variations . She won the inaugural Kari-Ann Flickinger Literary Memorial Prize with her upcoming collection These are her thoughts as she falls , and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. She was also Highly Commended in The Hedgehog Poetry Press' second A Proper Poetry Pamphlet Competition in July 2024. Translated through the twin prisms of myth and nature, Louise's poetry brings together her personal and professional experiences – she's worked for many years with survivors of trauma at Rape Crisis, as well as with charities focused on alleviating loneliness and supporting mental health recovery. the poems Drowning on Dry Land 00:00 / 01:41 We go in a drought year, and she remembers a sacrifice that was made to the god of Water, when the village was buried under the flow that ate the river and the broad pale fillet of rock where she used to bathe and fish. Huge metal bulldozers rumbled like tanks, planes practiced overhead for a dam-busting raid over the water, unaware of the irony. Twisting streets she walked to school and clean white stone houses became slack and rubble. The foundations of her childhood crumbled away with them. In this dry summer of baked mud, the reservoir breaks its silence. The village has come up, gasping for air. Her memory gushes out in a flood of nostalgia that is hard to bear. It is a hunger, remembering. An ache that hurts more than all the forgetting. By spring, it will slip back beneath the water and she, too, will be gone. Only a pile of sad stone remains; the shaped and faced remnants of a former beauty. History will hold them; both no longer existing and existing at once in an ellipsis of space, a lacuna of fluid time. Battered Woman 00:00 / 01:03 That’s what she was called, back then, like something you’d get from a chip shop. She was the chicken on a spit with the life cooked out of her. Pasty skin, pied with bruises ebbing in colour from Baltic-blue-black to sick mushy-pea-green. Dried ketchup in her nostrils, split lips. Told by her mother she’d made her bed and must lie in it, she could have her cake but couldn’t eat it. Knowing her place is in the queue, waiting her turn until he shouts. Who’s next? Wrap her up in words: newspaper stories said she screamed so quietly the neighbours never heard. Nobody saw her until she slipped back into the waters; disappeared with the slap of tailfin and quicksilver flash. I trawl for her in my dreams. How I Find and Lose My Mother 00:00 / 01:29 Hope is what keeps her going down the street, to the unremarkable house that, like her, needs a new coat of paint. To be repointed, given an extension. I only had twelve weeks. She comes with a shopping bag and a social worker. It’s a crash course in redemption. Pass, and we can leave together. Fail and we will be sent off discretely in different directions. We were never left alone. Each moment of interaction kept in a detailed logbook. You were to be picked up, hugged, fed, changed into a non-risk situation. But, sleep deprived, there were two things I could not keep: my anger at bay and you. Now, forty years later, she tells me her story. History scrapes me, scribing pain onto my scrimshawed bones. Here I am. Unbroken, whole, and as perfect to her as the day she walked away, alone. We only have twelve weeks. Publishing credits Drowning on Dry Land: The High Window (Summer 2023) Battered Woman: Songs from the Witch Bottle: Cytoplasmic Variations (Alien Buddha Press) How I Find and Lose My Mother: Allegro Poetry Magazine (Issue 30)

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 Marie Marchand read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Marie Marchand wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Inaugural Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, Washington State, from 2022 to 2024, Marie Marchand was nominated by iamb for The Pushcart Prize in 2024. Her poetry has appeared in Crannóg Magazine , Catamaran Literary Reader , California Quarterly and elsewhere. Marie is the author of three poetry collections – most recently Gifts to the Attentive – with her fourth, Mostly Sweet, Lovely, Human Things , due out in 2025. Marie is a graduate of Naropa University and The Iliff School of Theology, where she studied psychology, religion and peacemaking. the poems As Necessary As 00:00 / 01:05 I want to write a poem where every line counts as much as breathing. Where every word is as necessary as oxygen. Where if one stanza was removed, the whole architecture of the poem would crumble because every part needs the others that damn much. It would be a poem about what I have lost because how can I know anything else as intimately, as desperately, as that which is no longer under my fingertips yet is always on my mind—dancing like persistent ghosts, utterly vivid and concrete? These apparitions are more alive for me than this kitchen table, this paper and pen. I want to write a poem where every line counts as much as breathing. Then maybe these ghosts will feel seen and heard and I can lay what I’ve lost to rest. Dinner Party in Boston 00:00 / 00:51 Wave-remnants lap the edges of my memory. It was 30 years ago when we kissed in the ocean house on silts. The Atlantic’s wintry breaker spanked the salted wood beneath our feet like a metronome. Surrounded by water yet haunted by thirst I kissed you in the hallway and your cheeks turned to pure fire pomegranate-red the juicy tide of your body rising. Cool mist from the surf seeped in through the old home’s joints dampening the flames. We resumed mingling, talking small knowing that soon we would fall into each other’s ocean and be quenched. In Defense of Poetry as Therapeutic From the Greek therapeuein : to minister to 00:00 / 01:20 It’s true, when I’m having an asthma attack, I don’t reach for Keats or Kinnell— I take my inhaler and within minutes steadfast science rescues me. But when my heart is filled with grief, I write. When my life is shuttered by loss I go to the ancient poets to hear what they have to say. They are my lifeline. Their words get me through prod me towards something. Towards going on. Towards going on. The only thing that matters in the moment. The only thing that matters ever. Why read and write poetry if not for its curative powers inviting us to wholeness? Yes, poetry is craft. Poetry is community. But, above all, poetry is therapeutic: it ministers to. It divines understanding of the fledgling self and by showing us to ourselves, saves us from our own extinctions. Publishing credits As Necessary As / In Defense of Poetry as Therapeutic*: exclusive first publication by iamb Dinner Party in Boston: POETICS: Water – Life & Death (Bainbridge Island Press) *Nominated for The Pushcart Prize

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 Jenny Byrne read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jenny Byrne wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet A newcomer to writing, Dublin-based Jenny Byrne had her first poem published in 2020. Her poems have appeared in The Galway Review , Impspired , Dust Poetry Magazine , Drawn to the Light Press and The Madrigal – though Jenny still thinks her biggest achievement is being a mum to two lovely people. the poems Danseuse 00:00 / 01:25 I do not want to lament the day you died, each year, purging up the aisle of expectation to kneel and prostrate I am ready for the day to come and know there is no must, no proper, no should I may trace a fingertip across your scarf of orchid silk, allow jewels to glisten in my palm, scatter photos, hold linen to my face and breathe you in — less of you with time; but still, a tiger knows her cubs, animal instinct reciprocates This pace, once chaotic, stumbling, shape-shifting to satisfy others has slowed, is gentle; with desire to gratify fading I move, a rising relevé in satin slippers to my tentative, delicate rhythm I may look back from time to time as I lead myself forward towards my skyline I think you would raise a celestial hand, urging me onward. Love (Classified) 00:00 / 00:45 I don't write about love it's ours, it's private. Where we are queen and king passions force bloody battles some won many lost We grieve poultice womb wounds with salt purging the demented Orchid roots reach toward light and air epiphytes survive supported freely I don't write about love, it's ours, it's private. Sapere aude 00:00 / 00:59 The wise child omniscient, sensing, absorbing full up, engorged, overflowing No reprieve, corridors closed, dam bulging, deluge certain walks within the gilded mausoleum, sham, chaos mire Instinct knows what can and cannot be said perception is reality they say a ten-year-old cannot play with perception Sensitivity has no place in dysfunction systems are not made to be broken wise children, bearing all weights, eventually crumble. Publishing credits Danseuse: The Madrigal (Vol. 2) Love (Classified): Impspired (Issue 11) Sapere aude: The Galway Review

Hear poet Polly Walshe read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Polly Walshe wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Polly Walshe is a poet and painter, whose pamphlet, Silver Fold , was published in November 2024. Her poetry has appeared in PN Review , The London Magazine , 14 Magazine , Shearsman Magazine and The Spectator , and has been longlisted three times in the UK's National Poetry Competition. In 2019, a selection of Polly's poetry featured alongside Melissa Ruben’s paintings in Night Vision(s) at the Atlantic Gallery, New York. That same year, Polly won The Frogmore Poetry Prize . She also scooped a Betty Trask Prize in 1995 for her novel, The Latecomer . the poems One Small Case Only 00:00 / 01:11 Have you ever packed your bag before a war, Grabbing a few things hurriedly, Paperwork, some underwear? What, you wonder, will you really need? Will it even be possible to change your shirt During the war while on the road With nowhere to stay? You throw In a hairbrush, lipstick, evening shoes But who will have time for these? You know That in a day or two you’ll be laughing Dryly at choices you’ve made, At your ridiculous ideas. As if anything Will be normal! As if washing in clean Water might occur, or going to bed At a predictable hour after a meal. Something inside you knows this dance As if by memory, the need to thrift And thrift to pay a slave’s remittances And how there’s always someone more Forced out of you, a hedgerow poet Or a hidden priest, a conjuror To heal those wounded by their shame, Uncover words that fit when hope expires And cold stars offer no grace. Brand Sharpening Section A: Core Concepts (i) Now 00:00 / 00:49 Now is your only home And will make you authentic Across all platforms Not franchised to the future Or the past As many operators are. The progress of shadows Cuts up the hour But Now – and who knows how? – Has seamless power. All representatives and strategists Must beware of actioning Precise time terminology When Now is always streaming Perfectly, Licence up-to-date. Our Now is flashier, A great deal more Kardashian, Than tomorrow, Next week, Or the endless wait. Extraordinary Rendition 00:00 / 01:43 There was a woman who turned into a shadow, You could pass your hand through her quite easily. It was her desires, she could not overrule them, They chaperoned her everywhere and wore a hollow In her and the hollow grew into the whole of her. Mostly she longed for random retail objects, Heart-breaker shoes or a small Norwegian table, But her longings also looked for unprotected people Who lacked the strength to pull against the pull of her. This person drifted round a little spitefully and yet You pitied her. She was so small, so guinea grey, And getting greyer, more transparent, every day, While the hollow in her grew insatiable, hanging Out of her like Bonnie Parker to suck the strangers in Who stopped to talk to her. The hollow Would swallow her too, eventually, her nose, Her rings, her smile and her broken-brimmed fedora, Closing its portal to the human world and shooing Its desires back to their dark stable For refurbishment, but not before enticing several More unguarded strangers, showing them the charm In her and dragging them to the far side of her Where they remained, lost in a modish purple fog, Not understanding where they were and dreaming That they still lived modern independent lives, Following the news, et cetera. Publishing credits One Small Case Only: Pennine Platform (No. 95)  Brand Sharpening: Shearsman Magazine (Nos. 131 & 132)  Extraordinary Rendition: PN Review 269 (Vol. 49, No. 3)

Hear poet Dominic Weston read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dominic Weston wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Dominic Weston makes wildlife programmes for television, runs over the Mendip hills, and writes poetry. His work has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, journals and anthologies, including Ink, Sweat & Tears and Green Ink Poetry . Once, he even slipped off the page into poetry film . Dominic's work veers into the natural world – often with a healthy undercurrent of darkness. Adopted as a baby, and having lost both parents to prolonged illness in recent years, Dominic treasures most the poems he writes about his family. the poems November 00:00 / 01:35 Scissoring volleys snip across the dripping field call and counter-call sewing lines of reassurance between fleets of long-tailed tits as they slip westwards from the cider orchard through the beeches to infiltrate a long thorn hedge Half the front leg of a roe deer is sheathed in mud-washed fur, a finger of matt bone protruding at one end, a black flinty hoof at the other – rejected by the nose of a curious hound articulated by the shunt of a cautious boot Ghost memories of deer appear along the Fosseway in the dun flanks of fallen field stone greenish with algae half-light fashioning their features Pale flashes on the path, peroxide husks look like Bambi tails not the fallen maize wraps from a squirrel’s overhanging store Thwud! Strikingly rigid and damp-dense Millie claps my knee backs with an over-long branch Labrador trots her pride in the mimic trophy – her own piece of Jane Doe Beneath our feet limestone knucklebones push up through the blackspots of let down sycamore palms yellowing gloves smooth the naked crevices November is the time when the ground is made. The Daedalus I Knew Inspired by the bronze statue Daedalus Equipping Icarus by Francis Derwent Wood 00:00 / 01:28 The father of Icarus is on his knees, left hand deftly lacing a leather cuff around his son’s bicep, while the right carries the weight of the wings It was not my father but my mother who knelt before her own boy wonder to tie the laces on my new school shoes and launch me into the world Daedalus’ rapt attention to his son as unimaginable to me as flight itself, a pantomime played out on a mythical isle, nothing I could know My mother sprang my father from the loveless island his parents confined him to determined that her own children would never see its brittle shores My father’s skills earned the salary that paid for tan sandals in the summer and black lace-ups in winter, that put food on the table year round So no, he never did kneel before me to tie my laces or straighten my wings, but he lent me his place in my mother’s heart and that selfless act let me fly And The Third Wish 00:00 / 02:41 It would be an unseasonably warm afternoon when I would turn myself inside out start to roll the skin back from my crown unrooted hair flopping down onto my chest the skin slinking over shoulders to the ground An unexpected easterly wind would rise making it a very good day for laundry so into the tub with it, and half a box of soda to scrub, scrub, scrub with the old bristle brush and then three times through the mangle The hottest part of the day would see me sitting in the shade on that stool from St David’s with its three clawing rhododendron legs me thinking about nothing in particular until my freed skin flapped bone dry in the wind Once the steam from pressing had dissipated I’d take out my reglazed glasses and look for the first time into every crevice and wrinkle survey the landscape supported by my fingers and audit my own hide for scars Out of the long-crushed grey shoebox I’d lift the gold leaf embosser I’d liberated from Reading Grammar’s library stores retired from inscribing Dewey’s digits on leather spines in favour of cold hard print Plugged in the mains and finally hot to its tip I’d parsimoniously press through foiled tape to fill in the full extent of every scar I’d found with a thin shield of gold, soon gone cold the chink in my cheek where it kissed the steel-lined typewriter case in the hall the dent in my forehead where it struck the brake lever of my Raleigh Tomahawk the grave accent over my right eyebrow inscribed by an open can of baked beans Then my hands, oh my hands! my pride, my strength, my means the scenes of countless crimes and remedies so many nicks, so many cuts, so many gouges painstakingly gilded into delicate koi scale gloves At the end of this burnished afternoon I’d slowly pack my tools away for the last time then burn my clothes in that rusting rubbish bin carefully step back into my newly sequinned skin and shimmer my way to Gomorrah. Publishing credits November: exclusive first publication by iamb The Daedalus I Knew: The Language of Salt (Fragmented Voices) And The Third Wish: Gallus supplement of Poetry Scotland (Issue 101)