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 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 Mary Mulholland read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mary Mulholland wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Mary Mulholland's poetry has been published in Mslexia , Magma , The Interpreter's House , The Rialto and Under the Radar . Highly commended in the Bridport Prize for Poetry and The Rialto's Nature and Place Poetry Competition, she was also longlisted in the UK's National Poetry competition. Mary founded and co-runs Red Door Poets , and is co-founder and editor of The Alchemy Spoon . Formerly a transpersonal psychotherapist, Mary holds a Newcastle University/Poetry School MA in Poetry. Her published works include What the sheep taught me , two collaborations with Vasiliki Albedo and Simon Maddrell ( All About Our Mothers / All About Our Fathers ), plus a new pamphlet is on its way from Broken Sleep Books. the poems Heading to the swamps 00:00 / 02:00 The fruit bats flew off at dusk. I went to the harbour, bought a prawn salad, but a gull snatched my first forkful mid-air. Now, heading back, empty, to the Airbnb, seagulls yeowing, chuckling over my head my phone rings: you’re in a coma. I stop midway across the bridge, the sea far below dark and cold, so many stars, and all I can think is where do the bats go by night? At first I’d thought they were a cloud of crows. I force you back to mind, wonder if you’ll survive, but we all die sometime, and this’d save divorce. I’m having an adrenaline rush. It’s as well we have a half-world between us. I’m no good with invalids. And hearts need to be looked after. Mine can’t be broken. You say love’s a basic need. I don’t need needs like that. Yet once we had dreams. On a beach you read me Jonathan Livingston. We were so young. After that, seagulls divebombed me, followed me home, waited on my sill. Seagulls have this wide range of sound and elegant social behaviour. I don’t like seagulls. When I broke with you, the first time, you argued your way back. It was autumn. Even fruit bats get amorous in autumn, making love, feasting in the swamps until dawn, then off. Like us. Always coming and going. And you now drip-fed. The cold rips through me. Does it take this for me to learn I love you? What the sheep taught me 00:00 / 00:41 All day I have watched the ewes, Trying to see as they do, everything at once. I think best sequentially: it’s getting towards evening. The sheep know this too, they’re starting their sunset corral of the field perimeter, practising for the national, leaping like antelope, even the large one bearing triplets, she soars over the electric fence, she’s made of spring. All those fences I could have jumped. I take a run. The shock sends me flying. Flypast 00:00 / 01:46 He hands me a canister decorated with sunflowers. It is November. I peer into a hole, the size of a fifty-pence piece. Inside is just over half full, its weight approximate to a bag of flour. Pale grey, the cremulator has produced a texture more silt than sand, and I am lost in staring: that speck is her laughter, that’s her at the proms, dressed for a ball, with a fractured skull on her way to the point-to-point she’d invited me to but I was busy revising the middle ages. That dark fleck is her holding babies, never her own, and that, ‘if you’re cold put on another jumper’, their chilly lakeside house. My brother-in-law clears his throat. Last night he said he gives wood-ash to a neighbouring potter for the kiln; it creates a fine sheen in the glaze. Has anyone used ash of a loved one? Three fighter jets burst overhead, fast and low. We look up. Cloudless blue, after a wraith-like early mist. He circles the cherry, scatters her lightly, and each of us does a round of the leafless tree whose base flickers with tea lights. She’s a circular skirt of powder. A breeze lifts her briefly, almost a flamenco, then drops to silence. Overnight drizzle will vanish her to earth. Publishing credits Heading to the Swamps: Fourteen Poems to say I Love You (Candlestick Press) What the sheep taught me: What the sheep taught me (Live Canon) Flypast: Mslexia (Issue 105) Author photo: © Xavier Bonfire

Hear poet Rosie Barrett read poems for wave 27 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rosie Barrett wave 27 autumn 2026 back next the poet Published internationally in magazines including Picaroon Poetry , Write to the River and Communion , Rosie Barrett has seen her work appear as far afield as the USA and Tasmania. She featured in the anthology Called to the Edge , and was shortlisted in 2017 for the Bridport Prize for Poetry. Rosie aims to create accessible poems on topics ranging from onion sellers and mermaids to the joys of family and the loss of a son. She's a proud member of the Moor Poets group. the poems Sometimes it Just Takes Time 00:00 / 01:26 That year. That autumn when everything changed and we carried on took each day did what we had to do slept the sleep of the exhausted hoped not to dream. Rob took his grief out on the hazel wood – to the ancient woodland where the dormice hide and breed leave shells with perfect holes. That autumn he put in a gate from the garden made a path hacked through brush and brambles took care to leave the rowan. Along and down following the contour of the hill then up to meet the drove track. Went out with mattock spade and axe, built steps edged with fence posts sawn to size. He hardly spoke came in for soup and cheese went out again returned to shower eat and sleep. A week it took him and on the day we all came to scatter say our last goodbyes there were a few who understood who went through the garden gate walked through the wood took in the silence that’s always there disturbed only by dogs or deer the rustlings of small mammals the harsh jeering of a jay. In spring, the scent of bluebells overwhelms. In the Quiet House 00:00 / 01:03 Again the soft mew of the baby in the middle of the night Mew turns to wide-eyed tear-free cry in the quiet house the ticking of the clock In the middle of the night comfort comes the child falls back to sleep In the quiet house the ticking of the clock mum and baby settle back to rest blessèd rest for mum as baby sleeps Take your sleep when she does her mother said Mum and baby softly breathe Four in the morning is a dreadful time Take your rest when she does her mother said You need to stay strong to keep her safe Four in the morning is a dreadful time Change and feed her she'll drop off You need to stay strong to keep her safe Mew has turned to red-faced bellow Change and feed her she'll drop off In two hours that soft mew of baby once again Trust 00:00 / 00:36 In Narrow Seas I breathe in through my nose out through my mouth calculate the distance to shore check who is near. You watch the chart unfold our boat a small black triangle. Red crosses mark the rocks I cannot see. You gesture right or left. I turn the wheel. I doubt I’ll die in my bed. There’ll be no cross for you or for me in your wake. Publishing credits Sometimes it Just Takes Time / In the Quiet House: exclusive first publication by iamb Trust: April Skies (The Hedgehog Poetry Press)

Hear poet Luke Palmer read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Luke Palmer wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Poet, author and teacher Luke Palmer has written two poetry pamphlets: Spring in the Hospital – winner of the 2018 Prole Pamphlet Prize – and In all my books my father dies . His novels for young adults have been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and shortlisted for the Branford Boase award. In 2022, he won the Winchester Poetry Prize . Luke's debut poetry collection Homunculus is due out from Broken Sleep Books in early 2024. the poems Homunculus, Potty Training 00:00 / 01:13 My father in his soiled apron kneels to the rug I’ve soiled sops it with caustic water his cracked knuckles singing so much soil and smut while outside the earth stirs the small machines rising the shock of my own water brings springs to my eyes and father comforts me says all water is blessed is longing to fall back to the centre and the world’s in endless gyre around a hollow middle where God sits and he rises up through everything muddied by what he touches but still inside everything that seed spirit inherent and I am a planet too my divine core rising to puddle on the kitchen floor miraculous he says and smiles his raw hands working the rug beneath his knees and my miraculous marks Horse Mother If [a human sperm] be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom. Paracelsus – De Natura Rerum (1537) 00:00 / 01:20 O great and latinate mother there I was haunched in your middle mired inside the bloody knot of you fattened on plasma plump little barrel the small bow and tight stitch of my shimmering translucent brain I wanted to stay squared in your uterus womb-warmed and duvet’d galloped in your sternum stuffed and packed wanted to be kept left to loll in your thick limbic hedgerow cooped in that belly never to be dealt but no plans had been made the world opened so big my mother O so big and so so cold Doomscrolling 00:00 / 01:02 Yes today has been the bluntest cross legged at the kitchen window the same view pressing on it the sills are deep with flies ticking consonants of small forms that slowed against the glass then shrunk their cursive rasp at my fingernails only the fridge hums now meanwhile the sky is faultless with swifts I watch vital parts of myself detach lumber to the river where they cease I squeeze greenfly from the bud of every rose in all my prosperous beds until my fingers change colour Publishing credits Homunculus, Potty Training / Horse Mother: exclusive first publication by iamb Doomscrolling: Anthropocene

Hear poet Steve Smart read poems for wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb. Steve Smart wave 17 spring 2024 back next the poet Poet and poetry filmmaker Steve Smart is based in Angus, Scotland. His poems have appeared in Atrium , Firth , The Poetry Shed , The Writer's Café , Ink, Sweat & Tears , Poetry Scotland , Gallus , Consilience and elsewhere. Recent collaborations have meant Steve's poetry has featured in anthologies published in New Zealand, Canada and Scotland – while his poetry films have been screened at various international festivals and exhibitions. In 2023, funding from Creative Scotland helped Steve and Irish poetry filmmaker Colm Scully deliver a new poetry film workshop for the Scottish Poetry Library. the poems luminous without being fierce 'Light in Scotland has a quality I have not met elsewhere. It is luminous without being fierce, penetrating to immense distances with an effortless intensity.' Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain 00:00 / 01:20 We meet were ridge meets sky – your kin are only here, above a rising contour of warmth, an unrequested flood shrinking your island tundras, stranding you upward, a feathered bellwether. You switch from being, to being unseeable – lichen-hill-skin you’ll speckle-wait me away, hunker into arctic whites – if the high corrie snows hesitate, else doubtful greys for spring. I forget so much, but remember each of all our meeting places. The map knows their names – I recall stones and land and the rise and fall, where you were, were not, and were again. I saw your presence shimmer, while I gazed breathless – while you waited, while I was not too much, while you were still. entrenched 00:00 / 24:07:02 Mine hunters with doll-sized trowels, flense the russet soils with caution. Is that slight discolouration the circumference of a wooden post? That line a distant season's burning? Stratigraphy layers the plot, yields the story. Circumstantial evidence – is that scrape a street number, a mason’s strike, or just more tumbledown sandstone subtext? The palm gifted a stone tool finds an easy accommodation, caresses as if to cup a cheek – to retouch, re-dress familiar bodies, in more than a change of clothes. How much for ten minutes chat? Of different days and other treasures – of how children always fight, of what the sky says in the dark, of one mind horde to another. sidelong From the United States Library of Congress details of the first photographic portrait image of a human produced in America: Robert Cornelius, head-and-shoulders self-portrait, facing front, with arms crossed. (Daguerreotype, 1839.) 00:00 / 00:59 Robert Cornelius remains sceptical. He does not trust that it will work, or that a specific future develops when this image will be visible. He does not pause to comb his hair or consider us, but guards himself against the possible exposure, against the theft, of unmarshalled spirit. Slow counting silent hesitation, he glances sidelong from 1839, doubtful of our existence, his focus on what he next intends. Publishing credits luminous without being fierce: Alchemy and Miracles (Gilbert and Hall Press) entrenched / sidelong: exclusive first publication by iamb , though sidelong was previously blogged by the author

Hear poet Natalie Crick read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Natalie Crick wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, Natalie Crick has had poems in Stand , The Moth , Banshee , The Dark Horse , The Poetry Review and elsewhere. One of her poems was commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020, and awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition that same year. Another of Natalie's poems received a special mention by judge Ilya Kaminsky in the Poetry London Prize 2020. In 2021, Natalie was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award, and nominated for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is co-founder and poetry editor of small literary press Fragmented Voices , which is based in both Newcastle and Prague. the poems Cut 00:00 / 01:17 the lovely fairies in Sister’s room have blades on their backs and lately Lee sucks lemons for their sharps looks for wounds in snow on his morning walk with Mam fantasizes he is sliced like a pear but today the blood smells real he wipes his hands on his trackies dizzy tries to walk not run because he doesn’t want to scare and blooming like a cherry tree stumbles out there is a metallic grinding scream when Next Door ignites the hedge trimmer the winter sun pierces Lee’s eyes blue sky sawn open in that moment the sky is too big for Lee far too big and empty he wants to find the stars wants a knock on his bedroom door wants to be red for somebody Doctors and Nurses 00:00 / 01:10 Lee’s Sister is upstairs Septembering in the back bedroom where Lee sometimes eats old bread. After long days of waiting, Lee moves like an infection up stairs that smell of cigarette smoke. Sister’s shadow is a boy of five in the right light. Lee lights her smile with a tickle, breaks the pill onto the spoon’s curve and tells his patient to suck on it. She coos. This is what doves do, excited through open lips. Lee tends to Sister’s most-hurts, examines the cut on her toe and kisses it. Allows her to undress to rub salve into her cattle state. Sombre Doctor Lee, grave in gloves, checks her pulse: Miss, there’s something you should know. Girlfriend-Watch 00:00 / 01:55 Poorly Girlfriend sleeps like a parched stone. Boyfriend watches her instead of television. Boyfriend watches when light slats dangerously expose her black eyes to him. His hand is a quill; the crow feather a flutter to ease out her bad, the nib a point stroking her cheeks. Boyfriend makes up Girlfriend’s face with motes of ash from his fingers. Her face is lengthening, looking up. To Boyfriend she seems Unsafe. Undelicate. He plays love with her, plays fetch, plays harm. He likes her to suck his fingers, He likes her to smile, always. Boyfriend likes to use the biggest knife to slice Girlfriend’s strawberries, likes to see the red of them against the lap of white at her throat. Boyfriend confesses how much he loves Girlfriend to the mirror. He whispers the names of the others he loves, but can never change the channel on the remote. Boyfriend watches Girlfriend instead of television. He turns the ceiling light on and off to see just what she will do, lights up the room bright to check she is still breathing. Off and On. Publishing credits Cut: The Manchester Review (Issue 23) Doctors and Nurses: The Interpreter's House (Issue 76) Girlfriend-Watch: placed second in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020

Hear poet Rachel Smith read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rachel Smith wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet New Zealander Rachel Smith, a chef and Open Floor Movement Teacher, has made London her home. She's had work published in various journals and anthologies, including The North , Magma and The Book of Love & Loss . Her recordings of her text Bed Unbound toured Scotland on a bus as part of the Day of Access . Rachel's poems for iamb are part of her ongoing project, A Manual for Dying . the poems We die in stages 00:00 / 00:55 Claire wakes us at 6am. She’s already called Mike, so we all go to your room. You are still curled up, could be asleep, except your rattling breath is absent. We toast you with whiskey as the sun rises. You are soft dead, still warm. The undertaker comes after breakfast, takes you away. You are back early afternoon, laid out on your bed in your town clothes – moleskin trousers and Guernsey jersey. Ben and Penny come in to say goodnight. Penny says Antone is really dead now, eh . I know what she means. You were soft dead before, now you are dead dead. Firewood 00:00 / 01:03 We all knew Dad wouldn’t want a shiny coffin. But the pine ones are expensive and there’s not much money. So Matt and Mike turn Dad's woodshed into a workshop, get macrocarpa planks from the local sawmill, debate the design. Matt spends three days sawing, planing, sanding, worrying it’ll be too heavy, that Dad won’t fit, that the bottom will fall out. He fusses over the strips along the top: Dad was so good at lines. The morning of the funeral we test it out. Matt gets in and my cousins and uncles lift, shaking it slightly, laughing in the way you do when life and death are close. Matt gets out relieved, shakes himself, speaks at the funeral about Dad’s love of fire, says I’ve built you a coffin of the finest macrocarpa. Provisions 00:00 / 01:12 Six men – sons, brother, nephews, old friend – lift Dad from his bed in a blanket sling, swearing as they carry this body that does not bend around corners. There is relief when he’s in, that he fits. We put in earth from farms he loved. Roses, seashells, fern fronds. A bridle and dog collar. His radio. Rosary beads. Niall Fergusson’s 'Empire': That’ll give him something to argue with. Jamie makes him his cheese and onion sandwich. His teapot that drove us all crazy with its constant dribble but which we miss as soon as it’s gone. The half bottle of Jura from the night before. Tui sing. Father Joe says a prayer and the lid goes on. The men lift Dad into the hearse, silently. We are bound in this ancient rite, where carrying a coffin is still one of the most sacred things. Publishing credits We die in stages / Provisions: exclusive first publication by iamb Firewood: Magma 75

Hear poet Stewart Carswell read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Stewart Carswell wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Stewart Carswell grew up in the Forest of Dean and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, where he co-pilots the Fen Speak open mic night. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. His poems have recently been published in Under the Radar , Envoi , Ink Sweat & Tears , and The Fenland Reed . His debut collection, forthcoming in 2021, is Earthworks . the poems Earthworks West Kennett 00:00 / 00:34 I migrate back to this farmland burdened for summer with corn, where the mound distorts the harvest and the great stones form the façade of a house that swallows the dead and has for centuries. On a ledge inside the entrance a line of faces stares down at me, their flesh behind glossy feathers, and guarding its nest is the swallow, inverting the tomb into a cradle, raising five lives from this chamber. Listen to this 00:00 / 00:26 The river is fed by brooks that pour sound down the hillside. A season of rain fattens it. The level has risen higher than I expected, but it is level still and that is important: to stay balanced no matter how much rain has fallen, no matter how much you want to flow with that water away from this place. Sleepers 00:00 / 01:45 A curtain of ferns spreads at eye height to a child and parts from the push of a hand to expose the shrinking clearing and the treasure at its centre: an ancient sleeper laying like a sunken casket and shrouded by a puzzle of oak leaves. The specimen ornamented with metalware: rusted plates and bolts, brooches carried by the dead to the next station of life. Close the curtains. Change the scene. A figure stands at the end of the platform, his face masked by a flag. Steam spirals around him, a spire above rows of sleepers. There is one line drawn from childhood through junctions to connections, and the destination is close to definition. I feel the platform vibrate from something about to begin. The figure sounds his whistle. His flag drops and it is my face unmasked and it's time to leave this dream and I see it now. The trackbed has lost its track and I have lost track of time. I get up to check my phone but there’s no signal and my daughter is asleep, habitually dreaming of a better life to travel in and I see it now. The ancient sleeper is a relic, an inherited burden, second-hand history. I step outside, and the first engine of the day sets out light, and I see it now: I know what to do. Publishing credits Earthworks: Ink, Sweat & Tears Listen to this: Eighty Four – Poems on Male Suicide, Vulnerability, Grief and Hope (Verve Poetry Press) Sleepers: Elsewhere

Hear poet Wendy Allen read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Wendy Allen wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Wendy Allen’s poems have appeared in The London Magazine , The North , Propel Magazine , Poetry Ireland Review , Ambit , Poetry Wales and The Moth among others. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Plastic Tubed Little Bird , was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep Books. the poems Plastic Tubed Little Bird 00:00 / 01:40 I hide the tampon within my fingers like I’m holding a tiny, fragile bird. Someone once told me this is how my hands should be when I run. On the side of an unstained trainer’s edge is a star. In red. On the edge. I think of the tiny celestial mark I draw in ink on my calendar, always inconspicuous. I pretend to look for my phone, pen, a date two weeks later. Inside my bag, a yellow wrapper the colour of cruel. A creased spring dress worn only to celebrate bloodshed. I whisper period to you in the hope you will turn around. You don’t. I shout it out 28 times aloud in my head. When I empty my Mooncup, the blood remains crescent lonely in the daytime bowl. I like the absolute discomfort this causes you. I envy the plastic backed sanitary sleeping bodies on their unfamiliar coastal beds, their one-night stand leaving them free for me to feel their single use guilt. A naked tampon in the cervix of my bag is exposed only by a useless string lifeline, the wrapper from the orange tampon flatlines at the bottom of my bag. Our Turn to Host 00:00 / 01:25 That the dinner party is ours is a bad start / I open the door / smile / take coats / observe new hair / enhanced romance between the couple we sit down with / every sentence I begin with I self-censor / make sure I’m not going to disclose too much / B notices but she’s got the headfuck rush from the Pata Negra I bought at Madrid Airport / I’m struggling after two glasses of wine and 12 drops of Rescue Remedy / I want to smoke too fast / exhale this shit sham of an evening / At eight seventeen and we’re one hour and sixteen minutes in / after melon and lamb and Hasselbach potatoes / here is the part when I want to cram soft sponge into my mouth like a gag / this is when B’s husband asks about my job / I'm lying on the table naked / exposed as he dives in with precision / cuts into the decisions I make laid out on the table / dissecting me in parts / judging and measuring and weighing and labelling / I want to eat trifle and cry Pelagos After Barbara Hepworth What happens when I look from the side? When I can’t see the strings completely? Does that mean the sea disappears? 00:00 / 01:47 It is Pelagos I always go to first at The Hepworth . From the front, the repeat, the shadows, the stitches transform my vulva into a perfect circle as you reach around my waist, from the side repeat, trace finger on back. I hear a moan from the centre (my voice) your cock is between my lips I am the opposite to hollow now the stitches are laced with immediacy they mimic breathing they rise – pause – fall I move to the side, hold my breath the sea stops moving – land locked, absent body. In the gallery we meet at cat’s cradle we begin on an elm flat base lick salt off plate, off body into the space, fold shouldered waves into me sea wall curves over arms – wrap around, repeat I look at Pelagos from the side I think of myself open mouthed an empty estuary the size of an unspecified sea, downy breathing I’m almost complete in this part. I am Pelagos . From the side from the side, make my strings dissipate. Publishing credits All poems: Plastic Tubed Little Bird (Broken Sleep Books)

Hear poet Pascale Potvin read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Pascale Potvin wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Pascale Potvin, who writes as Viola Volée, has published several chapbooks – her newest, SEX, GOD, & OCD , arriving in February 2024 from Naked Cat Publishing. Thrice nominated for Best of the Net, she's also had her work put up for The Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction, as well as longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. Pascale's work has appeared in Juked , Eclectica Magazine , trampset and many others. She's Editor-in-Chief of Wrong Publishing, and writer/director of feature film, Baby Fever . the poems Down a Seized Throat 00:00 / 00:38 How can hair be healthy if it’s dead? My bloody earlobe says the most about me. A leaf falls onto the street and it hardens then softens back into a baby. Yet while summer brings old lusts, like birds for others, I never understood song; On the trail, I place a bandaid for blisters in my mouth, till the ridges of my tongue are gone. Because, what if a wasp dove into my Flavor Aid, like taste creates cult? What if it was a bird? It’d have to swim. What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD? 00:00 / 00:38 It means he closes his eyes, like umbrellas stop feeling the rain. It means that, when I wave to him, I make the grass move with the sky. And it means that, when I say hello, he’ll hear a rhyme: je te veux (my therapist said u might have a crush on me, so i need you too scared to become famous cause the people past our deaths might dissect your pages: there, they would find me folded up, up in the letters’ livers like you still tried to get me out). Museum One 00:00 / 01:03 did i ever tell you that i stopped at a museum, just a block from my house for the wifi? i couldn’t wait longer to be touched by you; teenage bodies are too fertile and we were the bodies in the god oh kiss my neck, like cutting a dandelion stem, i’ll do it, like rain water’s submissive to its leaf (i promise if one chair in the history of the world ever got turned on in a flash of unsolved natural mystery, it would be that one) like nature photography (selfie of me in a top that reminds me of u) and so what’s the point of living, or writing, i wonder? if there’s no one left to fall for? if there’s no one to seduce, in that order? i’m free, my pussy against the dirt, like it’ll never taste me again as an artefact or a grave i would’ve worn your name, gone on display Publishing credits Down a Siezed Throat / What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD?: exclusive first publication by iamb Museum One: excerpt originally from Fifth Wheel Press' 2022 calender (Fifth Wheel Press)

Hear poet James Giddings read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. James Giddings wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Born in Johannesburg and now living in Sheffield in the north of England, James Giddings is the author of Everything is Scripted , published in 2016 by Templar Poetry. the poems Look inside 00:00 / 01:00 At the base of the back of my neck is the button you press to get a look inside. One firm push with your thumb and FWIP! my head pops back like the top of a kettle and a noise strikes the same tone as a microwave casserole when it’s cooked, a mushroom cloud of steam ballooning from the neck hole of my thin cigarette body. Once you’ve released all that hot air, take a peek, you’ll see there’s not much there: no gold elements, no dial tone of great intellect, just a feeling, as if staring down a deep ravine. There seems as if there’s no end to it, until you throw something down and a sound calls back from the bottom. There are versions of us in alternate universes 00:00 / 01:37 One where we’re partners on a buddy cop show who stand back-to-back with our guns raised as our theme tune swells to a crescendo and the screen detonates, our names exploding out of picture. Another where we bloom on trees like bright fruit and our lives are spent waiting for the great fall. Then there’s the one where I am your father and you are my son, and you are crying because you’re hungry and I am crying because I can’t get the car seat to bloody fit, but we stop, for a few seconds, each of us near silent when we catch the eyes of the other. One where we are giant glass shards reflecting. Another where we are bank robbers, our ears pressed against a safe door like expectant fathers listening for a heartbeat. Another where we wait in a long line for the entrance to Hell and both complain about how long it’s taking. And even though I know there are worse universes than ours, I can’t shake the one in which each night you tell me all the unextraordinary words you know like spam , hardcopy and telemarketer, then right before you leave, say a couple of extraordinary ones, which are only so because of how rarely I’ve heard you utter them in this world. No requests 00:00 / 01:55 I’m working on my vanishing act, an homage to my father. To learn more I attend a show where the magician starts by sawing a ladle in half. To further subvert the genre he pulls a hat out of a rabbit, places the rabbit on his head like a toupee and shaves it into oblivion with a set of clippers, leaving the cue ball of his bald head shining. Do the one where the father disappears and you bring him back on stage! I heckle, but he doesn’t do requests. Next he does a card trick entirely with birthday cards, which, in a feat of anti-gravity, levitates the heart in my chest. With love , one reads, then his signature, a single kiss. Impressed, I shout, do the one where you bring back the father! But he still doesn’t do requests. Next he stretches a ten pence piece leaving the Queen’s face visibly frustrated. Then he solves a Rubik’s cube by throwing it behind his back; it is so convincing and easy, I hope a policeman might hand him a murder case. I rise from my seat, plead, please do the one where you bring back the father! He gestures off-stage theatrically, magics up security and I’m escorted out through a plain grey door. No traps. No secret panels. I never got to see the big finish, whether he did the trick, but I waited anyway, checking every face that left the auditorium, hopeful he had pulled it off. Publishing credits Look Inside: exclusive first publication by iamb There Are versions of Us in Alternate Universes: Poetry Wales (Vol. 56, No. 2) No Requests: Poetry London (Issue 97)