Hear poet Marcelle Newbold read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Marcelle Newbold wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Winner of Cardiff's Poetry in the Arcades Competition 2020, Marcelle Newbold has had her poetry, with its themes and explorations of place and inheritance, published in various online and print magazines – most recently, anthologies from Black Bough Poetry and Indigo Dreams Publishing. Managing editor of Rare Swan Press, Marcelle is also poetry editor for Nightingale & Sparrow. the poems Weeping Willow 00:00 / 00:58 The boy wanted to know so they embraced. Her bark softened to his apples and knobbles, less agitated now her tendril jewels dripped. She did not answer. Although her roots sang again, again and a leaf, perfect in its death, kissed frigid ripples to life. They whispered soundless love: conceived sinew; osmosis; their thirst. Dreamt indigo sweet blooms, beds of white, held solace in their skins. He knew: the full moon flooded her, bled potential. Death score times score, now a feast for the roses, evidence of a scheme. She knew: memory as a trick, there’s only now. So they bathe, drink, exert, worship – keep not to themselves, and believe in divine cultivation. Wassailing Spirits 00:00 / 00:31 I idle under the apple tree – warped limbs, damp smell of green, dormant blooms. Eventually they come: spoon and saucepan clanks; grins and ciders, bright toes cajole, blunt fingers creak, sweet hearts enjoy the blush of dusk. And they greet me. They sing & dance & racket around, voices conjure bounty, enchant praise, nurture the new. Moving On 00:00 / 01:09 And that’s when I knew those seagulls had lied – my then-smooth face turned to the sea, breeze pulling wetness from the sky and our eyes, my summer frocked legs goose-pimpled — hand in family hand we sat on my father’s favourite gorse-cling bench, saying goodbye, as his urn carefully capsized. Those seagulls enjoyed the bleak lifting. Beaks yellow, blood spot. Bellies chip full. Sky blackened wing tips gleaming. They mocked: no return . For here, now, my daughter sits, serenely wrapped in orange lifejacket, cinnamon bun in willing chubby hand — licking icing streaks, selecting raisins, one by one, occasionally releasing a blown blond strand from sticky lips. The sea churns white crests, we heave and jolt, the boat cradled through mud-heavy waves, our sails sheeted tight. Publishing credits Wassailing Spirits: Black Bough Poetry (Christmas Edition 2021) Weeping willow: Dear Dylan: An anthology after Dylan Thomas (Indigo Dreams Publishing) Moving on: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Cora Dessalines read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Cora Dessalines wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Cora Dessalines is a queer, London-based freelance writer. They were former assistant editor of their university’s creative writing magazine ~FACTORY~ and editorial assistant at Guts, an independent publisher of memoirs and short-story anthologies. Cora has had their work published in Lacuna, a literary magazine that showcases the writing of young women and non-binary people of colour. They are a lover of fashion, space and anything colourful, and are currently at work on their first afrofuturist science-fiction novel for adults. the poems takotsubo cardiomyopathy 00:00 / 01:53 they say it feels like s i n k i n g that tectonic plates shift and create fissures wide enough to swallow you whole quite the opposite, in fact it isn’t quicksand nor an overlap of scrambling hands and clawing fingers craving to drag you under no, it is a rupture in the laws of physics a losing battle between mass and energy where gravity knows no bounds— it is the feeling of your feet g n i t f i l and your body capsizing gnizispac to mould with this wretched world in which you rise, climbing the clouds, your head facing the ground all the way they say it feels like a cavernous well but the devil is a liar that chilly water is the fluid in your lungs, sib the build-up from elevating to such high altitudes where dew droplets crystallise on your eyelashes and your oxygen is slowly snatched while you ascend them six layers as punishment by this, a most wicked cosmos to be honest, you should’ve guarded your rassclart heart instead of looking up and thanking the universe for blessing you with syrup and silver and steadfast loyalty that love was on loan, little horror and the night sky tricked you into thinking those were jewels stitched onto a dark tapestry instead of black sheets stuck on using a roller and wheat paste i wish i could’ve warned you the light you saw are just bullet holes we call stars. so this is love 00:00 / 01:35 i want it to be glorious. i want us to douse ourselves in it to take a match in each hand light them and set ourselves on fire! our mixed ashes must ripple and rumble until we, two phoenixes, rise birthed from the pyre of our own making— it needs to be … ravenous. and make us forsake all earthly foods save the tongue-plucked cherries that grow above our inner thighs, swallowed and savoured a sempiternal reminder that we are the fruits of a supernova, dual spheres of magma. we will steal matter from each other like two thieves in the night gorging in tandem lava— combust we until i only want it if it’s going to bring me beyond the brink of destruction and make astronomers believe planets will form from we, these dead stars’ disk. stars above, it must be r a p t u r o u s! and so fucking consuming that my lungs become your air becomes my lungs fill faster than what my breath can catch. trust, we best be willing to lean over balconies sever our bloodlines and make a pact that our hearts may only beat at the same time as each other or else, leave us permanently breathless. … i want it to leave us breathless. because to us that is love. love in reverse 00:00 / 02:38 legend has it our meeting made flowers blossom in the gloom of winter, spurred leaves into elevating back to their branches as they shifted from red yellow to green again with every day we spoke we, two divergents, formed our own timeline and while everyone else’s nights came quicker the sun would spread its arms just for us, purposely setting when the rest of the world rose for work this was back when i thought my love for you shattered laws when i believed the night we met caused mangoes to grow in the north pole like a unity of contradiction sprouted from life’s continual war of opposites instead of lying in that field of tension i made my love for you alter the meaning of cause and effect in the hope i could understand how the imprint of your head on my shoulder was there before i even knew you see, i used to think we would be infinite to spite the general line, that even though we’d submitted to the logic of change, pledged our lives to nada hay absoluto y todo revoluciona me and you would stay the same but this was back before i knew my honesty would have me barred indefinitely, would have my words chewed up and spat back to me at a later date, with the mushy remnants of them laid on my palm like a spoiled crop you told me afterwards you didn’t want us to end like this but i’d already washed my hands i only wish you hadn’t waved the wrong red flag, my love it was better when whatever we were was an unspoken thing, curved into your left cheek like a tiny sickle it is said our meeting unravelled the rules of the cosmos, burned the cool red stars so hot we made one another tremble, as proof that in the last analysis we could’ve won this world together if either of us just had some compassion now the thought of you reminds me that we are in the time of monsters, running parallel to each other so that our contradictions never overlap, never reveal that me and you were in the bloom of life, from a planet where you don’t refuse to see me even after i beg the politburo for a meeting Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

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

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

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

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

Hear poet Melita White read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Melita White wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Melita White is an Australian poet, writer, and spoken word artist. Her blog, Feminist Confessional , features feminist poetry, essays and personal non-fiction pieces in a confessional style. Melita is also a composer and a classically trained musician, and loves making all kinds of things. Her creative work is a form of activism, and she enjoys examining and debunking gender constructs, as well as focusing on topics such as the #MeToo movement and domestic violence. Her writing has featured in anthologies from Rhythm 'n' Bones Press and Indie Blu(e) Publishing, and various places online. the poems When God Was a Woman 00:00 / 01:36 When God was a woman there was no God There was only you and me and many other humans besides and there were animals and trees and rivers both wide and skinny and spans of land and oceans deep and crystals and sand and stars and comets and heavenly bodies galaxial When God was a woman the moon presided and the sky and weather and seasons were full of infinite knowledge both intimate and beyond When God was a woman there was no God and power filled each entity and no one thing dared take from another what was rightfully theirs And all had food and tenderness and air and water and learning and life and respect and there was enough of all of these things because there was no God to rule or to punish to preach or to take or destroy or to flood or to incite us to rape or to kill or to conquer (in the name of God) and all was exactly as it should be and there was love and balance and the Earth was just so Only ever as it should be Always When God was a woman Sardines 00:00 / 00:33 Bodies silver similar bodies Firm and plump they lie in a row Synchronised swimming silver sequins Similar bodies headless whole Salty sparkly oily striptease Turn my key and open me up Slippery cold skin to swallow Exhale life and crunch my bones Zoë means life 00:00 / 01:53 To my friend Zoë whose name means life who is a poem much richer than this a love letter a witch’s dictionary sage of all that is known or felt Zoë a Dada dandy my surreal sister humourist in the face of death she touches up my pain with the tiny brush of absurdity dials up the light on my chiaroscuro until we howl and the bitter tears of joy run over round cheeks Zoë stands and faces and says fuck you to the things that should be fucked well off — she is soft rose velvet blue glimmers of giggle plush cushions of cuddle sharp spikes of valour she is my chainmail armour and it is lined with cashmere   she is my posture straightening my cradled soul weeping my voice heard and my anger multiplied she is my mother and my other and my brother she is every soul’s lover she is 12 and 15 and 20 and 46 and 87 she is timeless and ageless she is a living ancestor the ground and the feed the seed and the sun the rain when it came she is all that she knows and she knows like no other Zoë means life — happy birthday Publishing credits When God Was a Woman: Whisper and the Roar (September 4 2019 ) Sardines / Zoë means life: Feminist Confessional

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

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

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

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

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