Hear poet Frances Klein read poems for wave 26 of literary poetry journal iamb. Frances Klein wave 26 summer 2026 back next the poet Alaskan poet and teacher Frances Klein is the author of poetry collection Another Life and chapbook ( Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel . A founding editor of Flight: A Literary Sampler , she also edits The Weight Journal . Frances' flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including Best Microfiction 2024 , The London Magazine , Rattle and The Harvard Advocate . the poems Another Life 00:00 / 01:43 Public Works is deconstructing with mathematical precision a massive maple that threatens the telephone lines, branches leaning in to eavesdrop on million-dollar deals and petty gossip. Men stand at the base, arrayed around a machine thrum-rumbling with hungry insistence. Their eyes guide the loop that will steady each branch for the saw, moving easily as a needle seeking thread. My son watches from his perch in the bucket swing. He gives equal attention to machine, loop, and saw, to the limb that slips its binding and daggers earthward toward one of the men, the young one who keeps tucking dark curls under his hardhat only to have them escape time and again like unruly children. The man dives out of the way just in time, finding ground in a fountain of mulch. There are seven alternate universes where the tree flourishes, left to its own devices. Generation of children trying and failing to reach its upper branches, dozing between cradling roots, saying marriage vows in front of its broad trunk, leaves throwing themselves from their branches in celebration. There are twenty-three worlds where the man is fixed like a showcase beetle to the earth; twelve others where the bucket swing I push is empty. I wanted another life, but this one has a dead stump, a living boy. This life holds me like a loop around a tree limb, keeping me here in this world where my son reaches up to be lifted from the swing, where we go back together, my husband spreading his maple-wide arms to welcome us home. Better Half 00:00 / 01:14 A confession: I do things in half measures. Half the dishes washed, pots and pans abandoned to soak in lukewarm water, the night half over and half the wine drunk. Guests collecting coats, calling cars, the few that remain the same ones who showed up half an hour early to set the table, to be handed a broad wooden spoon for making slow half-circles in the risotto: here, stir . I've half the children I should have, which is to say I have one. I am half as able as I once was, hand twice as tight on the railing, eyes measuring the distance and halving it so that I might make it back undoubled. When I practice our arguments I speak like a dinosaur skeleton in a museum, bones of the battle half real, half fabricated. I’ve read only half the books on our shelves, but isn’t that marriage? We come to union asking to be halved, our burden reduced, each of us lifting one end of the old yellow couch as we take it to the curb, half-bickering about who brought it in half a lifetime ago, wholly uninterested in the answer. Unfinished Ars Poetica 00:00 / 01:29 I am writing a poem about my son standing on the tee ball field while the rain pours like some giant faucet has been broken above the clouds. In the poem, my body chills in sympathy with my muscles' stored memories of my own sodden games where I fielded and hit and caught and threw from the bottom of the ocean. I need a title, one that strikes as true as a fly ball descending from the cover of clouds on some unsuspecting child, and an opening line that captures the bone cold of it all, the way my son eventually gives up on hats and hoods and bares his head to the sky, water darkening his hair. I need a middle stanza that sums up the way my skin remembers drops turning to rivulets turning to rivers running down the nape of my neck and into my shirt collar, how the only way to stand it was to decide to love the suffering. By the third inning, I don’t have an almost-end for the poem I have not written, no volta to layer my son’s experience over my own like the transparency pages of my mother’s old medical textbook, where each layer added to the body: bones, then organs, then the intertwined blues and reds of veins and arteries. But the game is ending. Here comes my son, soaked and pink-cheeked and beaming, and surely what’s unfinished will wait. Publishing credits Another Life: Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press) Better Half: Miniskirt Magazine Unfinished Ars Poetica: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Di Slaney read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Di Slaney wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Di Slaney lives in Nottinghamshire, England, where she runs livestock sanctuary Manor Farm Charitable Trust and independent poetry publisher Candlestick Press . She was the winner of The Plough Poetry Prize 2022 , and has had her poetry broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Di's poems have been published and anthologised widely, as well as highly commended by both The Forward Prizes and the Bridport Prize. She is the author of two poetry collections: Reward for Winter and Herd Queen . the poems Creation 00:00 / 01:48 In the beginning there was a farmhouse without a field, and a woman and a man without children. The man was content but the woman wanted. The old farmhouse knew, it had always known what the people who lived in it wanted, although most wouldn't listen. This woman listened. She heard the house breathe her thirst through its beams, wear her desire into its scuffed flags. She smelled its loss when wind spat ancient soot down the chimney, saw how every spring wildgreen crept a little closer to the back door. So the farmhouse and the woman made a pact, a promise without words. They sealed the bargain with palmpress to wood, flesh on oak. She proved her faith first, reclaimed the land though it wept scars of rubbish when it rained. The woman marked the field with scent and sticks, walked it over and over till she knew the pits and folds like her own body in the dark. The farmhouse waited, humming on a frequency only she could hear. That first winter, with planting done and everything suspended, she doubted the bargain. The cold seemed to freeze out good intentions, make every possible thing one step closer to impossible. But the house still thrummed its constant yes , and when spring returned, and new trees perked first buds east to face the pale sun rising, hope fluttered like greedy sparrows on the feeder. Diptych 00:00 / 01:18 i. Brick by brick If I could lift it up and move it, brick by brick, I’d gladly build it all by hand again myself, and pick the best location here, against these trees, back to the wood, view facing clear downhill towards the stack of small red chimneys huddled round the church, where it sat waiting, calm, untroubled, four hundred years, knowing that such vigil would pay off, timbers aching for it, stone hearth breaking. ii. Buying it back Fitting that this field returns, unharmed, now that the deal is sealed, to where they farmed hard living those long days before, leaving no trace but bones and stones, their ways at odds with my mad pace stuttering slowly to a crawl along the sloping rocky track, across the weatherweary wall with seedlings pointing every crack, my greedy eyes fill up with green, buying it back, borrowing a dream. History of a Field 00:00 / 01:39 Roll it back, roll it back, this greentipped scroll, this loosetop layer, from how-it-is to how-it-used-to-be; unplant the trees, dig up the hedge, blur out the track, return the moat, the gate, the square of earth you see behind the church, give sheep those other lives or deaths, keep rolling till loose cattle stroll black graveyards late at night, pigs begrudge their lack of straw in tinlid huts, hayyield begets huge stacks and roll, keep rolling while World War II Italians pick fat fruit from applepears and sing sweet songs and trick young localhearts with tiny matchplanes crafted under candles in the loft, keep rolling back past all their prayers, soil shifting, harrowed, furrowed, shires turning, bridled, harnessed, tacked; keep rolling – now land is wider uphilldownhill, woodside, broadside, trees reaching overunderround, leaves smacking heads, rumpsandtumps, the forest’s knack to spread and swallowwhole this little patch, its shack of small dominion, its stamp, its hearth, your heart. Stop rolling. Fold it back, fold it back. Publishing credits Creation / Diptych: Reward for Winter (Valley Press) History of a Field: winner of The Plough Poetry Prize 2022

Hear poet Bill Sutton read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Bill Sutton wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet London-based Cumbrian poet Bill Sutton (he/him) creates visceral, abstract reflections of nature in his work. His poetry has appeared in Anthropocene and new zine Overgrowth . In 2015, Bill and his brother formed music project Slabtoe, which has released several albums and EPs. Bill's recently lent his poetry/song-writing abilities to the BFI-funded short film The Leerie , and his debut screenplay Corpse Road will be produced later in 2022. the poems Helton 00:00 / 00:22 to see stars, the hulk of barn, the rise behind and silent. to see rain, smoke wrapped, the valleys slope and dreaming. to all orbits, a ripple, and the quiet fields sleeping. Lend The River Rain 00:00 / 00:32 The lights on the hillside are a constellation, scattered. A half-remembered conversation; a friend lost, a family gathered under a winter sky, whose clouds are torn and tattered. 'It’s just a shadow cast from a different day, but none of that now matters … ' I lend the river rain. It lends it back again. Black Barn Rise 00:00 / 00:23 shadows in the mist, an echo where a wood once was. moon cold mist, settled on the river's twist. above and behind, black barn rise, there, where an echo of a wood once was. Publishing credits Helton / Lend The River Rain: exclusive first publication by iamb Black Barn Rise: Overgrowth (Issue No. 1)

Hear poet Alexandra Citron read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Alexandra Citron wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Alexandra Citron was born in the USA but has lived in the UK since her early teens. Her poems have appeared in Mslexia , Visual Verse , Ink Sweat & Tears and And Other Poems , as well as in the Emma Press' anthology, Everything That Can Happen: Poems about the Future . the poems Learning to accessorise 00:00 / 01:46 Eighteen, tank-top and jeans, the girl from three doors down holds court one summer on the trunk of her white saloon, draped in python. Cross-legged, bangles jangling, she loops four feet of lustrous snake along her arms and waits to see how long it takes for us to creep forward. Wide eyed. Mesmerised: aliens landed in our neighbourhood. Go on, you can touch him and shy hands reach to take the inky-lacquered dare, tip-toe fingers along dark bands glistening like moonlit rain on bark. We stroke a rolling shudder of pulsing silk, a placid purr, black eyes holding back a spell. Undulating to a whispered song, she charms to summer incense of charcoaled meat and late mown grass. Boys slow their bikes. Fathers home in time from work pause latchkeys in the locks. She swirls patchouli-scented hair off tendrilled shoulders, cradling the thick ribbon of him cheek to scale, his tail languid across her thighs. I go to sleep those sultry nights dreaming of someday sliding into rooms, sophisticated, cool, smelling of dark flowers and wreathed with serpent. The Novaya Zemlya effect For Max and Ben 00:00 / 02:03 Boys, be wary of the peddlers of absolutes. But certain things are known. Take on trust that the earth goes round the sun. Is round. Requires oxygen and ice and like us a balanced diet. That it can be seen from space. That we have walked in space and travelled to the moon not once but six times. That the moon controls the tides. Turtles swim hundreds of miles to return to the same shore. That the sun comes up the same each day as expected. Most of the time. That where the sun doesn't rise for months it can seem to, a mirage reflected in the atmosphere, stained glass glowing in a desert of polar dusk when the sky is a mirror to what lies below the horizon. A hope of light. A prayer. That the mirror of the atmosphere only works at certain latitudes, like Novaya Zemlya, in winter, where once they say during sun-starved days, the reflection of a polar bear was sighted miles away. That forewarned is forearmed. That what is called sorcery at one point in time may well be explained at another. With time and particular quirks of mind. That pointing this out is not heresy, just as seeing the sun rise where it is not is not madness but a trick of light and physics I do not fully understand. And boys, that's okay. We breathe the laughter of uncertainties. Sometimes there's trust and sometimes the evidence of your own eyes and the element of surprise. Let Streetview take you home for the holiday 00:00 / 01:00 Hitching a white arrow up Saffold Way the trees are all too tall. It’s garbage day. The blue door to the old house stands ajar but should be orange and the street wider where in summer small feet ran over searing asphalt for a dare. The birch in the front yard’s gone with the brown Toyota and begonia beds. A man in shorts is heading to go in, his chores complete. I shadow his retreat back to the kitchen on his left. Ahead the L-shaped room and stairs, perhaps a cat scratching the corner of a chair. You are outside on the balcony, let’s say, just out of sight, calling us in from play. Publishing credits Learning to Accessorise / The Novaya Zemlya Effect: exclusive first publication by iamb Let Streetview Take You Home for the Holiday: Ink, Sweat & Tears

Hear poet Beth Brooke read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Beth Brooke wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Retired teacher Beth Brooke was born in the Middle East, where she did important parts of her growing. She now lives on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast: its landscapes seeping into her writing. Beth's debut collection, A Landscape With Birds , will be published by The Hedgehog Press in 2022. the poems Man and Bird Ink on paper preparatory work for the Unknown Political Prisoner (1953) 00:00 / 01:02 'Speak to me,' says the crow, 'give me your story. Tell the roots and branches of where you chose to roost and build your nest.' The man settles the crow upon his chest, the needle prick of its claws a small discomfort in exchange for company, for the richness of the crow’s attention. 'I come,' he says, 'from the scent of the sea. I was seeded by the ocean in the valleys between chalk hills. 'In autumn the hawthorns of the inland slopes are bent by salt breezes and heavy with berries, crimson, tough-skinned against the blasts of winter. They were my roost.' 'I will go there,' says the crow, 'I will gather berries for you. The scent of the sea will be on them. It will comfort you.' Skin 00:00 / 00:31 I have begun to inspect the edges of myself, I notice that I bruise more easily than when I was young. I catalogue this, and the creases just beginning to be visible around my mouth. I think of my mother’s skin withered, transparent, fragile as tissue paper; the slightest move tears it, lets mortality in. The Taste of Summer 00:00 / 00:50 In childhood I ride the hill, stand on the pedals, propel myself to the top, throw down the bike, and flop exultant under a peach-fat sun. It hangs ripe in an endless sky heavy with the scent of August. I reach up, plunge my hands wrist-deep into summer's flesh; gouge out the fruit, cram my mouth, eat until I am nectar-drunk with joy. In childhood, chin and fingers sticky with summer juice, I ride down the hill. Legs stretched out above the pedals, I shake with laughter. I am eight years old and I can eat the sun. Publishing credits Man and Bird: exclusive first publication by iamb Skin: Green Ink Poetry (Discovery Part 2) The Taste of Summer: an earlier version of this poem appeared in Bonnie's Crew (Issue 5)

Hear poet Heather Quinn read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Heather Quinn wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Heather Quinn is an artist and poet living in California. She was a finalist in House Mountain Review's Annual Broadside Contest (2019), a semi-finalist in both Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry prize (2020) and Prometheus Dreaming's Unbound Competition (2019), and has featured in Palette Poetry's 'Poetry We Admire' column for Shroud with Lead Wing, published originally in Raw Art Review. Heather's work has appeared most recently in the New York Times, 42 Miles Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, Ghost City Review, High Shelf Press, Inkwell Press, Kissing Dynamite Poetry and Burning House Press. the poems Kaddish for Grandma Irene 00:00 / 02:08 Her bony body is naked underneath a dress of translucent leaves. The knobs of her knees are burls of a willow tree. I place the paper cut-out of a blackbird on her left shoulder. In an open green field, we drink warm milk from cracked teacups painted with tiny yellow birds. She unknots the twine from a Rosenbloom’s cake box. I remember sugar cubes perfectly stacked in her silver caddy. Its delicate silver tongs. One lump or two, angelah? The way she would sing to me in Yiddish, Shlof, shlof, kindela. She was shaky, made of glass. I was a sparrow, terrified that even so small I might break her. Her heart pieced together with string saved from 1930s Pittsburgh, from that Hill District row house where seven children shared two bedrooms. All those socks and sweaters darned for her six younger siblings. All those beatings by her mother with a washboard or wooden spoon. Her father, the cantor, practicing for Shabbat service, Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu. At the Monroeville Mall she bought my first purse, flowered and pink with a gold clasp. Oy! It’s exquisite, kindela, she said. Tearing up, she pinched my blushed cheeks. In her leafy dress she is the green field, her white hair catching flecks of dusklight. From a phonograph, Billie Holiday’s voice scratches, I’ll be seeing you. Grandma closes her eyes and sings. sparrow 00:00 / 01:40 i watched a fledgling sparrow fly from its nest to its mother no, let me begin again it did not fly but landed at my feet after it was propelled from the tree in front of my childhood home by a rock thrown by a gangly boy bigger older the tree was painted with dry pigment & rabbit skin glue no, it grew of bark & leaf but i reconstruct the sparrow’s slippery skin damp slickened feathers its seedling heart visible through translucent membranes beak snapping open & closed squawk with no sound Munch’s Scream i picked up the baby bird held it like a damp lung in my hand nursed it with water & seed no, what really happened was dad said we had to leave it or momma sparrow would never return we knew momma was off building a new nest the O of the baby’s beak an alarm, until feathers wings flattened in shallow grass like a fried egg yet the sparrow lives pecking at my sternum, sipping oxygen from my windpipe clawing for its perch the history of light: a burning haibun After Torrin A Greathouse 00:00 / 02:15 i examine the bones of an incandescent bulb, crystalline glass, base & socket, thin wiry v relic of winged light i remember being chased by a ghost from my bed to the landing crying out to dad his face cast in television lowlights he scooped me up, tucked me back in, kissed my forehead & clicked on the bedside lamp ghosts always disappear in the light, he said dad died months before my wedding day his wedding band bound to my wrist with satin ribbon i imagined him as we wrapped his & her bulbs in black velvet smashed the glass beneath our feet later we picked up the broken shards, crushed metal burned the remains in a fire pit sealed them in a mason jar tonight i shake the jar like a snow globe watch the ashes bloom into embers, into dad’s image as it flickers, a reel of celluloid lit by one struck match // i examine the bones of an incandescent bulb, crystalline glass, base & socket, thin wiry v relic of winged light i remember being chased by a ghost from my bed to the landing crying out to dad his face cast in television lowlights he scooped me up, tucked me back in, kissed my forehead & clicked on the bedside lamp ghosts always disappear in the light, he said dad died months before my wedding day his wedding band bound to my wrist wi tesatin ribbon i imagined him as we wrapp hed his & her bulbs in black velvet smashed the glass beneath our feet later we picked up wroken asha s, crushed metal burned the remains in a fire pit sealed them in a mason jar tonight i sha r like a snowobe watch ashes bloom into embers, into dad’s image as it flickers, a reel celluloid lit by one struck match // bones of an iof winged light dad s face ca ghost always before bound to my e d like a snow he loom ins a s a reel ofcelllits c atch Publishing credits Kaddish for Grandma Irene (earlier version): Minnesota Review (November 1st 2016) sparrow: Prometheus Dreaming the history of light: Cathexis Northwest Press (October 1st 2020)

Hear poet Rhona Greene read poems for wave 19 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rhona Greene wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Rhona Greene is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer from Dublin, Ireland. She loves to read and celebrate the work of contemporary poets, particularly those in the online poetry community. Rhona has had work published in several volumes from Black Bough Poetry, and was shortlisted for its Dai Fry Mystical Award in 2022. She was the featured prose writer in the second issue of The Storms Journal , and her work has appeared on Susan Richardson’s A Thousand Shades of Green poetry podcast, as well as in The Wombwell Rainbow's Disappearance calendar . the poems Day Trip to Newgrange with my Grandmother When I Was a Little Girl More than 5,200 years old, Newgrange stands at the UNESCO World Heritage site Brú na Bóinne in Ireland. The rising sun illuminates its passage and chamber around the winter solstice. 00:00 / 06:16 My grandmother tells me whispers: ‘Fadó, fadó, far away, far below. Éistigí, eistigí. Listen.' O shimmering sun. O breath of life. Still. Life. Still. Breathing. Below, below. Fadó, fadó. Kings, queens, gods, goddesses, preparing, turning, positioning crowns to glitter, to glow, tilting glinting halos light caught dark to shine between flicker and flow, flaming unborn visions to flight, crowning spinning heads brim full to dreaming, deep in the majesty of time. ‘Éistigí.' Shimmering sun. Breathing life. Below. ‘Fadó, fadó’. She whispers: ‘Tar liom’ . I follow. Up one grassy mound to another, then another, little giddy goat galloping up, rolling down, skipping, squealing, spinning round and round and round. Knowing nothing of time – yet, but to follow the sun following me in cartwheeling revolutions of joy and its grip soft, green, underfoot, holding me here, holding me now and O how it fills a throbbing heart to burst spilling over with bird songs of joy and sparkling wide-eyed wonder. Eyes open. Sun. Eyes Close. Wait. Open. Sun. Bright. Shadow. Bright. Shadow. Close. Cover eyes. Splay fingers. Filter. Flicker. Filter. Flicker. Shimmer – Shimmer – Shimmer. Glimpse. Vision. Dream. Whispering whispers. 'Tar Liom. Tar liom.' Follow the sun. Up ahead, my grandmother billows in floral skirts leading the way beyond here, beyond now, gathering me – ribbons and bows – in ripples, in flow. When the powder puff cloud of her passes on through the yawning gap and disappears, everything slows. My spinning head. My thumping heart. My every motion winds down to stop and I turn to stone – to this chiselled moment tracing rhythms throbbing to touch. There is no name for this. This day of light and shade, cloud and revelation, forever and now humming, thrumming, trembling stone, coiling and uncoiling the spiral of me, of everyone on this trail. 'Ciúnas, le de thoill.' Quiet, please. The stone is singing. I spiral on to the rippling melody of touchstone, following my grandmother’s dusty footprints laid down before me as softly as snow on snow – a faint trail leading toward a mound. The Mound! O how it looms, blooms, blossoms and grows on approach and I, all shrinky Alicey, my heart full of wonder, bending and folding like a butterfly, crouch down and pass on through the low portal of time, entering a long dark narrow passage, becoming one more tiny dimple in the continuum. Squinty blinking into the vast unknown shape-shifting familiars appearing and vanishing between icy breaths, O so shivery cold to the bone, stirring the primal tendrils of instinct to search, reach, touch, intertwining ribboning strands binding, briefly. We connect, reunite and persist in this heart of darkness where shadow dust sprinkles tangled souls into cradles rocked by rhythm and scattered bones, where time bleeds in sun and echoes, where I feel flow. Silently, we seep into sacred chambers, swelling with life in the slip between flesh and bone, where blood pools, warms to touch in anticipation of a promise, a spark. Hearts beat, beat, beat, pounding hard, fast, loud, throbbing rhythm’s ancient pulse, then slowly, gently down, synchronise to quivering harmony and grace notes, time’s simple signature, and O how we hang in this hallowed place oscillating, unknowing, hoping for the untangling of everything so barely contained. Clinging on in unspangled enfolding black ribbons of fragile awakening unravelling, flinging against the entangled dark whispering: ‘Oh Nana. What do I do now Nana? What do I do now?’ Her sweet voice comes calling, softly, again and again. ‘Mo chuisle, a chuisle mo chroí.' Tilt your shattered head skyward, and wait for light to return. Fadó fadó / Long ago (Fa -though) Éistigí / Listen (Ay-shtig-ee) Tar liom / Follow me (Thar-lum) Ciúnas, le de thoill / Quiet, please (Queue-in-us leh duh hull) Mo chuisle. A chuisle mo chroí / My darling, but literally, my pulse/ beat of my heart (Muh cooshla. A cooshla muh cree.) First Love 00:00 / 00:43 It leapt out of me glistening like a wild salmon on the run up the Boyne – river of my heart. Surging on and on, driven by impulse or memory of its pea-sized beginnings. Tiny thing, mother-planted in the burrowed gravel of her love. Flipping itself in the sparkling air, hurling against rushy waters, turbulent life gushing towards it. First love – the flippin’ and leppin’ madness of it! Shiny Distant Thing 00:00 / 01:25 Wings singe-glow transparent in dipping gold – light is leaving. A silhouette in solitary flight far from this catastrophic labyrinth of gloom. Soft comes the crash of night – music melancholy, blue. Waves receding murmur a vow of silence: ‘mare tranquillitatis - hush, hush, hush.’ After comes rain like petals – sacramental, light. Then comes mourning dovetailing dark infinite deep and shadow-dazzled bright breaking fast any commitment to sorrow, resistance to flow. Anointed, ocean-holy, ascend through blossoming trees to sky-high altar sacred-blue and wish a upon a fish high-leaping to catch a shiny distant thing – star-shaped, moon-blest. Then dance! Publishing credits Day Trip to Newgrange with my Grandmother When I Was a Little Girl: Freedom-Rapture (Black Bough Poetry) First Love: exclusive first publication by iamb Shiny Distant Thing: Sun-Tipped Pillars Of Our Hearts: The Dai Fry Award for Mystical Poetry Anthology 2022 (Black Bough Poetry)

Hear poet Robert Harper read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Robert Harper wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Robert Harper’s poems have appeared in The Interpreter’s House , Prole , Acumen , Ink Sweat & Tears , And Other Poems and elsewhere. He's also had work featured in anthologies such as Fathers and What Must Be Said , A New Manchester Alphabet , The Every Day Poet , An Anthology to Seamus Heaney and The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry . Robert founded and edited the magazine Bare Fiction , and has recently launched online poetry magazine Disjointed . the poems An embarrassment of poverty After Michael Hoffman 00:00 / 01:09 At 1pm you sit and look at the poem. Among the other things you should be doing, you drink water to allay the sweat and read, squint at, your midnight endeavours, a tower of books leering like an old professor. You, compelled, or just desperate to let the thoughts flow, lay on your side unable to sleep. She, right there, like the painting you love and for which a light is always on. A thought enters your head. You tried too hard, yet held back and, subsequently, pushed too far forward. You wonder if the sleeping, the loss of it, curled like a cat in an empty box of paper, is what is up. You read it again. Embarrassment comes and you thank the gods for your humility, ask of the page – How dare I look at you and think of poverty? Obstacle 00:00 / 01:14 A boy sits alone (a roundabout) watching cars oblige as they dutifully trust an indirect route around the obstacle. He considers himself ‘obstacle’, traces his eyes via entrance to exit and nods his head. Half yes, half whatever appears on the road around him—obstacle. JCC 428H, Bangor 1970, Cortina Mk III, yellow and chrome trim. HFK 015E, Dudley 1967, the lost Ford Zephyr, abandoned, a yard monster. Dreams plagued with red trucks, green buses, black Austins to remind boy of time before his own existence. Dad, car, ahead, his birth. Obstacle. What is he looking for behind the seven inch sealed beam of a Hillman Imp? A connection to his beginning—an accidental merging where 2 people, going past obstacles, become stuck. How do others make such 00:00 / 01:31 Forked tongues. Unsure how to proceed, I detach my arm, look inside the open flesh for morsels hiding beneath the skin, quivering before the opportunity to be plucked or nurtured in the between state of draughty window by a slavish boy who wishes for nothing but new worlds and the road right in front of him. The road, full of signs, made up symbols to delay the choosing of the path, the leaving of one, one side which will not be taken, will take time. So I remove my leg and look beneath the skin; surely hidden there is knowledge of the groove, how one hops in and out needling the unsung sound — like a shellac 78 left in the heat of the sun to warp and throw you off the scent of music long lost; the jive and the rock, hard places rolling beneath your single step, out of reach of your one arm. I cannot see anyway so I pop out an eye, peel back the layers for clues — something observed but missed, known yet forgotten. It conjures nothing new, but I begin to understand the little boy whose appetite is itself ready to be swallowed whole. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sam Henley Smith read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sam Henley Smith wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet A Person Centred Therapist with a special interest in bibliotherapy, Sam Henley Smith found writing poetry helped her process the death of her parents from COVID-19. Sam’s had work published in a variety of journals, including Anthropocene , Green Ink Poetry and One Hand Clapping . She was longlisted in 2021 for the Plough Poetry Prize, and commended by Jacqueline Saphra in the Winchester Poetry Prize. the poems Requiem Delphinus Delphis For Dad 00:00 / 01:02 I find you again, in the body washed in. You sailed out of this city single and sailed back betrothed, exchanged the brine in your bloodstream for love, found land legs and made family your amphibian home. Now, boat-teeth line the mouth of the muddy creek where the sea spat the creature out. Face up, fixed grin, unable to swim with or agin the tide. Time swallowed the whole whale of it and retching, the sea returns you to me in case I hadn't understood that you were gone. I have come to the wall to pray 00:00 / 00:55 to be with you. The stone is peppered with scars, an executioner’s wall – rows of hearts obliterated. You wouldn’t approve, I can hear you dismissing such display of affection as sentimental memorialisation. Hand-painted in pretty pink FUCK COVID on a heart is not your style. Yet in the insistent overwriting of a name, scribed again and again, I see your pain – determined to be etched forever as if you had held that husband’s hand and together had shouted your loves. A familiar route 00:00 / 01:31 I’ve researched it on the internet, how to brace my back between wall and chair right leg slightly forward, knees pinioned fondly around your together-knees. It’s my turn to raise you now Dad. British Red Cross has lent us the commode but Covid-style, we are alone. I struggle, ease you to sitting, gently ease, gently please , then a pause for breath. Another breath. And if the Tamar Bridge could swing it would look just like your legs as its long carefully engineered limbs manoeuvre in parallel, perfectly paced, another journey across a Devon river bed. The crooks of my arms are hooks now, nestled in your pits. And lift. And pivot. And lower. Gently ease. Gently please. And breathe. And breathe. Publishing credits Requiem Delphinus Delphis: Green Ink Poetry I have come to the wall to pray: exclusive first publication by iamb A familiar route: So we go about our days: Winchester Poetry Prize Anthology 2021 (Winchester Poetry Prize)

Hear poet Penelope Shuttle read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Penelope Shuttle wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall, and recently published her 13th collection Lyonesse – an Observer Poetry Book of the Month – and her pamphlet Covid/Corvid , a collaboration with Alyson Hallett. Recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award, Penelope was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and The Forward Prizes for Redgrove’s Wife . She is president of the Falmouth Poetry Group, founded in 1972 by her late husband, the poet Peter Redgrove. Her radio poem set in Falmouth, Conversations on a Bench , was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2020. Penelope is a contributor to BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and is currently at work on a new collection, History of the Child. the poems one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life 00:00 / 00:39 but mild clouds hold you drawn water settling in the pail holds you the old walnut’s cracked and serviceable trunk these parched purple and white autumn cyclamen circling its gnarly foot hold you the sapling at breast height the wing that’s folded in mild clouds drawn water they bear everything for you Noah’s notes (preliminary) 00:00 / 03:12 there’s meaning in the various colours of doves the blood of a he-goat is so hot it can dissolve diamonds the spider is an aerial worm that feeds on air a drink made from the tears of a stag cures heartache bees are the very smallest of birds, born from the bodies of oxen the cat is a shadow animal, the Bible has never believed in cats the eagle will not converse with falconers but a she-wolf will take communion from a priest the blue-eyed phoenix lives on a diet of dragons hunting dogs are just as beautiful as the tallest medieval horses, the destriers, or the soul when it is first spied as some tiny thing, a maggot or a grub when the starling speaks in French, you must listen the hare may not always be a Christian the moth found on a young boy’s kimono sleeve brings sorrow hawks stare at one another without moving their eyes, this is how their young are conceived the dragonfly never stops working on the twelve volumes of his memoirs the pig takes mercy on the vineyard, and is the world’s best wet-nurse the he-wolf must be tricked into sleep, then bound with a rope made from the sound of an ant’s footfall, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird the snake is the best dollmaker you could ever wish for the elephant! he takes up so much room, he won’t tolerate the crocodile he’s so wise, how can I forbid him? the three-toed sloth is nothing but a bundle of leaves, and so is the brown-throated sloth with her iron jaw and massive clitoris the beauteous hyena is no more and no less than a Queen The lion is the strangest of messengers, with his Tsar’s face, the chakra of his tail give him your full compliance the swan bids the rain leave off with a swirl of her meekly-shaped wings the oriole is an unimportant bird but proud as a hornet the winter-sleeper ignores the moon, and the two little toads only the mouse comes in with the blessing of God reforming the calendar 00:00 / 00:54 january turns the other cheek february pulls the moon through the hole in its heart march blows such fine fanfares he’s crowned Trumpet-Major of the Trees april’s a dark horse in may the roses are great with child june wears a hairshirt of gorse july considers the lilies or glides in the longboat of light august has the gift of tongues september blames no one but herself october paints doors to war rooms red november sucks blood from the world’s wrist and december? he hides his light under a bushel Publishing credits one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life / reforming the calendar: exclusive first publication by iamb Noah's notes (Preliminary): The Poetry Review (Vol. 106, No. 4) Author photo: © Katrina Naomi

Hear poet Sharon Philips read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sharon Philips wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Bristolian by birth and upbringing, now living in Otley, West Yorkshire, Sharon Phillips began writing poetry when she retired from a career in education. Her poems have since been published, online and in print, in anthologies and journals ranging from The Bridport Prize Anthology 2019 , Under the Radar and The Dawn Treader to Ink Sweat & Tears and The High Window . Her first pamphlet, Liven Yourself Up , appeared in 2024. the poems Prelapsarian 00:00 / 00:44 He is at his most beautiful. Motown is behind him, he’s too strong to be beaten, his cheekbones are sharp, acne scars all healed. At last he feels good about his face. He looks up with a grin, snaps his fingers to the bass line, pushes off the wall with his foot, leaps, moonwalks, spins, slides. He sings, easy, unforced, the songs that mark a decade. There’s no stopping him now, you’d like to think. The hardest thing about hospital 00:00 / 00:45 it’s not the obs trolley rattling me awake not the overhead light blink-blinking not the bleep of stalled infusion pumps not Rachel in the next bed howling whenever she pisses herself not the weary nurse who tells me these ladies are all quite confused not the maggot in my mind worrying why they’ve put me on this ward not cannulas dreadlocking my arms not the steroids prowling my nerves not my mouth gaping for words not the blotches on my brain scan it’s wanting my mum. Consider After Kim Moore 00:00 / 00:59 the early morning cleaners, who rise at five, who dress in the dark for fear of waking their children, who eat cold toast at the bus stop, who lug buckets and hoovers through empty offices, who wipe fingerprints from photos and neaten toys and mascots, who scrub piss and shit from toilet seats and floors, who fear their hours will be cut, who are desperate for money for food and rent and the gas bill, who wonder what it would be like to have a cushy office job, who sweat under sky blue polyester tabards, whose backs ache, feet throb, whose ankles are swollen, who worry they won’t be home when the kids wake up, who'll do it all again tomorrow. Publishing credits Prelapsarian: exclusive first publication by iamb The Hardest Thing About Hospital: Liven Yourself Up (Yaffle’s Nest)  Consider: Black Nore Review (August 26th 2024)

Hear poet Saraswati Nagpal read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Saraswati Nagpal wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Forward Prize-nominated Indian poet Saraswati Nagpal is the author of debut poetry collection Drench Me in Silver . A co-editor of the Substack edition of The Winged Moon , she's been published in The Atlantic , Atlanta Review , Usawa Literary Review , SAND and The Hooghly Review , as well as in international anthologies. Saraswati's poetry has been nominated four times for Best of the Net, and once for The Pushcart Prize. A performing artist and choreographer, she's taught literature and creative writing for more than two decades. the poems If You Look For Me 00:00 / 00:57 You will know me by these strange eyes lit by a hundred ancestors’ fire-sight— this left iris locked on the underworld. I bleed from three wounds— empty mother-shrine, duty’s iron mantle, and of course, a woman’s ache for wings. I once feared the river of me, dammed it for the favour of cowards. Now my wildness spills beyond and deep— flowers flourishing in gashes, roots tethered in my vast acres, the Sun’s grace feeding me in her molten language of verse. At First Light After Marcelle Newbold 00:00 / 01:04 Bring incense, smoke of sandalwood, jasmine of longing in sweet braids. Bring petals of rose, red with hope to the bodhi tree sprouting sacred figs. Bring your feet, bare. Place your fated forehead on these roots, thick with sweat of sleeping ancestors. At first light, the tree is dreaming us awake in its hundred leaves of memory. Can you see the forest in your fingertips? Can you hear the rust and gold of the red earth’s song? Will you become a blessing and offer it your full and fragrant heart? Magdalene by Caravaggio 00:00 / 01:00 That face could be mine, could be yours. Chin tilted to a blazing world behind your eyelids, eros emerging as verse from the open mouth— And the belly, a maelstrom of flame-flecked yearning. You know, as she does— not even that which you seek will silence the ache, no salve for this ochre agony. For it is not in crossing the threshold but in existing on its liminal embers— this is where divinity floods the body, this is where the soul turns gold. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb