Hear poet Brian Bilston read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Brian Bilston back next the poet Brian Bilston, author of the Costa-shortlisted novel Diary of a Somebody , has been dubbed both the ‘Banksy of poetry’ and ‘Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate’. His first book, You Took the Last Bus Home featured poems he'd shared on Twitter. His poem Refugees was adapted into a picture book for children, and his new collection of poetry, Alexa, what is there to know about love? was published in early 2021. the poems How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors 00:00 / 00:50 It’s not rocket surgery. First, get all your ducks on the same page. After all, you can’t make an omelette without breaking stride. Be sure to watch what you write with a fine-tuned comb. Check and re-check until the cows turn blue. It’s as easy as falling off a piece of cake. Don’t worry about opening up a whole hill of beans: you can always burn that bridge when you come to it, if you follow where I’m coming from. Concentrate! Keep your door closed and your enemies closer. Finally, don’t take the moral high horse: if the metaphor fits, walk a mile in it. She’d Dance 00:00 / 00:55 She’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. The kitchen was her grand ballroom; her partner was a mop. She’d foxtrot among the pots and pans, she’d paso doble to the sink, and as she swept across the floor, her mind danced, too. She’d think of how he’d held her in his arms at the Locarno and the Ritz - whirling, waltzing, a world apart - in the years before the kids, and longer still before the shadow the doctor spotted on his lungs. How dazzlingly they had danced! How dizzyingly she had spun! Her neighbours saw her sometimes, shuffling bent-backed to the shops. But at home, she’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. How Much I Dislike The Daily Mail 00:00 / 01:01 I would rather eat Quavers that are six weeks’ stale, tie up the man-bun of Gareth Bale, listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail, than read one page of the Daily Mail . If I were bored in a waiting room in Perivale, on a twelve-hour trip on Network Rail, halfway through a circumnavigational sail, I would not read the Daily Mail . I would happily read the complete works of Peter Mayle, the autobiography of Dan Quayle, selected scripts from Emmerdale , if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail . Far better to stand outside in a storm of hail, be blown out to sea in a powerful gale then swallowed by a humpback whale than have to read the Daily Mail . If I were blind, and it was the only thing in Braille, I still would not read the Daily Mail . Publishing credits How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors: Diary of a Somebody (Picador) She’d Dance: Alexa, what is there to know about love? (Picador) How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail: You Took the Last Bus Home (Unbound)

Hear poet Ivor Daniel read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ivor Daniel back next the poet Ivor Daniel’s work has appeared in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival's wildfire words , Steel Jackdaw Magazine and Writeresque . He lives in Gloucestershire, where he works as an English tutor. the poems Perfect Bed 00:00 / 00:56 I dream I am at Bembom Brothers Dreamland funfair park with Tracey Emin. Hard by Margate sands. I know I shouldn’t drink that Vodka on the Helter Skelter. Apart from that, a Day as Perfect as the Lou Reed song. We Kiss with Fish and Chips Lips, Join Hips. A Turner Sunset Going Down. I guess it is the Golden Hour. Blair’s Babes and even some of his men MPs are busy Changing a whole heap of things for the Better. Back in your room we remember that we even Changed the Bed this morning. The linen soft and cool next to our Optimistic skin. Questions & Starlings 00:00 / 03:01 Wow! Can the sun set blue azure and flame at the same time? How do starlings twist and turn as one? Who decided this is called a murmuration ? And who was that, going behind that awesome tree? No...It couldn’t be.. sweeping turning swooping......soon arriving from all directions. swelling then melting then swelling. streamlining safe in such numbers. pirouetting protection from predators. twist turn swoop swirl your genie is out of the bottle. shape-shifting unsolid sculpture of starling. you spinning top you sundown twister. a magic carpet has slipped its cave. . ...a cloud of iron filings .. ... dancing from... ..and to .. . . ..an ecstatic magnet. if we could cast the ashes........ of our loved ones as elegantly as your silken swirl then that would be the perfect way to go. intuiting when to turn in complex shifting patterns through a liminal space between remarkable and miracle. flying like no one is watching or maybe like God could be watching. oblivious of compass points and rocket science yet also knowing more than this. murmuration motion poetry in motion your swarm is the truth. black mustard seed beauty. then in the last of daylight at the secret signal a final funneling collective swoop down an unseen chimney to land on your roosting grounds. I labour with my leaden words, and muse on whether starlings know how spellbinding they are. And God. Is that you behind that awesome tree? Is this the last, the only, evidence that you exist? Was this your hobby all along: the choreography of sunset starlings? And is that just the slightest hint of disappointment on your face at how the human cohort of Creation has performed? Tread Lightly 00:00 / 01:31 I navigate the micro fathom ocean charts of flat portal ice puddles on a January farm track With their trapped air bubbles whorling patterns coils gyres spirals curls Trapped otherworldly whirls Secret as fingerprints coiled like intestines mysterious as a foetal scan marbled as the white fat in Spanish ham Iced lava lamps but underfoot Liquid light shows behind psychedelic bands but monochrome The frozen surface flat as frosted glass The patterns captive Zany This is the cat ice So named because it can only bear the weight of a cat Cold-pawed agile Although I am yet to meet the cat who would leave the warmth of the hearth to test ice puddles with its paws or fret on other scientific laws as hydrostatic pressure capillary action et cetera I make a resolution to tread lightly Publishing credits All poems: Exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Charlotte Gann read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charlotte Gann back next the poet Charlotte Gann is a writer and editor from Sussex who enjoys walking the South Downs in her spare time. Her first pamphlet was The Long Woman , which saw her shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2012. Two full collections followed: Noir and The Girl Who Cried , as well as another pamphlet, Cargo . Charlotte also founded and runs online hub The Understory Conversation : a space for fellow writers to meet, talk and share in small groups and one to one. the poems The house with no door 00:00 / 00:38 The house with no door looks welcoming, with its wisteria and robins. I can see, through the kitchen window, a bowl of cherries. They’re the brightest, darkest, shiniest cherries. But that window’s shut and bolted. I move on round. I know I shouldn’t walk on flowerbeds. I keep thinking the door must be around the next corner. I’ve lost count now how many times I’ve circumnavigated. In the Classroom of Touch 00:00 / 01:36 This is how you hold a person , Mr Farnham says demonstrating. Your touch needs to be light but firm. Felt in the skin like a weight, a squeeze. No sudden movements, please. Still is best. The pupil he’s performing on closes her eyes, head slightly folded like a bird’s. She’s collapsed into his woollen front. See how my arms arc? the teacher asks his class. Hold each other like precious cargo. Never be rough. Don’t shove into the person you love. Don’t steal touch. Be clear about this: we give a hug. Thanks Lydia, back to your seat now. Giles–? The boy stares down at his feet, face pink. His worst subject. Mr Farnham waits quietly, bends his head, smiles. C’mon Giles , he says gently. The boy staggers down the ragged aisle between assorted classmates. Waits while this man opens his arms. Falls forward, hiding his face, his sobs. The teacher enfolds him carefully, whispers, You’re doing well, Giles . Calling Time 00:00 / 02:09 So I’d sit at my desk waiting and hoping and trembling before someone would say it – maybe me – A quick drink after work – and we’d go night after night, pint after pint after pint. We’d smoke sixty cigarettes, drink drink after drink starting at six when seven thirty seemed another, safe country but suddenly was upon us, then long gone and it’s more like half nine and our table a landscape of pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays after trip upon trip to the cigarette machine in the hallway and turn after turn to the bar for another round, another tray of toppling filled glasses and laughter and it still only Tuesday, say, and then the bar staff flashing the lights on and off and it must be after eleven and they’re calling a warning and stacking chairs at the other end of the narrow room and we’re the only table left and still we stay drinking and shouting until they call ‘Time’ and yank the noisy chain grille down over the bar and padlock it and turn the lights off and we grope our way blindly foghorning back up the stairs and even then not out into the night, contrite, rushing for last Tubes but into the hotel bar for residents only where the drinks are even more expensive and it’s just us two now usually and we order ‘A night cap’ then ‘One for the road’ lighting cold fags and slumping on that black-leather slidey sofa in this pot-planted environment with piano muzac playing softly and it’s hard now to keep my spirits up with you falling silent beside me so near and far away. Publishing credits The house with no door: The Lyrical Aye: Richie McCaffery Calling Time: London Grip (Summer 2022) In The Classroom of Touch: The Rialto (No. 81)

Hear poet Corinna Board read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Corinna Board back next the poet Corinna Board teaches English as an additional language in an Oxford secondary school. She grew up on a farm, and her writing is often inspired by the rural environment. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in And Other Poems , Anthropocene , berlin lit , Propel Magazine , Spelt Magazine , Atrium , Ink Sweat & Tears , Magma and elsewhere. Corinna won the Gloucestershire Wildlife category of the 2023 Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust poetry competition, and was commended in the 2024 Verve Poetry Festival Eco-Poetry competition. She published her debut pamphlet, Arboreal , in January 2024. the poems Picking up my prescription ‘Sometimes as an antidote to fear of death, I eat the stars.’ ~ Rebecca Elson ~ 00:00 / 01:00 There are no stars in this city. I nibble on concrete, sip cocktails of NO₂. I’m dying for a decent constellation. Would some of those neons do? Or the flashing red lights on a high-rise? I FaceTime Olivier in the Pyrenees. He points his camera at Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt … Star after star devoured through my screen. I whisper Merci , then sleep like a baby. When the woman in Boots tells me I’m glowing, I say it must be the new meds. I keep quiet about the stars. On the tube ride home, they twinkle in my stomach like a Tiffany’s heist. My uncle brings back a fox tail from the fields 00:00 / 01:09 He is carrying his rifle, brandishing the tail like a trophy. A week ago, the fox (was it this one?) got into the coop and slaughtered all the hens. My uncle is grinning. The tail is cleanly cut, bloodied at the end. It hangs from a nail in the big barn, swinging like a corpse on the gallows. For days, I'm scared to touch it. The fur is coarser than I expected. I comb it with my fingers, breathe in its musk, close my eyes and pretend it's whole. Later, I run wild with my cousins. We are foxes — and I, the eldest, am the mother, the vixen. Driven by hunger, I burn through the fields, my cubs left hiding in the ripening wheat. The wind ruffles my coat the wrong way. Too late, I pick up his scent. Field notes 00:00 / 02:02 1. field noun : an area of land, used for growing crops or keeping animals, usually surrounded by a fence. 2. Green as far as the eye can see, then the brook. Water-mint, pebbles bedraggled in weed. 3. A six-year-old girl with a net, a bucket full of bullheads. Friesian cows bellowing, tick of the fence. Where did the years go? 4. Before he died, my uncle planted a rowan tree – there in the tall grass. 5. When we first saw the barn owl, it could have been a ghost. It flew low over the field, wings whispering. 6. If I buried my heart, what would grow? Perhaps a sapling. 7. Today, I have counted three kinds of butterfly: marbled white, common blue, speckled wood. 8. Dear Field, Do you ever dream of picking yourself up and striding off over the horizon? Be honest now. 9. I don’t know what I’d do if you left. I love you, field. Please stay. 10. Are you crying or is that rain? 11. In the field, I’m a child again. All this green, all this sky. I could disappear. 12. Meadow foxtail, yellow oat, timothy. I am the field, and the field is me. I am the field , and the field is me . Publishing credits Picking up my prescription: Anthropocene (July 2024) My uncle brings back a fox tail from the fields: Modron Magazine (Issue Four) Field notes: exclusive first publication by iamb

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

Hear poet Rishika Williams read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rishika Williams 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 Faye Alexandra Rose read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Faye Alexandra Rose back next the poet Faye Alexandra Rose is the author of four chapbooks: When Memory Fades , Incognito , Mortal Beings and Pneuma – the last of these shortlisted for the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Faye's forthcoming release, Wild Women , is due out with Sunday Mornings at the River. the poems A Force of Nature 00:00 / 00:28 We are Earth’s daughters, hips like rolling hills, moss-laced breasts quench your eternal thirst. We contain the ocean, unpredictable beauty, one pull of the moon creates a ruinous storm. We weaponize life’s sting like the blazing sun —even wildflowers can survive barren lands. We grow lungs like the roots of a birch tree, and nest fragility out the reach of beasts. Womb of the State TW: SA 00:00 / 00:33 Humanity is no longer human when people dig out their souls with coat hangers. Fearful of others with needles for hands waiting to thread their bodies to a backward piece of legislation. Two lines on plastic equate to a cross, righteousness woven with power like thorns in the skull. Wombs are crime scenes wrapped in yellow tape, for conceiving from brutality and not from being raped. Whilst stained white flags sway in limp hands, cursed tongues pray for their bodies to be cut free. My estranged father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 00:00 / 01:12 Dad, if I can still call you that, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt entitled enough, for your silhouette has always stood empty within photographs but your presence has always lingered, like a punch in the gut, as I’ve lived my life mourning a man who has never been and never will be. For I heard whispers through grapevines that your brain is a ball of yarn, your memory unravelling, forgiving you for all past sins. And I’ve spat bile at empty pages since I read that news, but each time it only ever seems to poison me as I pull at my skin to prove to myself that I’m real, trying to fathom that you no longer remember I exist. And I clung on for dear life Dad, I did, I never lost hope that I could hear your voice for the first time, an apology. But I must continue living with the pain of being forgotten, You don’t know I exist; I didn’t exist; I don’t exist. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Eilín de Paor read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Eilín de Paor back next the poet Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin, where she works in services for people with disabilities – a field in which she's studying for a PhD. Her poems have appeared in numerous places, including The Stony Thursday Book , Banshee , Howl , The Waxed Lemon , Abridged , Ink, Sweat & Tears , Flights and New Ohio Review . Eilín collaborated with Damien B Donnelly on their pamphlet, In the Jitterfritz of Neon , and sub-edited Issue 2 of The Storms: a journal of poetry, prose and visual art . the poems Anchor Stitch 00:00 / 01:13 Once he had asked and I said yes, we flew to London, Mum and I, budget, red-eye, trawled the costumeries of Soho, the Liberty remnant troughs, returning that night with six metres of duck-egg satin, two of lace chiffon. We borrowed a form from her friend Joann and for six months, I shared a bedroom with that silent twin, draped in muslin mock-ups, pinned with panels of interfacing, lining. I worked with ceremony in cotton gloves like a magician— shaping cap sleeves, scoop neck, empire line, added thirty covered buttons along the spine, three hidden tapes to bustle up the train. Afterwards, the dress became a headless Havisham stuffed pert with acid-free tissue paper in a vacuum-sealed box with viewing panel, waiting in the attic for a daughter to claim her and now, failing that, staying on as ballast. Why Poets All Wear Sturdy Boots 00:00 / 00:58 Forget mists and honeydew, poems aren't drawn in subtle hues, words are born of mud and blood, wrenched panting from the sludge and scrub. Pull on your toughest pair of boots. Tie the laces skin-blanche tight. Hitch a pack onto your back. Anchor nets around your waist. Scour the earth for worthy clods, fingers stained by foraged weed, forearms bared to better feel the sting and flay of briary twigs. When night and hunger leave you weak, gnaw wild roots, suck bird-scorned fruits, or blistered, bruised and labour-torn, scavenge on through muck and thorn, in thrall of ever brighter gems, hidden just beyond the dawn. Back at the End of the World For Barbara 00:00 / 01:00 This is how you came to an unnamed spit of dunes and winter-flooded fields: the caravan park was too crowded that summer, your mother couldn’t stand it, so your father drove out, turned off, picked a field, made an offer. Clay puddles up in copper pools where we trudge now through marram trails carved by long-scrapped dune buggies, kept up by horses, dogs, the children of the children. At the sedge-break to the waves, sea pea and holly catch the pebbled sky, cast back blues to the wheeling terns, who dive for fish to bring back to their island mates. We dive our feet into the coarse-grain sand, choose old songs on our phones— sing along to the terns, to our mothers. Publishing credits Anchor Stitch: Howl – New Irish Writing (Issue 23), and shortlisted for the 2022 Red Line Festival Poetry Competition Why Poets All Wear Sturdy Boots: exclusive first publication by iamb Back at the End of the World: Local Wonders Anthology (Dedalus Press)

Hear poet Sue Finch read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sue Finch back next the poet Sue Finch’s first published poem appeared in A New Manchester Alphabet in 2015 while she was studying with Manchester Metropolitan University for her Masters. Her work has since appeared in a number of magazines including The Interpreter’s House , Ink, Sweat & Tears , Dear Reader , One Hand Clapping and IceFloe Press . Sue's debut collection, Magnifying Glass , was published in 2020. She lives with her wife in North Wales. the poems Flamingo After Liz Berry 00:00 / 01:47 The night she bent my elbows to fit the candy floss cardigan for the twenty-third time, my limbs turned to wings. She wished me to be a pink girl. My neck grew and grew, elongating, extending, black eyes shrunk in the pink like submerged pea shingle. Light in my fan of feathers, I was lifted like a balloon puffed with helium. Body and wings held stately, magically anchored by one leg, miniature rough patellas marked my hinges. When the scent entered half-moon holes in my new beak I could have salivated at the raw rip of scaled flesh but my juices would not run – I was gizzard now. I couldn’t bear the confinement of the flock, but flight had me fearful. Passing through flamingo phase I fattened, darkened. A birch broom in a fit, I shook my thick cheeks side to side became a dodo with a waddle in my walk that slowed. She sent my father then. He came alone with gun and incongruent grin and shot me dead. Skewered me above his heaped fire under moonlight, turned me slowly round and round. When he turned for the sauce I dropped; charcoaled feathers, beak tinged with soot, burning in the blaze. I laughed as I rose higher and higher; a golden bird from the fire. I Can’t Send You Back, Can I? 00:00 / 01:56 I I can’t send you back, can I? she said. What if I wanted to go? To have her voice filtered through skin and fat. Those words, those questions, that curious consoling babble. What if I wanted to be enclosed again? To be unseen, hidden. What if I wanted to keep her expectant? To have us halted in anticipation. II Last time I led with my head; tunnelling though grip after grip of concentric circles. A hot salted mucus sealed my squashed nose denying me her scent. Air on my hairless head shocked me as my face squashed tighter for my slow unscrewing. The throb of heartbeats confused me with her; fast and faster in my ears, my chest, my head. Longing to cry, my lungs had me impatient. A metallic tang hung in shivers of cold as at last my body slung out behind. I was landed. III This time I would be her contortionist daughter – her womb my lockable box. I would have to go backwards, lead with my feet, point my toes. Contoured contractions would twist my legs into a rope their powerful vacuum cramping, pulling, spiralling me upwards until the smooth, curled width of my hips pushes her pelvis, demanding to come in. My left shoulder would force her wide just before that warmth grabs my neck. Her stretch for the sharp shock of my head would finally close my eyes. Jars 00:00 / 01:27 It was a surprise so I kept my eyes closed all the way to the garden. My empty stomach was a theatre of kaleidoscoping gems. She stopped me walking, invited me to open my eyes. Slowly I began to see. An enormous glass jar had been delivered to our lawn. Above it, swinging from a crane was a lid. Do you like it ? she asked. It’s huge , I managed. I am going to exhibit you , she said excitedly. You like things in jars . I did. That was the truth. A collection of smurfs, smartie lids, miniature carved owls, that figure of Dick Tracy. I liked looking at them, it made dusting easier, they could be handed to someone with ease, for scrutiny. I wasn’t sure this was right for me. I ordered an extra large one , she was saying. She seemed to be making a speech, a declaration of love. I was supposed to be grateful now, touched, overwhelmed. Two men were smiling at me asking her if I was ready. then I was on a platform being lowered in. I smiled like a good exhibit should as the lid was lowered on. It fitted firmly. Did she know I would make condensation spoil the whole effect? Publishing credits Flamingo: won second prize in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Competition 2020 I Can’t Send You Back Can I?: Interpreter’s House (Issue 69) Jars: One Hand Clapping Magazine

Hear poet Catherine Graham read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Catherine Graham back next the poet Catherine Graham’s most recent book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric , was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award; while her sixth collection of poems The Celery Forest was named a CBC Best Book of the Year – as well as being a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW , Catherine leads its monthly Book Club, and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto. Her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, is due out in spring 2022. the poems Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead 00:00 / 02:55 The moon arcs—in and out, playing form. Stars wrap our fate while intruder dreams signal: come back. They hold our stability with quickened steps. Stand where grass weaves basket strands, make the centre heave, the pinched earth speak, before thoughts erase and we have no names. Fixed on the busy you miss the owl-winter, the who-cold crizzling lake. Raindrops inside snowdrops. When our shoes sprout hello-flowers, cold lips pucker, speak— What to do but follow this thread? Wind circular words to chain our necks. A necklace without clasps means another light’s not listening. To think story is to construct from that other realm where jade water cools fire’s friction. Pockets where pleasure finds memory. Take this nosegay, touch intuition, before we float off the page. Now go past sentence. Air-sheets shatter—absorbed by grasses and creatures scurrying there. Viral green points down, we watch the swarm. Swan’s neck quickens to question—her wings, snow-blinding flaps. Nest birds have it—twiggy cup to sink into after cracking. The rub that brought forth twine and twig weaves the cradle. Head naked like a freshly hatched bird, moist with dew from the wormfield. What moves in tawny spurts, jolts. Silence rearranges. It does not mend. Seed. But know bloom. Unravelling defies gravity. False to think otherwise. Fools. We have a future to hatch. When roots shoot out— the sun-calling art of escape: leaf, sepal, petal—the sun plays hide-and-seek. Silence is a kind of flight. Scratch light to a rain-flecked level. Twitch strategic to inhabit submission. Repetition renews. Upland by the railroad tracks—eggs disguised as stones. Slip past daylight to a time held by skein of old stars— past evening, past waiting— Enough! Never enough, until pulled to flight or sleep. And a dog bounds helplessly wet for a tossed stick he cannot find. MRI 00:00 / 01:04 No metal implants or fragments. A long, fibrous stalk. You signed consent, removed jewellery. Face down through the doughnut hole. Tapering into leaves. Contrast material running through your veins. Magnets. Pinnate to bipinnate with rhombic leaflets. Still – lie still. You’ve been given earphones, a padded table. Seeds are broad ovoids. Cushioned openings for breasts to hang. Grown in an open garden. Thumping. Clicking. Knocks and taps. The celery’s a cleansing tonic. Whirs with car-accident screeches – a father’s skull, mother’s mouth. Wide range of cultivars. The technician stands in a nearby room. Inside, a seed; inside, a small fruit. Sleep Patterns for Seamus Heaney 00:00 / 00:33 We hold sleep patterns for him. Clip flowers from seeds; mist hours from worries into a line’s heartbeat. Tears are rinsers, not energy takers. Never waterfalls. We don’t envy his gift, we coax something out— Take me, for instance, my dead mother’s voice— You’re a game changer, a post-autumn woman. Publishing credits Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead: Finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize MRI: The Celery Forest (Wolsak & Wynn / Buckrider Books) Sleep Patterns for Seamus Heaney: The Belfield Literary Review

Hear poet Maggie Mackay read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Maggie Mackay back next the poet After retiring as a support teacher for young people with additional needs, Maggie Mackay took up writing again in 2009. A Masters degree from Manchester Metropolitan University followed – as did her pamphlet The Heart of the Run , and debut collection A West Coast Psalter . Maggie's second collection, The Babel of Human Travel , appeared in 2022. Her poem How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s inaugural WordView 2020 permanent collection, and one of her poems was a runner-up in The Liverpool Prize, judged by Roger McGough. Maggie is a regular reviewer of poetry collections and pamphlets at The Friday Poem . the poems Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages 00:00 / 00:53 To witness the birth of my father one hundred and four years ago on that sunny November day To meet my grandmother humming a baloo to her new son To hear the milk cows low beyond the limewashed buildings To walk the fields towards the White Cart, Crookston Castle within sight To feel the oak barley breeze in my hair To watch the Clydesdale’s hooves sink as the plough carves into the soil To smell pure country air To play with my toddler uncle on the stone floor with his home-made wooden train which I have to this day To run it down the hallway and hear the wheels clatter as they have for three generations The Babel of Human Travel 00:00 / 01:37 The day comes when she hears the pasture murmur for the last time, and so/her trunk and her soul head for the/Broomielaw where the ship waits for her coming and the Lord/keeps faith while all manner of Scots are scattered/with all manner of dialects and accents, treasuring them/in this fine, vessel-stranger towards new lives abroad/She waits for a roll call, goes from deck to berth from/dining table thence/to fall upon/her lonely spot and weep the/salt from her pale face/dream of/the final lament her brother played, all/the longing pouring through the/Atlantic waters, that handful of earth/deep in her pocket and/the treasured Christening robe folded where they/packed it with the promise of babies to come. Those too aged waving off and miles away, left/behind. The worn spurtle, flat irons, darning mushroom, cradled too in the hold, as the ship casts off/towards the land of caribou and snowshoes through struggles to/understand othery Baltic tongues which yearn to build/homesteads along riverbanks, seek to befriend the Cree nation, preserve the/songs and stories of home, create new histories of their Manitoba city. Void 00:00 / 00:26 Father hanged himself perhaps above the washhouse mangle, or in the orchard maybe, dead weight dressed in apple blossom. You’re wondering if I miss him, if I miss his hand on my arm, if his voice is fading. It’s in the sparrow’s call, ten chisel clangs, a bicycle bell. Publishing credits Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages: exclusive first publication by iamb The Babel of Human Travel: The Babel of Human Travel (Impspired Press) Void: A West Coast Psalter (Kelsay Books)

Hear poet Sarah Holland read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sarah Holland back next the poet Sarah Holland is a writer, poet and meditation teacher living in rural England. She's a regular at the writing groups and open mics held by the Poetry Pharmacy , where she also teaches mindful writing practices. This is the very first time Sarah's poems have been published. the poems Unseen 00:00 / 00:43 The sly smile of flesh knows its own beauty. Somewhere, a naked body is screaming, sweating, still. It howls when uncapped by sleeves, cold slicing bone, shocked by its own need to be covered. Now a lonely, lost landscape, blindly eroded. Tiny streams in rivulets you won’t remember weren’t always there. Your care of my nakedness is all I will ever know of love. When I’m next uncovered, I’ll no longer witness myself being seen. Dress in Stars 00:00 / 02:06 The dress is clustered with flowers join the lines between the nodes to find her stories in the eyes of the stars. Virgo Here I trace a girl standing proud in new folds of fabric paid for by her own wreath-weaving hands. The hem is hitched to her waist in a teenage tryst the stars hold her heart when broken. Draco The dress becomes lazy, lounging in corners forgotten for pyjamas and red-tipped hair and freedom and pint-size laughter. Notes are absent, margins full of rhyme. Aquarius The fabric sprawls dazed with travel on a bugged bunk-bed. See here, a map of islands, an elephant’s wrinkled ear, the currency of symbols smoke singing from the folds. The Bears Here is a woman now, buying new dresses from markets, city-chic, following rivers to return to the ring where the bear was tied to steps and she will sometimes wait. Gemini The straps sting like cuts on reddened shoulders muddied by festival swamps. Friends fade to twin with pole stars. Behind a closed door, the dress hangs limp and worn. Leo The dress has been lifted from sun-striped skin a tigress released again and again and again she curls alone into her warmth and swims the wide water. Hercules Hold the dress as carefully as that first love hang from a hook that drags the door but remember to hope. There is still space in its starred sky amongst the moss-worn patches. Gargoyles 00:00 / 01:53 I had remembered you wrong with a hoop in your ear but the curls were real that uncoiled from a cap another woman pressed to your scalp. Coffee from a market stall instantly chilled as the wind whipped the steam to the gargoyles who supped it like breath. We chose a face for each of us and perhaps that was a gift, seeing how we would soon jeer across the distance, bitterness spitting the air. I wanted you to ease me down the river on a boat you had made, wade with me across the brown water. I thought it would be glassy, our faces two stars reflected there. But we were just tourists, disappointed by the churn of the silt and the slime and the mud, a memory punishing itself again and again. The bridge suspended us over floods that might have carried us to fences, flowers. We didn’t know we’d be sucked under, crushed by the wheels of a tour bus as a gargoyle cackled, ringing from a city’s tall tower. I scratch into stone with my nail I don’t want to write these poems anymore but my blood obscures the words. I want to cup you in my palm feel your breath mist my skin. We played house in a home I thought had two beds. I still feel the warmth in our current as I flick fragments of stone into the ripples, sneers etched over smiles, but even though I’ve been here before, we are forever gargoyles. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb