Hear poet Eleanor Hooker read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Eleanor Hooker wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Eleanor has published two books with Dedalus Press: A Tug of Blue and The Shadow Owner’s Companion . Her third collection, Mending the Light, is forthcoming. She holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. Currently collaborating on two new poetry chapbooks, Eleanor has recently been published by Poetry magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Agenda. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a helm and press officer for Lough Derg RNLI lifeboat. She lives in Tipperary, Ireland. the poems Nailing Wings to the Dead 00:00 / 01:37 Since we nail wings to the dead, she calls ravens from the sky to inspect our work. 'For flight,' they say, 'first remove their boots.' She leans in, inspects a fresh hex behind my eyes, takes my feet and lays them on the fire, to burn it out, roots first. We're the last, babička and me. We've survived on chance and bread baked from the last store of grain. And as we're out of both, we will die soon. They are gathering in the well. We disrobe. She hums whilst I nail her wings, she tells me a tale, her last gift — 'This dark stain, passed kiss to kiss-stained fevered mouth, blights love, is pulsed by death-watch beetle's tick, timing our decay. They know this. They wait by water, gulping despair. The ravens keep watch, they say the contagion's here, they promise to take us first.' Her tale done, we go winged and naked to the well. We hear them climbing the walls, caterwauling, but ravens are swift, and swoop. Guardian Angel After Guy Denning 00:00 / 01:21 Mine is perpetually undressed, though not ingloriously so. He's illustrated too, yet I can tell his new tattoo, Paradis Est Ici, does not improve his spirits. When he splays his charcoaled wings, the wrench of skin, feather and bone makes a sound like splintering wood, I hear him mutter, 'fuck that hurts'. He shaved his head when I shaved mine aged twenty-two, and though my hair's grown back, still he calls me 'baldylocks'. I've been called worse. With a devoted sense of wickedness he feeds rosemary to lambs, 'pre-seasoning', he winks, 'no salvation for the lamb'. He's at his most morose in a boat; it reminds him of biblical times and fishing trips that brought him little cheer. He gets cantankerous at my dithering, Tells me I need a 'swift kick up the arse'. 'You must rid yourself of your demons' he chides. 'What', I snap, 'and lose you?' Well Worn Wings After Jeanie Tomanek 00:00 / 01:52 That cabinet in my mind, where I put things I'd rather not consider, is almost full. Row upon row of stones stacked behind its vast yew doors, collapse in on themselves daily – like bones in a graveyard. The cabinet sits above high water in a backroom named, Unutterable. I didn't name the room, and don't know who did, but I'm conversant with its synonyms. The creature that guards the room is not an eel or a terrible fish, it just is … and occasionally, is not. Where I trace the damp blue walls, a soft mould chalks the paint with my impressions. This room is a dark and broken sea, where disturbed waters drown time. I catch sight of my well worn wings – their hooked vanes patched blue and green – old wounds. With effort, they wrench me from the waters pull, settle me on a rusty puckane, protruding from the wall. Nearby, all my birds, obsidian and raven, caw – what, what, what-what, at the question of my unsettling. I unfeather, back to the rachis, I pluck quills from my shoulder-bones until, dismantled, I am back at source – flightless, woman, and unutterably sad. Publishing credits Nailing Wings to the Dead: POETRY (October 2015) Guardian Angel: Southword (Issue 30) Well Worn Wings: first broadcast on Evelyn Grant’s Poetry File

Hear poet Gillian Craig read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Gillian Craig wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Gillian Craig is a Scottish poet and author who spent 20 years in the Middle East, South East Asia and East Asia. Her poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including New Writing Scotland , Orbis , Abridged and Black Bough Poetry . Gillian is also a children’s author and poet , with four books published by Marshall Cavendish as Gillian Spiller. She currently lives in Scotland with her daughter, and is writing her first novel. the poems Helen, by accident 00:00 / 00:38 On a windscourged Scottish shore, Hogmanay, three lists brightly wrapped in leftovers. A fire in a biscuit tin, beacon in the storm sparked, smouldered, caught the wishes, snatched them away: a little hope visible as smoke. I intended the catharsis of fireballs; the forgiveness of krathongs. Instead, it seems I stood on the beach in this now foreign land where I’d screamed despair to the howling dark two nights before, and unwittingly vowed to burn it all down. Return to Saigon 00:00 / 01:29 On the long island I too am stranded on, he scans the gaudy propaganda, with its flat figures, stirring sentiments. The traffic laps the kerb. Later a book and a drink and I sit across the street, thinking of the old white castaway, and see him still on the same island, gazing at the traffic. He gives two bright young travellers friendly directions and a story; they laugh and thank and leave him. He resumes his post, staring into hypnotic wheels. ('I've been waiting since early morning to transfer power to you,' said Duong Van Minh, surrendering the South in 1976.) I know, although I do not know, he is no stranger here, and yet seems lost, waiting, watching the road now, not the traffic, for some sign he is remembered too. Eyes trained on the ground, he could be looking with young eyes again, when life was fierce, and any evening wheels could carry a friend, a foe, a flame, himself. As long, it seems, as he is peaceful, makes no sudden movements, things may rearrange themselves with their former brutal clarity. He bows a final look at what was lost. ('Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you no longer have,' said Colonel Bui Tin, cutting the strings, tying loose ends.) Stupit fucken wurds 00:00 / 01:01 A man sprawled on the station bench indistinctly opining, gleefully goading you as only a 3pm drunk in hi-vis can or does. When your vape shattered, punctuated the platform, I thought it was a semicolon; I expected something more. The Glasgow train was approaching platform 1. See stupit fucken wurds. That was it. No explosion. A slumped smoulder of despair. The carriage gulped, shunted you on to Kilwinning or beyond. Words can wound, tear, set light winds of fury, we cleave, hew, bark, we resent the toll the sewers we cross exact. We are so often misunderstood. But I wish you knew thae stupit fucken wurds were a poem. That’s all it is: the right words delivered perfectly at the right time. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ewan Mackinnon read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ewan Mackinnon wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Poet Ewan Mackinnon lives in Denmark, where he's artistic director of a charity that brings artists, clowns and musicians to children’s hospital wards. His poems have appeared in Under the Radar , The Rialto , Dear Reader , Jarfly , Obsessed with pipework and Prole . In 2021, and again in 2023, Ewan's work made it onto the longlist of The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition. He's a big fan of the Arvon Foundation's writing workshops, and his favourite poet is Caroline Bird . the poems After two evening classes in silversmithing 00:00 / 02:13 Finally, The Micro Motor arrived not that the little weak-assed-orange-battery-drill couldn’t do the job, well it couldn’t, but that's not the point. It was a step into professionalism, to taking myself seriously, to feeling the part. It is a pendant drill, I wanted the Balkan Venus but Mickey swears I’d regret it if I didn’t go for the Fordom SR pro with the quick release kit, so, I got that. I screwed a white-enamel shelf bracket into the wall to hold it (I had some left over from the extension that I’d picked up from the bargain bucket at Jewson’s three years back) which was awkward because it’s plasterboard so I had to find the beam and my beam scanner is crap, should have got the Makita, Mickey’s had one for years and he swears by them so anyway, I guessed, and that always means loads of regularly spaced holes in a little line that look like a, very industrious termite has been burrowing for a home(ha) I did try screwing it to the ceiling cause I can see where the joist is by the paint cracking cause of me walking on it when I was fixing the roof earlier this year, but that turned out to be too high for the table, then I considered lifting the table, but I just finished that, its split levelled and bolted to the floor so that seems stupid, it’s heavy, the motor, so when you squeeze the foot pedal, however gently, it jolts and rotates, something to do with momentum or centrifugal force, I’ll have to ask Mickey, but it doesn't really matter, it's not the point, it came with an ash block with a hundred holes in it for the accessories I’d bought; the diamond drills and busch burrs and stone router bits and sanding discs and pendant wheels and frosting brushes and polishing pads and finishers, oh! and a few spare mandrels. Its brilliant. The Streets are Stained with Sorrow 00:00 / 01:07 Walk for miles, find my house but have no keys. Sit on the step, teary, wait for anyone who knows me. A streetlight flickers and dies. Table for one. Dance with strangers, soaked in sweat and tears. Get lost in the museum districts towering ancient blocks, tear-stained cafes fill with early evening aperitif guests. Sharply dressed teary waiters serve huge Negronis and snacks. Join the line at the soup kitchen for leek and teardrop stew. Every head down. Find the river by a wide paved boulevard full of bullish carpenters setting up market stalls, their laughter cuts. I’m sobbing. A crowd gathers to watch the tears melting my face. Collapse to the pavement with a splash, the crowd whoop as they jump back, no one wants my tears on their shoes. James Peddle and Sons 00:00 / 01:03 Tea seems inappropriate. Dark well pressed suits even on a Sunday. A simple solid battered stretcher on wheels and a body bag. I offer to help. They politely decline. Their office is on the parade next to that nice Turkish place. Red sun-bleached drapes block any chance of a glimpse inside. The door has no bell. On the wall is a painting of a horse drawn hearse. Maybe that’s James holding the whip. Mum signs the forms. At the funeral, they stand straight-armed, unmoved. Thousands of souls have taken their last journey on these round shoulders, their breath like shire horses in the frosty sunlight. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sarah Raybould read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sarah Raybould wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet A GP living in England's Peak District, Sarah Raybould has had her poetry published by Black Bough Poetry , Ink Sweat &Tears and IceFloe Press amongst others. She's been nominated twice for The Pushcart Prize, and was commissioned to write and perform for English Touring Opera in 2023. Sarah takes part in local spoken word events, and typically writes of love, nature and finding deeper meaning in the ordinary. the poems The Ones That Miss 00:00 / 01:15 Some are steel tipped, angled too low, others fly past deliberately off target. There are whispers that woodsmen stalk deer in this glade. We are taught that to be hunted will look like running but she is a glass chalice, / saintly / crystalline, rubies in her ears and the silver scars on her birch-back soul are not visible under ripples of chiffon and her / smile / is a poised river enduring down the pleats of corduroy hills and her heart is cracked porcelain, guarded by a plot and a tiny voice that calls mum . After the Storm 00:00 / 01:26 At first glance, hush ( hush) alight where mist fingers the arching dawn, submission of wrangled bough, stooped low sorrel cradles tears like pregnant dimples, wax-green, twitch-bright, blades of trampled cotton-grass, unhitch in knee-jerk flick, reluctant rodents peep through spyholes crowned from weeping stems and elven eyelets coil at bracken’s end. Hold vigil, let cloud / contract / masquerade of sleeping pools confess as pulp and souse of sphagnum moss christen with sequins cupped in goblin hands, insistent, brim and bubbling revive the curlew calls. The Boathouse After visiting the home of Dylan Thomas in Laugharne With references to Under Milk Wood 00:00 / 01:33 From the apricot sea-lit harbour to a star-gulled lighthouse crouching on all twelve of the moon hours, slip-silt of the night licking bottomless fishing nets clean in the seething surf. Imagine the gust and gale riding cliff-top turf fish-lapping spray as river phantoms rove the rolling Tâf to the wrestling knucklerock ruins on the wings of the tide. Would he rhyme-wrangle with the briny-deep headstrong jaws of the sea? Or plunder their muddy dungeons? Would blind Captain Cat croon to the scum and morass of strangled souls in the deep whale-blue snake-streamered gob of the moon’s looking glass? Would he conjure Rosie from the eel-weed watery plughole, and the scolding mothers and the droll-toll town bell? Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Natalie Ann Holborow read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Natalie Ann Holborow wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Natalie Ann Holborow is a writer, digital content specialist and marathon-runner. She won both the Terry Hetherington Award and Robin Reeves Prize in 2015, and has been shortlisted and commended for various other awards including the Bridport Prize, The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition, and the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, And Suddenly You Find Yourself (Parthian, 2017) was launched at the Kolkata International Book Festival and was listed as one of Wales Arts Review's Best of 2017. Her second collection, Small, will be published by Parthian in 2020. the poems Andromache 00:00 / 01:30 Assume I am wearing black. Assume I have swathed myself in the hollow shades of his bruised knees, dust-clogged and sticky, assume I am leaching away with him. The tracks of his belly scar the dirt. Does anyone ask for his wife, hair dripping over the Trojan walls, towering ten feet over the beetled men below, gleaming up and blinking through her? Assume the wind blew me over the edge of the wall, quiet and pale as salt. Hear me say nothing at all. See these living hands. Hear the smack of my palms against stone, blood coiling its way to my heart, bind me tough as a horseman’s rope. Blow my bones to polished pipes they play when great men fall. For me, no tune at all if I should choose to stagger up, sway on broken toes, burst my lungs screaming for the dead man’s bones with our only child tumbling over crumbling stone in a gasp of blood and milk. When Hector cracked his back behind the chariot, when the bruises flowered blue, when our only baby spiralled like sycamore, the Gods, I felt it too – I called Astayanax, I called Hector. Who called Andromache? Who? Black Dog ‘I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.’ ~ John Keats ~ 00:00 / 01:31 He woke me just this morning, nose pushed to my sleepy cheek, breath shuttling down my cool neck: my faithful black dog. His tail clubbed me all shades of violet. The sun sawed me in half. He follows me to the kitchen. Here he comes, his canine shape gleaming like polished jet. I stoop over my coffee, hiss at him to go. My mouth lands on his drooping ear but the stupid dog is deaf; his dumb tongue a dripping slab searching my hand like a rodent. When milk won’t do, he loves the sting of salt. He nuzzles the lid of my eye. Wherever I go, he follows. At office desks, restaurant booths, hunched in the seat of a taxi, my faithful dog sniffs out my bones. When lovers come, he turns possessive. I wriggle free from their fingers, stop them kissing the sides of my jaw. They leave when I talk to the papered wall. I grieve when their footsteps have died. I go to bed at odd hours to watch the small pulse of blue time. When sleep stands me up for the zero moon, the dog strikes me down with his paw. Smoke Signals 00:00 / 00:55 We grew apart in inches, not miles. The house hummed, an empty theatre, our mother pushing the vacuum between our silence. Hacking clots of broken words, your lungs drained themselves into your pillows, fists thumping softly until you sucked in again, stained your breath from a chilly window. Where are you – I knuckled the question into the wall which dragged on between us, searched with my palms for your warmth. A blank inch pulled you away, and I listened to those hisses, those furious sobs, heard the weight of them bending your spine. The vacuum tumbled to a stop. You stopped hissing, opened your window, blew quiet smoke across mine. Publishing credits Andromache: Southword (Issue 36) Black Dog: The Stinging Fly (Vol. 2, Issue 28) Smoke Signals: And Suddenly You Find Yourself (Parthian Books)

Hear poet Suchi Govindarajan read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Suchi Govindarajan wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Writer, poet and photographer Suchi Govindarajan lives in Bengaluru, India. Her poetry has appeared in publications ranging from IceFloe Press and Cordite Poetry Review to perhappened magazine and Usawa Literary Review . Her poems have also been included in two anthologies. Poetry is Suchi's first love – fiction is her newest. the poems Of blood and war 00:00 / 02:10 The first time it happens, you are barely twelve. So much blood must mean either wound or war, s o you run to your mother and ask if you are dying. This is not death, she says, this is existence — just the basic bloodshed of being woman. There will be a celebration next week, she says with silks and jaggery, turmeric and gold. But don't be swayed by such fleeting love; the real gift is an unwritten book, stitched with rope, bound with tradition, its pages ornate and yet so sharp with rules, they only slice the fingers of women. Because you are a child, you take this gift, and you come to believe in this unquestioning dark, the flowers that will wilt, the milk that will spoil, the men and other fragile beings that will take ill. Everything, she says, that can be defiled by you. Last April you helped your aunt make mango pickles. This month, even your touch will spoil them — all that careful soaking in brine and spice — all that ageing in the home's coldest corners where you will now sit for days every month, muffling the many mouths of your pain. You cannot go to temples now, says your mother. You cannot worship the goddess I named you after. You are still a child, she says, but you are enough woman You are still a child, but you are already too much woman for anyone to bear, not the men, not the priests. They must pray to save all their gods from you. You told me once that he loved you 00:00 / 01:29 You told me once that he loved you because you were simple. I wondered then if he had seen your bookshelf or your bathroom. Did he see that small callus at the base of your palm? Does he know the weight of your gaze as you look out the window? Even on cold nights, you never cover your feet with a blanket, yet you show me these socks he bought for you to wear. They are the exact shade of purple that you hate and call violet. You told me once that he loved you even if you weren't beautiful. I wondered then if he had seen you speak about justice or poetry. Has he seen how you hesitate before you burst into laughter? Does he know you have your grandfather's hooded eyes? You told me once, under the yellow light of a station, of your surprise at his love and his existence. It was a windy night, your wild hair was held in a bun. You were wearing a sweater that billowed like a storm. You told me then you would try and love him back. I smiled, and felt a new grief in my limbs. Current affairs 00:00 / 02:05 My teacher told me my poems should be more current, should celebrate things in the news like the breaking of sports records, like the eradication of diseases, new machines in our libraries, or how a child, just six years old, sang like he was born of birds. Don't just write about flowers he said, or philosophy or these clouds of unrequited love that billow about your youth. Until we broke the mosque, I did not follow his advice. Until then, nothing in the world had touched my cocooned life: I had touched nothing in the world. But now I felt like it was my chariot wheels that crayoned dried blood into the tar. I watched my parents turn to wolves at orange moons, cheering for men with pickaxes, waving their fists at a box they could not turn off. But when I went to my teacher my words now a raw torment my pen now moving hard enough to leave round bruises on the page behind (at last, I thought, a poem he would praise) he grew narrow and cold. In a play last year, he had painted my face blue, draped me in shawls of gold and Raamar green. I had broken a bow for him. Now he whispered mantrams to protect his gods, and flung my poem back and told me to stick to love and clouds and flowers. Something that would dissolve and disperse easily. Something that would not leave marks even on the back of a page. Publishing credits Of blood and war: Usawa Literary Review (Issue 2) You told me once that he loved you / Current affairs: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Patricia M Osborne read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Patricia M Osborne wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet Patricia M Osborne graduated with an MA in Creative Writing in 2019. A novelist, poet and short fiction writer, she's published eight poetry pamphlets and had numerous poems and short stories appear in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Taxus Baccata , was nominated for the 2020 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award, while her poem ‘Sandcastles Fall’ was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2025. When not working on her own writing, Patricia enjoys mentoring other writers. the poems Galanthus 00:00 / 00:59 I shelter at the base of trees, abbeys, churchyards or amongst woodland. My neighbours, mistletoe, petasites, wild aconitum, hang close to my side. I’m harvest for Norman Monks who decorate churches at Feast of Candlemas, nature’s medicine, rub on temples to treat mal de tête . I spring into action, push up through arctic-white and cheer through winter gloom. Standing with grace, I nod as you pass by silver birch. Milk-tone drooping petals, viridescent stem, ... symbol of purity. Journey through a Mythical Forest An encounter with my muse 00:00 / 02:00 He wraps strong branches around me. I inhale his sweet scented needles with the promise of a story in a dream as the yew’s magic heals my mind from darkness into light. Twigs brush my bare arms, I caress their fruit, a cluster of nuts drop to my feet with the promise of inspiration as the hazel’s magic heals my mind from darkness to light. She rustles her leaves, I finger her silver bark, peel back a small patch with the promise of fertility as the birch’s magic heals my mind from darkness to light. Sturdy boulders stroke my shoulders I glance up at his crown with the promise of protection, strength and wisdom as the oak’s magic heals my mind from darkness to light. I kneel under his huge canopy, hug his wide trunk, close my eyes. My muse arrives. I write on the page– I am rich, I am strong, I am wise, I am gifted. I am thankful to the mystic forest for its magic in healing my mind from darkness to light. I am 00:00 / 00:53 Serenity captured by blue cloudless sky over sun-kissed ripples where Canada geese play and Egyptian goslings nuzzle up to their mother. I am Love and Harmony together with family, friends, yet miles apart. I am Hope as daffodils wave their yellow heads, and perfect pink blossom sways from the nearby cherry tree. I am Memory as forget-me-nots in their blue and white glory push up from the ground. I am Peace and pray this world will let me in. Publishing credits Galanthus: Taxus Baccata (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) Journey through a Mythical Forest: exclusive first publication by iamb I am: Nature’s Bookends (The Hedgehog Poetry Press)

Hear poet Theresa Donnelly read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Theresa Donnelly wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Theresa Donnelly is an Irish/Canadian poet who has enjoyed a career in Hospitality & Culinary Management. Widely published and anthologised, she's a past winner (and judge) of Canada's Food for Thought poetry competition in 2014/15. Poet Vanessa Shields said Theresa's poetry, ‘offers a delectable arrangement of observations that both haunt and honour.’ A member of The Ontario Poetry Society, Theresa's also a founding member of The Brooklin Poetry Society . the poems Towards Iseult’s Chapel 00:00 / 02:10 Before the brewery, cross Joyce’s bridge. Smithfield has a lighthouse but few horses! Pass pubs that rival any museum. Sweat of centuries steeped into stone; backyards where squealing pigs were kept. On Blackhorse, enter the Pheonix Park through the ‘Hole in the Wall’; traverse the expanse to Chapelizod. The wooded valley where tragic tales of 12th-century Irish Princess Iseult and lover Tristan abounds. A tree grows above each grave, their network of branches continue to reach for each other; alluringly scented honeysuckle, and the hazel with the knowledge of the universe within its branches. The weir-view at Martin’s Row: a favourite place for contemplating characters and the Liffey’s descent. In the Mullingar House, home of all characters and elements in James Joyce’s novel, Finnegans Wake, Earwicker pours pints, served by Anna Livia Plurabelle. Under a copy of Joyce’s death mask, a tourist reads the aforementioned novel. In one afternoon, he’s swallowed five pages whole. His uncle’s book club in Venice, California, took 28 years to finish it. It’s too nice an afternoon to read. Maybe it’s the stone, maybe it’s the spirits from Wakes watched in his father’s local with inquisitive pen and jotter. A cultural institution. A pulchritudinous view of a city from this riverside village. Dublin’s best kept secret. Mystery of Monarchs 00:00 / 02:08 Honeyed sunlight softens his jagged features. Late January mellows under a magenta sky. Sleeping beneath malleable boughs, his heart is unyielding. But only I know it. Remember, Adelita , the path which ran beyond the gated casement into a world we dreamed but knew little of? When Madre left, he occupied the blue room; frantically paced its floor like a caged tigre . His ingested rage spewing like an erupting volcano, over ink-stained flesh. Betrayed when, even the moon turned her face, leaving innocence to whimper in darkness. Remember, Adelita , you prayed to The Virgin of Guadalupe for wings like those of the monarchs, fluttering above the cornucopia of deep burgundy auroras kiss dahlia? Your prayers answered, during the summer of dearth. In a flurry of orange-silk georgette, monarchs filled the sky: the garden: the room. Emptied me of you. You flew away; found sanctuary on Sierra Chincua . Sometimes I hear your voice, rising on the wind, as it blows above the oyamels . Remember, Adelita , for fear that I will forget. Fishwife 00:00 / 01:30 Was it an act of sanctity or sorcery not to be created from Adam’s rib? Caught in your net, I fought brazenly, until you pulled me from the sea. Sweeping shadows aside, you bent barefoot and bronzed. Your lips allowed me breathe the earth once plump with poison. My eyes became saucers over which daylight spilled. I lay on the shore sweetened by the early tides of May. Seashells ringed my newly fashioned fingers and toes. You knew my name; you repeated it over and over until it was echoed by mute swans. You unbraided my hair, draped it like damp seaweed over stones. Visible silken threads coupled both body and soul beneath your cloak of tightly woven canvas. Duck egg is either blue or green, it depends solely on the light. I chose various shades of it for each and every room, in a house where I have never slept without some memory of water. Publishing credits Towards Iseult’s Chapel: Verse Afire ~ Canadian Poetry Magazine (Vol. 2, Issue 1) Mystery of Monarchs / Fishwife: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Grace Uitterdijk read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Grace Uitterdijk wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Counsellor and occasional musician Grace Uitterdijk from Northern Ireland enjoys writing poetry and short stories as a creative outlet. Her inspiration stems from a love of trees, the sea and all things wild. She's also interested in the lives of those she meets through her counselling work. Published in A New Ulster and Bent Ear Review , Grace loves to swing in her hammock, drink tea and read when she's not exploring Ireland's natural beauty. the poems In the middle of her ‘Dieu est au milieu d’elle: elle n’est pas étranlée…’ God is in the middle of her, she will not be moved Psaume 46:5 00:00 / 01:37 If I cut myself in half what would I find? What’s in the middle of me? Would it be a treacle sadness puddling round my feet? Or maybe I have a ball of glass in there. Hard, smooth, breakable. Would it be cosy in there? Could I cuddle up beside my heart or would it turn its back? What would it feel like to sit inside myself? Would it be like crawling into a hollow tree? Dark and wet and alive. Ancient. A womb of sorts. Would it be comfortable? If I could pull back my skin and let my heart fall into my hands, would it just be a throbbing organ or would I really see God there? Funny how that verse uses the pronoun ‘her’. God is in her. Not you, not me. Her. I would like to find her. If I did, I would run up to her and take her hands in mine And look in her eyes and shout, ‘Do you know what is in the middle of you? Do you know? Look, it’s God! Right there in the middle of you.’ Maybe she wouldn’t believe me. Maybe she’d turn her head, avert her eyes embarrassed by my spectacle. Maybe she would miss God because she didn’t even look. I would still tell her. Who knows when curiosity might catch her looking. Empty Space 00:00 / 02:06 Are you the man you dreamed you’d be? That’s a line from a song my friend wrote and that night it was floating round my head like it had nowhere else to go. I was driving home with loneliness in the passenger seat, and I remember thinking this feels like déjà vu, am I just stuck on repeat? The country roads were quiet, it was just a random night. Who knew space could ever feel this tight. Tears are a sort of currency but that night I didn’t know what I was buying. Maybe the desire to live even if just to do more dying. I had to stop in a car park, the tears were clouding my vision. Alone in a car in an empty space I was that space So empty I could just be replaced. For some reason I shouted ‘fuck off’ to a God I wasn’t even sure was real. I felt like my layers of skin were peeled to reveal the shreds of my humanity. Blood and water, water and blood. Is that all I am? Water and blood? I thought you promised there wouldn’t be another flood but what if every day is a flood and I am not the one being saved. Maybe I am just enslaved to this loneliness that follows me. Maybe my whole life is just one long damn fight to be free. If I’m not alone then why do I feel so fucking alone? When the noise is gone I sit there in the car park in the dark no longer even sure if I have a watermark to distinguish me from all the other lonely people in other car parks. I sat there crying until all the water in my body had seeped out of my eyes. Now I was left with blood. Life is in the blood, not the water. My tears had bought me one more day to live. Maybe tomorrow I would cry blood. I started my engine, reversed back out, drove home and got into bed. I’m not even close to who I dreamed I’d be, but I’m alive. Sometimes you feel alone in your own body 00:00 / 01:28 You are there and I am here. One letter difference and yet Can you see the insurmountable distance between us because I can? People say, ‘oh we are united, humans are all one’. Yeah, I've had moments like that, but can you not hear the story of humanity? You are there and I am here, and here is not there. There are two different words for it. I'm trying to be there, with you and yet you don't feel my nearness because the distance between those words remain. I'll try again. Talk to me and I won't understand but touch me and I'll know because touch is more visceral than words And wrapped in my arms here and there seem a little closer together. I know you feel alone. I feel it when our bodies collide, Slide to the left, away from your body, away from your pain. You can't bear to remain because you despise being here. It's ok; I'm alone too. I'm learning how to be here. I'll hold you tight until you feel safe again. Until your body is your own, until my body is my home, draining the distance between here and there. Press your body against mine, hold your head in my hands. Maybe we are less alone when we are alone together. Publishing credits In the middle of her: exclusive first publication by iamb Empty Space / Sometimes you feel alone in your own body: A New Ulster (Issue 99)

Hear poet Graham Clifford read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Graham Clifford wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet CEO of a large Multi Academy Trust and author of five poetry collections – published, variously, by Seren Books, Against the Grain and The Black Light Engine Room – Graham Clifford is the author of The Hitting Game . He's seen his work chiselled into paving slabs in Walthamstow, translated into Romanian and German, and featured in the UK's Poetry Archive . He's had poems in Poetry Wales , The Rialto , Magma , Ink, Sweat & Tears and The London Magazine , been anthologised by Faber & Faber and Broken Sleep Books, and rejected by The New Yorker. the poems No Alternative Now 00:00 / 01:06 Let’s grow a forest and hide in it. We will stay there for years, our clothes dropping from us in leaf shapes in the dim crunchiness where we copulate quickly like foxes, and crap standing, ready to run. After a while, reporters will arrive but we will be up a tree, bearded and matted. Puffballs come up in the areas where we urinate: they are delicately luminescent, buzz in the dark like candle-lit, drizzly planets. Shivering, curled together, one night I smell death about to bloom in you – next thing, you don’t want your hazelnuts, can’t pull yourself up onto our branch. From then on, until it happens, every night I dream we drive sharp cars and eat from tins. We will never get this life out of our system. Why He was Chosen 00:00 / 00:50 The man whose body accepted the pig’s heart had a violent past and worked with a machine that de-beaked chicks. The heart lasted three years partly because of immunosuppressant drugs. The night before the transplant he watched a YouTube video of a black and white Russian experiment where a dog’s head was severed, reattached and had its nose tickled and it reacted. It is reported the man mostly stayed alive because he studied calm and practised identifying and eradicating stress with the fidelity of a bear goring salmon full of semen and roe from a terrifyingly cold river in the dark. The Best Poem Ever Written 00:00 / 01:45 I write a poem that is the best. Massive. Not just long, but huge intellectually and although it is book length reading is like freefalling, each line greased with two genius thoughts. The poem makes me famous. I wander oxygen-depleted nights down city streets and hear lines of my poem bartered between sticky lovers. On the train, I peek over the top of a hardback book about me at a man in a suit nodding off and recognise the words he’s mouthing in his swoon. All front pages, every day, showcase stanzas of my poem – bombings and murders get tucked inside. The new novelist pays well to get my poem printed as an introduction: she knows her work makes no sense without it. Everyone I have ever known rings me to ask how I did it. I say I don’t know and that’s the truth. After a year the fuss hasn’t died away. I sit at my computer and hear downstairs turn the TV on. I put my ear to a gap in the floorboards. It’s an actor, and he’s reading my poem. It’s a good version: I’ve heard it before. He has a Shakespearean voice doing justice to what the introducer called The Best Poem Ever Written. I listen to it all, I travel where the poem takes me, then get back in my chair and write a better one. Publishing credits No Alternative Now: The Hitting Game (Seren Books) Why He was Chosen: The Rialto (No. 100) The Best Poem Ever Written: Obsessed with Pipework (No. 24) Author photo: © Martin Juhasz

Hear poet Piero Toto read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Piero Toto wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet Piero Toto (he/lui) is a bilingual poet, Italian translator and translation lecturer based in London. Author of Queering Sexual Health Translation Pedagogy , he co-edited Gender Approaches in the Translation Classroom . His poems in English are in Magma , Poetry London , fourteen poems and Queer Life, Queer Love II , as well as in other UK and international publications. In his native Italy, Piero has published the poetry pamphlet tempo 4/4 , and is a contributor to literary blogs Atelier and Laboratori Poesia , for which he translates contemporary UK poetry into Italian. He's also the co-editor of multilingual poetry magazine Atelier International . the poems Emotional Freedom Technique 00:00 / 00:49 My therapist says: narcissism is a form of unspent joy I say: you think you love yourself until you don’t you think you love somebody until they don’t spent is their body a continuum of—what? as if absence could summon the shape of stillness (on the matter of stillness we rewind the hours) and who but who deserves their fate, really? you already exist this time exists the linear cry of your thinking forever exists This was a day of revelations: bleed with me until the tenderness of a pause smoulders from within How to Address Absence 00:00 / 00:24 the outline of shadows reveals we’re born in the depth of zigzags & groans reflecting the impact we make the neon messing with our vibe I turn around to feel you inside me a hollow touch how fickle the dark incessant in this last room The Performance of Pain 00:00 / 00:25 give us a scar or a street corner we can fight when secluded in the chase for a name that fits give us more time to reset the world perception reduced to a pixel of you my hell is an echo of wanderers today’s epiphany: we shimmer still like blood on a scar Publishing credits Emotional Freedom Technique / The Performance of Pain: exclusive first publication by iamb How to Address Absence: Queerlings (Issue No. 2) as part of House Trilogy

Hear poet Jonaki Ray read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jonaki Ray wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Jonaki Ray is a poet, writer and editor based in New Delhi. She won the 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, and was nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Jonaki's writing has appeared in several publications, including The Rumpus, Indian Literature, Southword Journal, Cha, and Best Indian Poetry 2018. She is the author of Lessons in Bending , and her debut collection is Firefly Memories . the poems Kaemon Accho? Shob Thik? 00:00 / 03:12 This was a refugee market once, and now, more than fifty years after they were displaced the red-and-white saris, the Desh magazines, the nolen gur sandesh dot the shops, proclaiming the Bangla majority on the pavements and the streets. Yet, at the corner, the tarpaulin-covered fish market spatters with Bangla, Hindi, Oriya, Ahomiya, Bhojpuri, Manipuri, and more, reflecting the origin of the fish piling up the plastic-lined tables of the stalls. Mackerel from Karnataka and Pomfret from Maharashtra flash silver, their kite-like bodies quivering the ice underneath; the fishermen pull out black thread like veins from the brownish-grey jumbo prawns from Orissa—“Eita bish, bhoojle didi” while the shovel-like Rohus are haggled over mostly by the Bengalis. “Eikhan kar lok prefer boneless fish such as Surmai”, sneers Dulal’s grandson, as if not wanting to search for flesh tearing through thousands of needle bones reflects a lack in the people who belong here—the here that remains different from home. Dulal’s shop is the oldest—forty years and more— and the only shop with the “Eikhane Bangladesh-er Padma Ilish Paya jaye” sign. Grandfather would have bought the Ilish— not wincing at the 1200 rupees per kilogram price—a true Bengali doesn’t count money when buying Ilish—he used to say. But grandfather is gone, and so is Dulal. Now, his grandson jots down the day’s purchases in a notebook that seems to reflect the blood of the fish dripping down the tables into the water tanks under them. I buy my usual Sunday stock—250 grams of Rohu and 250 grams of the silverfish resembling Morella—a measly total of Rupees 220, and nod at Dulal’s grandson --Aashi—there is no word for goodbye in Bangla; instead I tell him I'll come (again). I'm already dreaming of marinating the pieces in salt and turmeric and frying them crisp in smoky mustard oil— the simplest of recipes that has travelled down from grandfather to me—in the same way that he did—from Burma to Bangladesh to India—just like these fish. Kaemon accho? Shob thik? How are you? All well? Desh Country (a popular Bengali magazine) Nolen gur sandesh Sweets made of milk and palm jaggery Eita bish, bhoojle didi This is poison, do you understand, elder sister Eikhan kar lok The people here Eikhane Bangladesh-er Padma Ilish Paya jaye Hilsa from the Padma river in Bangladesh is available here Ilish Hilsa Aashi I’m coming (a way of saying goodbye) Memory Talkies 00:00 / 01:48 On the road leading away from Florence, a woman is screaming at a man with a Picasso face. Shaking his head and half-shutting the door, he walks inside the house, leaving her alone at the stoop, smoking. She's trembling like the skeleton of a snail being picked clean by a colony of ants. The driveway leads to a gate and a child is attempting to swing it open, his face a smeared version of a Botticelli angel. Old men in Kolkata, reading newspapers, smoking, and solving the world’s problems are facsimileing in the suburbs of this city, while Cypress trees' fingers point skywards, apportioning blame. Buttery light pouring over miles of yet-to-be-harvested farms with stakes at their hearts dusks the days to evenings. In Montefioralle, a woman named Margherita offers me a gooseberry-coloured plum, while her husband tugs at her attention like clothespins before a thunderstorm. I'm back in the city that led a crushed Independence Mutiny, failing with my mother in convincing my father to let her go for a conference, alone. Who will take care of everything, he asks, even now, a dozen years after her dying. Eating Water Living Tales 00:00 / 01:15 Parboti Ma, front teeth missing back teeth always chewing betel nuts hands busy sweeping floors, stoking the stove kneading the flour, sieving the curdled milk into sondesh sweetened with gur, or roshogollas steeped into sugar syrup, tagged as ‘a hocche bangali’, for the hocche, hai she added to every line, dipping from Hindi to Bangla. Parboti Ma, happy to cook for Khoka Babu my father—fish and mutton, flavored with garlic and onion, food she herself was banned from eating, laughing at herself “Paani Khana hai” (I want to eat water)— dipping from Bangla to Hindi. Parboti Ma, refugee from Bihar, worker in Kolkata, resident of Delhi teaching me, “Stay still, just like the teeter-totter in the playground, and one day, balance will come to you.” Hai Is Publishing credits Eating Water Living Tales: The Sunflower Collective (June 8th 2019) Kaemon Achho? Shob Thik?: The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop) Memory Talkies: winner of the Oxford Brookes University International Poetry Competition (ESL category) 2017