Hear poet Hannah Linden read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Hannah Linden © Jeanette Mullins back next the poet Hailing from a northern working-class background but living now in ramshackle social housing in Devon, Hannah Linden has had her poetry published in Acumen , Lighthouse , Magma , New Welsh Review , Tears in the Fence , Under the Radar and elsewhere. She won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition in 2021, and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. Hannah's debut pamphlet is The Beautiful Open Sky , and she's currently working towards her first full poetry collection. the poems What the Wind Said 00:00 / 01:48 There’s no doubt I was already buried. I was prone and silent so it’s no surprise people talked about me in the third person. I was the family problem—the musty smell from a corner, the already gone but lingering. I did everything underground. Even my thinking was hidden from me. Up would come an idea— a fruit that was perhaps poisonous. I didn’t know how to trust anything. I felt the rooms of me become caves half full of water, somewhere, somewhere. My body was a disconnect. I was blind and deaf. Threads of me stretched thin, deep below the family carpet. I wanted to be gone, threw spores to the wind— tiny pieces of conversation seeking release, some lichen-yearn escape from a spent flower burst. There was no romance in it, no fairytale quest. I was turning myself into nothing, drifting on thin air. I don’t know who whispered onto a breeze the direction to a crack in the pavement. It was a small thing, small kindness, like I was alive—like I should be alive. The Fight 00:00 / 01:33 She said HE had packed my things, boxes stacked under the stairs, ready for the off. I tasted nothing of the reconciliation supper, the too- light chatter of my brothers, my sister's over-long hug as we whispered goodbye. But I felt Mum's silence in the car, the negative pull until I was a black hole sucking everything into my void, except her. She sat on the edge of Nan's spare bed. You will never come home again. I am a half-circle. I am an apple falling from the tree. When she left, I slit open the boxes to search for my overall: my dead dad's shirt, the hold of his undying smell. My step-father had thrown away this rag of him—the remnant Dad gave me for when there’s dirty work to do. How he'd kept me clean. I roll up my sleeves, remember bare arms, tattoos he'd regretted— it's my skin being bloodied now. Light 00:00 / 01:35 When I first climbed out it was simply the absence of him. Then the absence of pain in the shoulders that I hadn’t known was connected to him, like shadows are. Then a ladder started to form, simple steps like noticing I enjoyed the sound of a ticking clock. Or being able to turn over in bed, turn on a lamp to read, or open the curtains to the moon. Ladders of light are not a form of magic. Sometimes they are silence in a room that is not always aware of the sounds in another. I wasn’t used to climbing, the muscles in my legs weary from lack of use. Resting on a ladder of light takes practice. I made some of the rungs into ledges. Rested with my children. Sometimes it’s best not to look back or try to calculate how far there is left to climb. In the hollows at the back of the rock face, pressed hard into the surface, the imprint of women’s fingers, more felt than visible, waiting to be found. Publishing credits What the Wind Said / Light: exclusive first publication by iamb The Fight: The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press)

Hear poet Lesley James read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lesley James back next the poet Lesley James is a writer from Wales whose debut poetry chapbook is A Walk With Scissors . She's been published in a range of literary magazines and anthologies, including BOLD , The Broken Spine , Full House Literary Mag and Spelt Magazine . She was shortlisted for a UK Very Short Story award by LoveReadingUK, and won Cardiff Writers’ Poetry, Flash and Article prizes in 2022-23. Lesley's words have also earned her two 2023 Best of the Net nominations. the poems Ways in which a cortado can prompt existentialism (No. 3) 00:00 / 01:09 In the pastel Caffè Nero that used to be my bank, a man nudges a scuffed skirting board with his toe as he moves a chair. It falls off. I realise they’re all fake. Held on by silicone or No More Nails. What’s important is the impression. Never mind the feeling of concealment and being duped. The Doric pillars rise. But not very far. What sits above the lowered ceiling, I ask a barista? Beyond the replicated coving? He shrugs and shakes his head behind the Perspex screen. Bank clerks, no doubt. In a stately two-tone world. Greying and cobwebby. You Don’t Know What I’ve Done With thanks to Rachel Long, Caroline Bird and Arda Collins 00:00 / 01:02 And they say that Polar bears are under threat, but I saw them – one grey one beige – shopping in Cardiff City Centre yesterday. I did one of Harry Styles’ tattoos – and they threw me out of art class aged thirteen. Lizzo chose me to be one of her Big Gurrl Dancers, and I said ‘No, bitch.’ You don’t know what I’ve done. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE DONE. I invented squissors, scissory tongs to squeeze the slop from cat food pouches so you don’t get gunk all on your hands. And you know that gunk, the cat food stuff that drips all on your hands … I’ve licked that. I chose an elderly guy – seventy-five – to fuck to end my marriage – Yeah! I stole the cat – that cat, the one who lives with me – from his perfectly good home and made friends with his real mother. And I write it. I write it all. Like I’m writing us. Now. In The Drag Queen Vegan Café Ways in which a cortado can prompt existentialism (No. 5) 00:00 / 02:05 To unsheathe September’s lunaria seed from their waxy shields, you should first lick your fingertips. Take a single flat seed head between two fingers and a thumb, and make to snap your fingers. It falls apart. The crispy ovals flutter down. Catch the falling seeds. Some will jump away, and found the Honesty of two years’ time. Pearl lantern moons remain. On vanilla feet with toffee apple fur, the cat forgets we do this every year. He chases the papery housings like they are secrets I’ve been keeping from him, or his own free will. In darkness he practises sleeping round corners for when winter comes. But for now, everything is drag-queen vegan café, Banksy in Port Talbot, Frida Kahlo on blue brick. The buddleia points tourmaline fingers at pigeon-blood cosmos wearing bee earrings (clip-ons). The wingbeats of overhead sparrows purr like flicked open fans. Last night’s massive bedroom moth (critch-critch) has laid eggs from her orange furry bum, and left the building. Everything is voluminous, daubed-on, lipstick smeared, waiting to die. An apple drops. The astilbe is still. Publishing credits Ways in Which a Cortado Can Prompt Existentialism (No. 3): A Walk With Scissors (Infinity Books UK) You Don’t Know What I’ve Done: exclusive first publication by iamb In The Drag Queen Vegan Café: Full House Literary Magazine (Issue 2)

Hear poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Anila Arshad-Mehmood Johanna Elizabeth Photography back next the poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood (she/her) volunteers as a governor at a school and a trustee at a mental health charity. She has a professional background in mental health and wellbeing working with young people, and currently delivers safeguarding and mental health training to colleagues. Her writing focuses on her experiences of immigrant family life in an anti-cohesive lifestyle. Anila's interests range from reading, drinking coffee and petting cats to travelling as widely as possible to learn about other cultures and cuisines. An enthusiastic member of several book clubs, Anila considers poetry an abiding personal passion. the poems The World is Made This Way 00:00 / 01:09 When I scrunch my nose up Tight into my brain I feel something It's like a bad smell crawled into my mind to hold on to Why do we do the things we do To make others feel bad for their good You can be good Own your best Your strength is power And if you are better than the rest why is it Bad to feel good to feel bad to feel Something about me is triggered by you Not something is bad about you I'm letting you know I'm feeling something because of how you Present to me but it's me who feels the feeling Not you who is bad to be good in me forcing feelings on Owning my feeling My strength My best Better, smart, assured Because not everything is me and the world is different and we all have our Better and best self and skill and behaviour And this one can be mine It isn't yours But it's not bad to say Because the world is made this way Labyrinth 00:00 / 02:31 There's a ball of twine glowing at my feet I could pick it up, See if it leads me to the centre of the labyrinth. Or I could stay here, Try my way back to the door which I closed behind me. I didn't lock it but I didn't leave breadcrumbs, I was certain the way back wasn't needed, interesting or useful anymore. Going back or forwards, Forward or backwards. When you communicate differently what do you see A different reaction or an explanation that emotions exist Hide Exist inside your mind, nose, mind. I'm a woman with emotions, More than hate, rage, fear, rage, anger, rage, sadness, rage Curious, open, sadness, happiness, excitement, engaged, hopeful Open the door and check with the key Which key opens the door This behaviour means Empath: noun noun: empath; plural noun: empaths 1. (chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual. Emotional perception, try on the jacket of his dear friend and coat yourself in their sadness, happiness, sadness, step away so it leaves you behind. Emotional perception so your eyes glaze with the tinted glasses on his dear friend see sadness, happiness, sadness. Emotional perception, try on a medicated maze of bars blocking the feelings of every dear friend so only you can feel numb and nothing – not their dear saddappiness. Empathic Guide. Twine in a maze of bloody chains and no need for breadcrumbs, step into the light and wander around without the twine. No map, no guide, no rooms, doors, windows, what comes next, explore, who says twine is the way to explore anymore? Still 00:00 / 00:49 the women who came before me Rose but how can I wonder how can I access my sass draw on words and steal back breath to rise above this smog engulfing me I am drowning in black squares zoom sequences and distant W A L K S dreaming of the time when I step back from the bitter twisted lies written in hashtags I’ll remember I didn’t run from discomfort even when it ran from me like women who came before me I want to fill with air and rise Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Hilary Watson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Hilary Watson back next the poet Growing up in South Wales and now living in Cardiff, Hilary Watson graduated from the University of Warwick with a BA and MA in Writing. She was a Jerwood/Arvon mentee, and has had her poetry published widely in UK and international magazines, including Atrium , Ink, Sweat & Tears , Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and The Interpreter's House . Hilary is also an editor at thrutopian writing magazine, Bending The Arc . the poems Accountability Badger 00:00 / 01:31 Badger glares at you in the street from behind the net curtains of his two up two down. No chimney smoke, no love escapes the chamber of his heart. He knows what you did, what you keep doing to yourself each time you choose avoidance, when you’re too fearful to forgive. ‘Unforgivable,’ he mutters, sips tepid Marmite, his claws tight on the handle of the mug. He’s thinking now of earthworms, slugs, of how you hold him hostage in this Valleys town because you crave accountability, refuse to take the test, to do the work yourself, the stripes behind his ears turning grey. ‘One last job,’ he’d said, typically assignments taking half as long. He clasps the teaspoon in his padded paw, stirs clockwise, anticlockwise, tuts, shakes his head as some new excuse issues from your mouth. Excuse 00:00 / 00:59 The excuse arrives in the palm as though it was always going to land there, like a dragonfly out on the hunt, settling to eat its catch. The excuse is effervescent, more delicate than expected but who can deny that weight of legs in the centre of an outstretched hand? Fortunes cannot be read, but look here; that stance across the life and love lines folded into crevices. Who could ask for a more convincing reason, conceive of a lie that cuts so deep as the jaw of that magnificent dragonfly crushing a gnat to cells? Pygmy Hippo 00:00 / 01:05 Lean on my gate. The man in green throws carrots into this stew of my own making. Submerged, I can hold my breath for ages, walk underwater, bob for air, my nostrils bubbling apostrophes. Toss me a dandelion leaf. I’ll show you that to love me is to know no decency. Shy, me? I can go months without making a peep. I sweat blood. Ferocity’s my middle name. The man in green throws cucumber, fern fronds. I am going to die here. A young human climbs an old human. Some fun, at last. Find the diamond resting on my tongue. I’ll open wide. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Anna Milan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Anna Milan back next the poet Currently based in Hertfordshire, England, Anna Milan has had her poetry featured in various publications – Butcher’s Dog , Under the Radar , Eye Flash Poetry , Black Bough Poetry and Ink Sweat & Tears among these. the poems The wind is not yet awake 00:00 / 00:47 Patience, eyas. The wind is not yet awake. Wait for its breath to rise and turn till you can scoop the air under pointed wing. Your eyes are not windows, but walls. Enamelled with anger, watchful, siege-ready; mistrust kept safe behind ashlar and buttress. Although the frosts snap at your feather buds the spathes will grow curved and strong. When the barbs lock firm to collar the wind then, eyas, we’ll be ready to begin. Eyas: a young hawk; especially (in falconry) an unfledged nestling taken from the nest for training money & sex 00:00 / 00:46 I’m doing it for me she says & though in a way that’s true she speaks the softened vowels of her great grandma who heaved out the bastard child of the earl of bath & wrecked her voice in the process so forever & ever after it had an echo of the master’s tenor like the bass notes below the hymn’s melody in the estate chapel on the big hill & when she’s in those killer heels doing it for her I can’t help but wonder how many male choirs are in the harmonics singing yes yes that’s my girl you don’t answer to god or man do you what a chance to write yourself your own sweet song girl House guests 00:00 / 01:01 My mother drew cedillas in lipstick on the mirrors, scrubbed the skirting boards clean, and left stands of autumn grasses growing right up against the patio doors. Afterwards, my sister came to throw wet leaves at the ceiling and do handstands in the kitchen. The first man I loved told me a lady never bares her feet until she is alone in her room. He always turned off the light with his thumb before he shut the door. The next one, a man with grey curls and eyes saddened by the sea, hammered nails into a newly decorated wall to put up a shelf, and heaped sand onto it in restless piles. Others roam about outside, waiting to come in. Someone once said to me, In the end, aren’t we all just guests in someone else’s house? I think it’s true, but these days, I am more careful about letting people touch the walls. Publishing credits The wind is not yet awake: Atrium money & sex: Butcher’s Dog (Issue 16) House guests: Under The Radar (Issue 25)

Hear poet Devon Marsh read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Devon Marsh back next the poet Since serving as a pilot in the US Navy before embarking on a career in banking, Devon Marsh has had his poems and essays published by The Lake , Poydras Review , Black Bough Poetry , Split Rock Review and River Mouth Review , and has been featured on periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics . Devon lives in the North Carolina piedmont, and is currently searching for a good home for his first full-length poetry collection. the poems Driftwood – Olympic Peninsula 00:00 / 01:24 Children throw driftwood into the sea, rebuking the wood’s audacity. Limbs and trunks lie ashore, bone-like rather than a severed part of forest. Yet the skeleton-white logs pay homage to shadow-black forms. Trees above wave-carved cliffs oversee the beach. Tall firs look ahead. The firs turn from the ocean, put breath into the sky. They look back and think again. Children cast pieces of trees to withdraw with the tide and feign they won’t return when we’re gone. Tall firs regard the sea. They look back and think of me, know I am of the forest even as rhythmic waves pound within my veins. How many will pulse the shore where I stand rooted to a spot on the sand? I take evergreen breath from the sky, look back, breathe again. I watch my heirs, relish their audacity. My children throw driftwood into the sea. Own Fault 00:00 / 01:36 Last night’s rain bowed the stream. Water cranes to peek above the rim, see beyond the channel of its world. On green hillsides, scattered orange firs resemble derelict sculpture, ignored rather than poisoned, like a forest erected when we built bridges that threaten to collapse from negligence. How could we fail to maintain our means of traverse? I would find another way to you, swim a raging torrent, tasting with each dip of my face the rusted tang of failure. Distracted by thoughts of a crossing I won’t make, it’s a verdant tree, lovely with life I curse when I misjudge my cast. This is my own fault, no one else to blame for a hook sunk to its barb in this summer’s terminal growth. Wade ashore, cut the leader, leave the mayfly perched above the current. Its name — Ephemeroptera —gives a nod to its day in the sun. Tie on line, knot nymph to tippet, eye the yellow slice of sky backed by faience, by cobalt. I wade in, cast again, try not to squander light. Around me, trees agree on a color for night. Storm 00:00 / 01:18 On the porch, close to 10pm. Enjoying red wine, lingering rain, thunder moving off, songs of at least three types of frog. Lightning flashes at greater and greater intervals, building tolerance for a gap that will carry to the next storm. This is when I replay our conversation wonder why you wondered what I meant. And also wonder if I should remark to you, inside, about the storm as it subsides. Something obvious, a point of sure agreement. The darkness rather than what’s in it. With no flashes I see the sheen of the screen. Pixeled black covers the yard, drowns the pond, obscures field and forest and sky. Night tries to mist onto the porch like rain, pool with shadows. The candle keeps it at bay. I’m on the bright side listening to frogs, replayed conversation, and receding thunder until it’s time to blow out the flame. Publishing credits Driftwood – Olympic Peninsula: River Mouth Review (Issue 4) Own Fault / Storm: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Stephanie Clare Smith read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Stephanie Clare Smith back next the poet Stephanie Clare Smith is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, whose forthcoming lyric memoir, Everywhere the Undrowned , will be published in spring 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press. Stephanie's poetry and essays have been published in various journals including Bellevue Literary Review and Xavier Review . She currently lives in North Carolina where she's a social worker and mediator for families in crisis. the poems Small 00:00 / 01:18 Sleep is my friend, I tell myself. I don’t believe myself. I need more friends. What I have is Joni Mitchell songs stuck in my head. I really don’t know love at all. I make shapes with my body under the covers as though I am falling from a plane in the sky – a fetus, a windmill, a steak knife. Which shape survives a long-distance drop? The Times said a fetus – survivors fall small. In the morning, I wake like a clock. A chopper’s overhead beating the air. But this is not Nam or Afghanistan. The radio reports cops up above. A man dumped a woman out of his truck onto the avenue that feeds the heart of the city. Or else she jumped to escape the not-Nam/Afghanistan war in that truck. He fled on foot when the chopper hovered over. All day he’s at large like a storm in the sky. All day she’s out cold in a hospital wing. I feel all small; how she jumped or was dumped in the shape of log that rolled across the road that feeds the heart of the city. When a Horse Smells the End is Near 00:00 / 00:28 nostrils flare fist wide eyes shoot sideways halfway white a bad blows up bigger there nothing left to blind the view a storm stares through a round black sky a moon cut up a crack across the back of night and gallop gone to the edge foul the way it’s over Whereabouts 00:00 / 01:14 I dream I’ve gone missing. Wake up still here in this adopted state, out of place, nothing new. I throw back the comforter, count ten friends from home, lost or gone. Mostly gone. Mostly dope. They follow me to the sink like prayers. I cup my hands underwater. Wash my face, dress up my past, miss ten laughs. I drive to work, clip on my name. Be here for now. If I didn’t stay, if I’d kept on driving, someone here would call the cops, at least by Thursday. But it’s not a crime to just get gone. All I’d take with me is mine, low-key in my little car. I’d drive to other towns, all gone grey. Adopt every state. Take on new names. Hope, Mercy, maybe Shame. Maybe Eleven. The ten gone missing ride along with me and sing our songs. I stay put for now, feed feral cats, work overtime, eat out on Fridays. My little not-disappearing acts. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Simon Alderwick read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Simon Alderwick back next the poet Raised in Surrey and now settled in Oxford after several years of moving between various locations in England, Wales and the Philippines, Simon Alderwick is the author of poetry pamphlet ways to say we’re not alone . His poems have been featured in Magma , Anthropocene , Ink Sweat & Tears , Berlin Lit , Acropolis , Dust Poetry Magazine and elsewhere. Simon's debut collection, reaper in a headlock, will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2026. the poems love in the age of extinction 00:00 / 01:01 hot day on her lips, record-breaking thighs. no ice left when she tells me – we need a circular economy. she breaks the bones in my fingers, feeds me water – filtered – through a paper straw. straddles me, hushes my concerns, this aging population. she knows love’s impossible, keeps sandbags stacked against the door. we can't die out like dinosaurs – she says – we are God's chosen creatures. but her laugh, a tipping point. she drills me until she strikes oil. we spill across the bedroom floor. smoke like chimneys after. she says: the future’s out on Mars. – i don’t think we’ll make it. when she's gone my cat brings me birds fallen from the sky. the game 00:00 / 01:11 my daughter holds a red building block to her cheek, says: hello . i pick up another brick, say: hello . no daddy , she says, taking my hand, you’re in London . she walks me to the bedroom; goes out; closes the door. i put my ear to the receiver of the block. i can hear her through the door. hello . brick heavy in my hand. i miss you . my hand against my head. when are you coming home? i tell her soon. i tell her i’m on the airplane. i break down the bedroom door. holding my arms out like an airplane; fly around the front room; land in the front garden; run to the front door. my daughter runs to me kicking toys across the floor. i hold her in my arms. it’s a silly game but it feels good to make a game of it at last. flubbergust 00:00 / 00:35 can't come out today – bit of a mad one i was opening a packet of crisps and found a blue whale inside i said: normally the packaging is inside you but he failed to see the funny side i called a number on the crisp packet but i don’t think the girl was listening she said it should go out with the general waste i said for the love of god it's still alive Publishing credits love in the age of extinction: exclusive first publication by iamb the game: shortlisted for The Telegraph Poetry Competition 2022 flubbergust: Magma 81

Hear poet Valerie Bence read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Valerie Bence back next the poet After completing an MA in Poetry with Manchester Metropolitan University (plus a year’s mentoring), Valerie published her first pamphlet: Falling in love with a dead man – poems which take as their source the art of Rembrandt. Her second pamphlet, Overlap , followed in 2022. Valerie has been shortlisted for The Poetry School/Nine Arches Press Primer series, the Fish Publishing Poetry prize, and longlisted for the Ginkgo Prize. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, and she was delighted to contribute to the inaugural issue of The Storms journal. A mum and nonna, Valerie lives and works in Buckinghamshire. the poems Caitlin After Dylan Thomas’ death in New York, aged 39 00:00 / 02:13 So, it's happened, you shit of a man I love the bones of you. I can’t think for the howl in my head of our unborn babies I’ll never forgive you. I’m finished. No rules for us from that first day in the Wheatsheaf you lay your beer-swimming head in my lap proposed then and there stole me body and soul from Augustus. You always took what you thought was yours you had me in the raw, as far as you ever had me killed my soul, then killed your own. I love the bones of you. I used to think all men are swine. Now I know it. You bastard, you’ve left me squalid, what will become of us? I considered throwing myself out the bedroom window but decided it wasn’t a big enough drop I won’t make that mistake again. I hope you had your black socks on, darned with red wool so people would tut-tut over how you keep your wife impoverished you bad bastard of a wonderful man, you penniless slob I love the bones of you – and your voice, going on and on whispered endearments slurring in my ear – oh God! I always lose whatever I have, now I’ve lost you booming your poems at me when we weren’t in drink. At least it wasn’t me that killed you, although I’ve beaten and kicked you many times and you, the man that let me. Worse, I’ve torn your precious work in tiny pieces, flung them out the window like dark bats into the estuary. But even though I tramped out to the dawn mudbank to get them back before the tide did I’ll never know if you forgave me now. Well, you always knew you wouldn’t make forty I hope you’re happy now, you shit of a man. I love the bones of you. romancing the etch Rembrandt self-portrait with Saskia, 1636 (etching) 00:00 / 01:29 I remember the only time you let me share this intimate process I am behind you, not quite touching, watching fingertips I know so well work the surface of copper plate; take care with our hair, let the shadow of your own hand fall across my breast. I imagine these hands sharpening a quill, cupping my toes, drawing our baby. In mirror work, looking straight ahead, your hand moves ‘blind’, must draw in reverse – you see us backwards, as if we could turn back time before sadness made lines on our faces. The back of your head is rigid with concentration, you are rarely still this long and your reflected gaze watches me watching you work. With no change of expression you make myriad decisions – on pressure, what to leave, what to wipe away, which paper when pressed to plate will take up ink exactly as you want – then peel away revealing the reverse of the reverse. All this, your eyes in the mirror still hold mine. Red 00:00 / 01:27 There’s a red kite whose patch encompasses my house. I watch him most days, sweeping in slow circles, letting updrafts do the work for him, using his forked tail to steer the skies. On the first day of lockdown, as I drew back the curtains to let the grey in, he was the first moving thing I saw. So surprisingly low I could almost count splayed feathers on wingtips, eye on predatory eye as – just for a second – he seemed to peer into the bedroom. I think we’re quite close now; at least more than nodding acquaintances. When it snowed I considered wearing red, curling-up in the front garden to be as small as I felt. He might think me carrion – perhaps swoop upon me, take me to his eyrie. His little ones could be surrogate for mine. He could bring me small mammals I would learn to eat raw, my mouth and their little beaks bloodied red with the effort. I could teach his nestlings songs from Moana , number rhymes, how to play Jacks with leftover vertebrae, then at sunset we’d screech their names to a bleeding sky and I would tell them how the world used to be. Publishing credits Caitlin / romancing the etch: exclusive first publication by iamb Red: Overlap (The Emma Press)

Hear poet Pascale Petit read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Pascale Petit © Brian Fraser back next the poet Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales, and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl , was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and won an RSL Literature Matters award while in progress. A poem from this book won the Keats-Shelley Prize. Pascale's seventh collection, Mama Amazonica , won the inaugural Laurel Prize and the RSL’s Ondaatje Prize. Four of her previous collections were also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Petit is widely translated and travelled, particularly in the Amazon rainforest and in India. the poems Walking Fire 00:00 / 04:10 It’s high summer and the grass hisses where the tigress treads, her pads soundless on the tinder track. Her flanks sway, the cubs cool in their amniotic sacs. She is a walking fire her glance a flare that singes my lashes. I seem to be watching her through a veil of snow or ash – the sky as I know it falling falling and when her face comes into focus it’s like the membrane between us tears. She brushes against the jeep as she saunters past on the long patrol of her realm, her fur dripping after a soak in the stream. Can you see me, Gran ? I ask, I’m as close to a tiger as you once were, but I won’t touch. A baby wouldn’t alarm her, but I would. You’re sitting opposite, saying, It was like staring at a frozen sun . Your eyes grow coal-black as you think of the day you were left alone in a tent. I’m staring at the fire in your living room, anthracite glowing with forests of our Coal Age, flickers of fern horsetail clubmoss embers spitting onto the mat like sabre tooths springing from a cave – that split second when we startle and everyone is still alive even my first cat not yet given stripes by the combine harvester as he lay curled in corn. I’d walk over hot coals to get back to you, just to ask one more question about your tiger. But you were only a baby and probably you only remembered remembering not the thing itself. Just as now, I’m only half- remembering the ghost of your fire where we sit like two Ice Age queens worshipping the heat while underneath us the compressed beds of trees buckle under mountain-building. The tigress has passed by now, and is ahead on the path, rolling over the sand, belly-up, revelling in her power. Already she’s spawned three sets of cubs and they’ve forged their own empires. When she leaps onto a stag the whole world slows to hear the grass speak from inside the deer. Slows enough to listen to what trees have to say with the mouths of storms through their leaves. When I’ve firewalked through the dawn of your death my feet scorched on the cinder path to your house, when I’ve opened the gate of your garden – like opening the gate to Tala Zone where wildlife is almost safe – I will land in your armchair in the deepest cave. And then Gran we will talk again about the forests that once reigned on earth the mysteries of beasts who passed through them, the flames of their spirits surging under fur, not one spark escaping. How even their roars are relics of when the great woods blazed. How it was we who discovered fire and with our knowledge lit the fuse. Jungle Owlet 00:00 / 01:54 What you didn’t tell me is how poachers cut off their claws and break bones in one wing so they can’t perch or fly, that their eyes are sold as pujas, boiled in broth, so herdsmen can see in the dark. You didn’t say how sorcerers keep their skulls, their barred feathers, their livers and hearts, or how they drink their blood and tears. You didn’t mention how a tortured owl will speak like a young girl to reveal where treasure is buried. My kind granny who took me in when I was homeless, who sat down this very evening after I had gone to bed and wrote Mother a stern letter, telling her that she must take me back, it doesn’t matter where – Paris, Wales, Timbuktu. No more excuses, you are tired. And here, your slanted writing is almost illegible, but what I think it says is that you cannot look after a teenage owlet. You use your favourite pet name. I’ve never spoken of this before. I call it up my gullet from the pit at the bottom of my thirteenth year, along with my crushed bones, my stolen blood, and I spit it out through my torn-off beak, in language that passes for human. Green Bee-eater 00:00 / 01:03 More precious than all the gems of Jaipur – the green bee-eater. If you see one singing tree-tree-tree with his space-black bill and rufous cap, his robes all shades of emerald like treetops glimpsed from a plane, his blue cheeks, black eye-mask and the delicate tail streamer like a plume of smoke – you might dream of the forests that once clothed our flying planet. And perhaps his singing is a spell to call our forests back – tree by tree by tree . Publishing credits All poems: Tiger Girl (reproduced with gratitude to Bloodaxe Books for its kind permission)

Hear poet Daragh Fleming read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Daragh Fleming back next the poet Daragh Fleming, a writer from Cork, Ireland, has work appearing in several literary magazines – from The Ogham Stone to Gutter Magazine . He's also read his poems for the Eat The Storms poetry podcast. His pamphlet, The Hole , was highly commended in both the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Daragh was shortlisted for the prestigious Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. the poems The Hole For Max Porter 00:00 / 01:37 This is fine, there’s a hole here, did you make it? Did you? Better fill it up, fill it up quick, anything will do, what do you like? Do you like anything? Just fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Oh you like girls? You like them enough, go-on-dates-go-on-dates-go-on-dates, this is fine, everybody does this, three different women, four nights a week, five weeks a month, more months than you can count, just go-on-dates, this is how it’s done, never settle in, fill that hole with sex, sex with everyone, everything’s okay, you’re just having fun. The hole is getting bigger. Time to put the shovel down. Thick nights, empty texts, wet sheets, wits end, this isn’t enough, this is getting worse, oh you like to drink, better drink it up, fill that hole with beer, maybe that’ll help, now you’re doing both, whiskey with a fuck, you can’t get it up, no you can’t get it up. The hole is getting bigger, the hole is getting bigger, time to put the shovel down, enough is enough, flirt online with strangers, kiss her like you mean it, hope to catch a feeling, everything’s gone numb, the hole is now inside you, maybe always was, the hole is everything now, eating it all up, edges are collapsing, emptiness engulfs, this isn’t a good thing, why can’t you fucking stop? There’s an empty person here – did you make him up? Better fill it up, better fill it up, anything will do, enough is enough. Prescience 00:00 / 00:48 My mind is the radio you forgot to turn off – broadcasting noise throughout the dark silent house we no longer occupy. I dream in sentences I’m afraid to whisper. I write them down and tell the world I came up with them on my own. But they were delivered in the night – hungover takeaway bags glazed with grease. They cure me for a while but I always text you back. I always rise from another nap taken in a half-baked, half-attempted afternoon. I turn myself off so the cosmos can send me phrases that sound like temporary comfort. Stockpiling words, selecting the shiniest ones to build my nest. birthday poem 00:00 / 01:34 At some point, maybe around the age of fourteen, they stop putting the exact number of candles in your cake and replace them with a couple that just signify the number. I suppose it makes sense because the idea of placing fifteen or more individual candles into a cake and lighting them feels tedious. And as the years pass you’ll reflect on all the ground you covered yourself, how you spread your life out, each year a single candle on the surface of your time spent here. You’ll remember all the times you ate cake, all the times you allowed your heart to break. You’ll struggle to remember each and every one of the faces that have made you smile, but you’ll try. You’ll grow older and more grey and more grateful. Your circle will get smaller but it will feel more full. You’ll wonder where the time went, and you’ll cautiously consider how much of it you've left. You’ll think about all the things you’ve done, and all the things still left to do. It could be any day, it’s just a day after all. But on this day you’ll feel it all, reflect upon what you’ve become, what you’re inevitably becoming. Adding a candle each year, your light growing a little bit more each time, because although you may mourn the loss of your youth with every birthday that comes, growing older isn’t a privilege everyone gets to experience. Publishing credits The Hole: ROPES Literary Journal 2024 (Issue 32) Prescience / birthday poem: exclusive first publication by iamb

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