Hear poet Maggs Vibo read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Maggs Vibo back next the poet Maggs Vibo – pen name of veteran, military spouse and visual poet Margaret Viboolsittiseri – is the author of ash poetry booklet Ashes to Ashes . She’s contributed to anthologies from Poem Atlas, Penteract Press, Steel Incisors, IceFloe Press, Coven Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, AngelHousePress and Oxford Brookes University Poetry Centre. Published widely in the US, UK, Canada, Europe and South Asia, Maggs showed pieces in 2022 with L'Air Arts in Atelier 11 of Cité Falguière in Paris, and at The Library of Congress in Washington DC. the poems The Year of the Ox 00:00 / 01:01 Try not to box or blow up Chuck Dem-ah CRAZ EEEEE SAW Free DUMB Oh Fragil-egos and the Gods … k-NO-w science criminal enterprises drilling-in-digenous wears a Cape Fear full of shit bags of waste lands of carn age everything harnesses the power of the sun, winds, dust, rainmaker of all powerful Holy rolling phony and traitorous bologna sand Which way did they go? Storm In red and CAP-IT-ALL Off fences didn’t stop and neither could a WALL STREET of protestors (zip) ties mouth Shut the F. up You’re dis – loyal and royally F.U.C.KKKed up! Up! UP and A-way Through this maze of trickery The Year of the Rat 00:00 / 01:57 I don't find inspiration In a rat. Not that Creature scurrying along the floorboards looking forward to theft I'm bereft when looking at that tail, that long gruesome nose sniffing whiffing for the smell of death. Of plague. of Misfortune The Year of the Rat. Fat politicians told us that we’d be free of this virus when in fact or fiction (no contradiction) In our rat. He is the disease we wheeze and cough in his direction wherever he might go just know we wish he'd fall into the trap he laid for himself when he called all this a hoax just smoke and mirrors reflecting back a rat we loathe The rat serves no purpose and has no Make it Great claim to life Except through death, trenches and holes, Sewerbellies Of our globe. (Hold) The rat in a maze. It phases us How intelligent and how much they’re like us We hate the rat because: We Are the Rat And this is the year (we must endear) This creature who will represent All our selfish desires With ire we must take back (our rat) and Pet This debt … we make for generations In the future A suture to hold this geyser of blood We must mop to the corner and all over our Persistence and petulance Henceforth, This, POOOOR creature Is the Year of the Rat The Year of the Tiger 00:00 / 01:47 Lady Liberty Lingering threats January 6th Sense of Skipping rope With the reins of a Trojan horse Riding into the eye Yet do not see Your stripes A billion dollar Arsenal of logos, T-shirts, and Assaults A cache Of cash Yet, still you play the fiddle Down in Georgia Peaches Bragging and breaking skin Smash-n-grab’em By their special props In a Lone Star States Of oppression Against a mouse You taunt A community of trained Cops and Thieves who Claim supremacy You'll see We The People I am AMERICAN My hand raised to defend The Constitution You burned We The People We Are Cursed We Are Broken Our kindergardens Soaked in Coffins draped No playground Fallen grace Untenable and broken Lulla-byes Purring kittens Eyes too young to see Such tragedies Hiding Cowering Yet calling Out-stretched tails Sharpening nails Scratching A Cross And clawing Back We are Tigers Angry feoh-lions Roaring No longer silent Soaring Manticores Publishing credits The Year of the Ox: Visual Poetry (Fevers of the Mind) The Year of the Rat: Distanced 3.0 (ang(st)) / The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press) The Year of the Tiger: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet C Daventry read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. C Daventry back next the poet A linguist, writer and poet living in Scotland, C Daventry has won several awards for her work. These include first place in the Bridport Prize for Poetry (her work appearing in its annual anthologies several times), winner of the 2019 Hippocrates Open Awards for Poetry and Medicine , and The John Ruskin Prize in its inaugural year. A finalist in the 2019 Moth Poetry Prize , she's also chalked up multiple shortlistings and nominations elsewhere. Her work has been published throughout the UK and beyond, and her solo poetry chapbook is titled, The Oligarch Loses His Patience . the poems Mother’s Ruin 00:00 / 01:38 She comes home and takes gin gin deadbeat, gin strayed-from-the-fold takes its own back again, robs families of fathers, rips the roof off terraces, shows off mould and wallpaper in flapping strips gets inside the cistern, the milk bottle, the baby’s bottle, filled up with gripe and mither to the neck with Dutch courage, gin-Jenever; make baby silver make her gold liquid witch, my juice of the juniper take with you my lumbago my gallstones my gout take with you his droop and ague gin swills in our gutters, our runnels, swirls down the drains and out through the grilles, up to the gunwales mammy’s boots go out slap-slap on slimy cobbles. Gin is the colour of her moon-clout her eyes her rouged knees her grey lips gin with lemon gin with lime gin will be damned gin laced with turpentine will take oranges to Scotland and pish on England gin will fackin rhyme if and when it likes gin and whey out of the teats of her into the mouths of babes stiff after three days in winding sheets gin from the ankles up, bad as brown apples in the bottom of the barrel soft ribs teeth like cheese maggots in the brain in every port be mine in the estuarine brine croons the seaman biting her tongue I’ll give you gin up your skirt for your pains dump the bairn come away to Mandalay to the East Indies to the straits so she gave him a dose of gin to take away for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner 00:00 / 00:57 Beloved, it’s because of the way your parahippocampal gyrus glows green under pressure. The way your parietal lobe (which, try as I might, I can’t see as inferior) shows hyperactivity when I whisper sweet nothings. For this alone I want to sail away to your bilateral insula in a precuneus coracle, drag it high on white sand, dance the cingulate cortex breathless and wild, then pull you close and do the fusiform gyrus as the fiery plate of the sun drops below the horizon. You are my frontal and limbic regions of interest. You alone are my dorsal hypoactive cluster. You have declared cerebellum on my own amygdala, o, stroll with me under the globus pallidus of the moon. I do not appear in photos 00:00 / 00:53 anymore. There was a time my face was green hills covered in buttercups, I walked with bees hovering above the clover of my hair which was perpetually ruffled by the light breeze of your breath, of anyone’s breath, of the breath of a man standing over me on the bus, his feet planted too near the saplings of my legs, the hive in my belly, the bird of heart in my feathery breast, us swaying a little; everything I owned slung over the waterfall of my shoulders. My bangles had the clink of pebbles in a burn, and me, averting my eyes – changing direction quick as a shoal of silver fish – from my own aristocracy, my neck a stalk of willow under the heavy crown none of us ever knew we wore. Publishing credits Mother's Ruin: MAGMA (No. 67) for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner: 2019 Hippocrates Prize Anthology (The Hippocrates Press) I do not appear in photos: shortlisted for the Moth Poetry Prize 2019

Hear poet Sadie Maskery read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sadie Maskery back next the poet Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea. She's had her poetry published in numerous journals – among them, Fevers of the Mind , The Selkie , Green Ink Poetry , Crow and Cross Keys , Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Burnt Breakfast Magazine . Her chapbook Push was published by Erbacce Press, while her debut collection, Shouting at Crows was published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. the poems Beginnings 00:00 / 02:42 The first time we meet the shock is there but small, a pause in the celestial clock; a tick of time suspended, potentiality acknowledged. My heart refinds its beat. Life moves on. In quiet moments I find myself replaying the curve of shadows under your eyes and I wonder at your weariness. Another day, a touch of fingers on my shoulder and the heat flows, how can you caress so intimately? I walk away yet feel you across the room. When our eyes meet I know from the way our cheeks flush, we are magnets, an exquisite tug dilating pupils, veins, souls, it is more than imaginary, this pain, this want. We meet by chance, friends of a friend, and I want to say, if you were to take my hand right now, lead me to an empty room, press your leg between my thighs as I pull your face towards me, the wall cold against my back and the warmth of you so overwhelming I almost faint from hunger quenched, ferocity and joy, terror and delight, your tongue in my mouth, my fingers entangled in your hair, your hands caressing beneath the black soft cotton, belly, breast, my sighs, your breath gasping, diffident explorer, urgent devourer and all this Oh my God my dear did you not know? if you were to take my hand it would be beyond words, beautiful, defiled in ecstacy ... and inevitable – it has happened – it – will – happen – remember – the universe played this moment to infinity before we were born but yes, hi, no I don't think we've actually been introduced, although we've met. We've met. We've met. A Nice Cup of Tea 00:00 / 01:02 I knew he had died Because every day he woke first To bring a nice cup of tea in bed. And that morning the kettle Didn't wake me and he lay Still beside me. I eased into my slippers Padded to the kitchen. Made two teas, put them on tray. The nice cups, with saucers, Fine china that needed a wash Because of the dust, for show Usually, we could see our hands Through the glaze. Nice cups. With fresh milk, not yesterday's. Watched the kettle boil. The steam curled Across the worktop And disappeared. Where does it go I wondered. The sugar shook From the spoon a little. A nice cup of tea. Ruth 00:00 / 01:47 When we were young we played at the beach on a blustery day. The waves snapped against our legs. We bellysurfed through spume, not knowing if the wet on our cheeks was foam or rain or tears of laughter. Then you were tumbled by breakers against the groyne, the length of it, up with the wave and then sucked back by its retreat, and I still laughed because you were a rag doll flailing, sand and weed in your hair, mouth wide. You crawled back to me, stood, and from every inch of you blood welled, a thousand striations of intricate symmetry, delicate etchings, red rubies, mingling on skin marbled with the salt water but shock kept you numb, at first. I don't remember how you reached hospital, maybe someone from the pier phoned. I was confused, you went away, your parents came with white-edged lips and no words. I never saw you again. You were safer away from me and the sea. I went to the beach that winter to watch waves surge and ebb. There was no newly realised aura of doom. I ran fingertips along my body at night, wondered if your scars were raised or flat, if they held in their patterns the beauty of those first beads of blood through the pale, that surprise, and the wonder in your eyes. Publishing credits Beginnings: Push (Erbacce Press) A Nice Cup of Tea: Anser Journal (Dec 2020) Ruth: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sarah Wallis read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sarah Wallis back next the poet Sarah Wallis lives by the sea on the east coast of Scotland. Her most recent chapbook is Poet Seabird Island . She's also the author of Precious Mettle , which unfolds like a treasure hunt, and Medusa Retold , a long-form feminist retelling of the Medusa myth, set in a run-down modern seaside town. With a nomination for The Pushcart Prize and work forthcoming in Stand , Sarah is proud to have been published in The Scottish Poetry Library's Best Scottish Poems , Eat the Storms , The Interpreter’s House , Black Bough Poetry and Propel Magazine . the poems Amber Bears in the Danish Tuck Shop 00:00 / 01:06 An ancient civilisation’s glowing ruins, the spoils of prehistory are washing up on Danish beaches, translucent treasure looks like cola bottles from the sweet shop but are priceless gems and unlike gummy rings give sign and symbol of a society brokered long ago, who knows who else along the way may have lost such relics, toyed with the fragile forms of bear, elk and bird, cast them like runes or simply flung them into the sea refined pattern and handsome geometric designs lost for a time, the anonymous artist had patience and knowledge and an obsession with bears, catching a glint of amber fire, whatever your party, your pick and mix, let the resin shine again, let it spark, the amber bears are marching home through the dark. The Artefact 00:00 / 02:45 We walked miles, searching out a definitive signpost, like Land’s End, John o’ Groats, or Dover; the end of the line. Superstition kept us walking, staring down magpies as we looked for omens on the grassy path, twisting, turning between the neat lines of dreamers, reading their dramatic lines of poetry and strong Bible verses standing guard, the winged angels and Gothic letters steadfast, meant to last, to always point the way, Here Lies Mary Beloved of George ... and everyone would know, there was Mary, there she was, and – lucky her – she had been beloved. But where were you? Your blessed stone had been set, you were beloved too – but who could know that, since the words were spirited away ... We saw no one that first time, felt we were dreaming too, as you didn’t seem to be there – somehow lost, amongst the lonely headstones of the long since dead. The second time we saw disturbed earth, new graves appearing, fresh flowers laid. The third time the vicar showed up, sacred gardener, muddy and penitent, amen. We decided on a new stone. But once they were digging to set it, like archaeologists amongst the angels and the flowers, they hit upon something hard – the artefact – sunken down in its flowerbed and entered into a pact of hiding the past, as you always did, and the terrible warstruck things in it, a shadow reluctant to bring too much reality into the light. After much discussion, the man with two gravestones, thirty years apart, would share his signpost and the shiny, proud, Portland stone took precedence, standing for the two of you; husband and wife, reunited in death. The older of the two stones rides around in the car with us now, a grumbling presence, commentating on the driving, and crashing around in the foot well, side to side as we sit out the corners – until someone with the strength to do it can move the artefact again, perhaps to sit quietly in the garden by the birdbath or under the twisting grapevines waiting to ripen. Sent Tiny Stars from the Sea Echinocardium cordatum (sea potato / heart urchin) 00:00 / 24:05:16 A kick of spines like baby hedgehog once graced this brittle shell a heart shaped porcelain see-light-through star-marked path, a shape I mistook for crabwise, I thought it was a myth, strange albino no-coloured pincer mover decorated by a master etcher who dealt out constellations by the dozen, someone who wandered in starfish shaped dreams and drifted through the sand dunes left half-buried at the whim of breezes and joined the blue and flowers jellies of by-the-wind sailors. I exhumed the fragile white star-marked shell and recognised the constellation, sea-potato. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Michael McGill read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Michael McGill back next the poet Michael McGill is a writer from Edinburgh whose work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House , Lunate , The Haiku Quarterly and elsewhere. Michael also has work in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Poems by and for Social Workers anthology. As well as performing for Big Word Performance Poetry in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, Michael has appeared in several episodes of BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. His work has also been featured on the Micro podcast . the poems Puppy Dog Man 00:00 / 02:01 I thought I saw a puppy dog. I did! I did! I saw the Puppy Dog Man! Baroompta-doo-da. Walk tall, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, walk tall – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man never understand; never understand, little Puppy Dog Man, never understand – Let's talk man to man, acrobat to magician, Devil to Christian, honest man to politician on the street, drowning in a sea of integrity, of humanity; 'Such things as these don't please His Majesty!' Baroompta – do do do. Hello? Oliver Speaking speaking. I was talking to the dog, Maury. Please, you're annoying me. Baroompta-doo-da. Lie low, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, lie low – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man take me underground; take me underground, little Puppy Dog Man, take me underground – New street! New street! I wanna live in a new street. I wanna live in your face. I wanna live in the warm puppy dog folds of your skin. Yeah, I wanna live there, man. Woof! Woof! Baroompta-doo-da – walkin' hand in hand with Puppy Dog Man … Pyjamas in the Snow 00:00 / 02:07 Free postcards were scattered all over New York then, filed in metal displays on the walls of clubs and coffee shops, and I’d collect them and tuck them away in my journal, stumbling around like a 1996 Hansel and Gretel reject, and it was January and everywhere was lit like a still from a Blondie video, and sometimes I’d order a Hazelnut Latte and a Sour Cream Mini Bundt Cake, and I’d write home using one of these postcards, back when home-whilst-travelling was a strange place, an exotic village elsewhere, a solipsist’s mirage, a narcissist’s daydream, and then I’d go to the Post Office on East 34th Street and watch these postcards take flight, because I was living life in Technicolor then, but, oh, that boy back at the hostel was a strange one, and he slept in the bed opposite mine in the dorm, and he’d talk about how much he missed ‘The Bay’ and I’d look puzzled, and he asked me why I’d never been to Ireland, and he laughed when I replied, 'Because it’s so far away,' and he seemed homesick and lost, and very sad, so I showed him my postcards, and one was RuPaul’s face in close-up, and he said, 'She’s gorgeous!' – but he’d turn shifty most evenings when a note was stuck to the door because he was late paying for his bed, and the word REMINDER would sit at the top of the page in cold black font, and then he’d disappear for a time and come back later looking dishevelled and used, and then the note on the door would disappear, and one day it was time to pack and head to JFK, and he wasn’t there so I left the RuPaul postcard on his pillow, and I never said goodbye – and back then Jackie 60 nightclub had a hotline you’d call, yeah, it was listed in Time Out , and one night I stood in a phone booth in the lobby of the hostel, and a recorded voice said the theme that week was Scotland and the dress code was ‘tartan tartan tartan’ and, oh, how I wish I’d gone to Jackie 60 in my tartan pyjamas, walking through Manhattan in the snow, but I never did. Celluloid Clown 00:00 / 01:11 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. I recall him emerging; black biro, yellow Post-it. I recall the usual questions: 'To and or to ampersand ?' etc., etc. What is to become of him, I wonder? He doesn’t fit anywhere, it seems. Still, he remains my three-line darling; long-lost relative of that scrawled first draft. 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. Yes, I know he ended up like a circus clown from some campy old film. You know the type of character: always a criminal in hiding (for what are celluloid clowns really, but painted criminals?). 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. In his final scene, he is led to the jailhouse. He hands over his dog (a Boston Terrier) to a young girl and says, 'Take care of him, Cheryl, he’s a good ‘un.' Then he walks away – fade to black. Publishing credits Puppy Dog Man / Celluloid Clown: exclusive first publication by iamb Pyjamas in the Snow: Anser Journal

Hear poet Jenny Wong read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jenny Wong back next the poet Jenny Wong is a writer, traveller and occasional business analyst. Her favourite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centres and Parisian cemeteries. Jenny's work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions, as well as longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. She lives in Canada near the Rocky Mountains. the poems When I Let the Dog Out in the Middle of the Night 00:00 / 01:43 Usually, he will come in, obedient after fulfilling his duties. But tonight, he ignores the open door, lingers at the edge of the deck where porch light slips beneath darkness like a shore into black sea. He looks at me, aging clouds in his eyes. Asks if I will join him. Asks to go further out into the night. I leave the house, take three steps, before hesitation begins to make its inevitable lists. The impending weight of an oncoming workday. The alarm clock that must endure two more hours before unleashing its insistent sounds. The vulnerability of bare feet in the dark. So I recall our bodies back inside, leave our longings outdoors to weather down into undistinguishable forms. We return to bed, but refuse our typical patterns, our usual positions for sleep. Instead. His head on my hand. My head against his side. We speak to each other through the small collapses of our ribs, release ourselves from the definitions of our daily shapes. Goodest boy. Quiet girl. Two beasts who understand that even the gentlest of breaths was never meant to be held for so long. The Cartographers 00:00 / 01:26 The cartographers say my nose is a landmark. A low bridge that is crossed in order to arrive at their first conclusions. From there, they sketch in my origins, guess the vowels that will untwist from my self-bound lips, predict the names of my indoor plants. They will not see the white in my hair is a tired moon threaded through night, or the salt-tinged oasis that wells across the parched dunes of my face in the dark. To speak up is a bend in the knee, an acquiescence to their crooked parallels and unwanted latitudes. So I do not give them words, feed them only silence, and they make small notes in the margins re: poor articulation. In a quiet corner, they assign a broken compass that must always point overseas. I am landscape locked in observation. A map of drawn conclusions and labels. But what is unable to be captured is the movement of their lips along my paper edges, and this weary shadow that grows whenever I am mouthed. What Really Happens When I Sit Alone At Parties 00:00 / 01:16 I plant a graveyard of feathers on my tongue. Watch them sprout into birds without wings. I could pluck up these flightless fowl, snuff out the flame of their beaks, find that charred wick of tongue beneath. A thread of unspoken words, waiting to be pulled. But it’s a pointless show. Those birds see there is no blue in the cave of my mouth, no hope for the freedom of sky. So they bury themselves beneath the roots of my teeth. Even there, I could dig them up, salvage their forms into aspirated syllables that pass for agreeable sound. But the birds have already begun their second evolution. Shedding feathers. Coughing up bones. Revealing slippery skin. In small, salty batches, they slide past scars where my wisdom teeth used to be, and add their bodies to the tangle of old things I hold in my throat. Publishing credits When I Let the Dog Out in the Middle of the Night: exclusive first publication by iamb The Cartographers: Hayden’s Ferry Review (Fall 2022) What Really Happens When I Sit Alone at Parties: Splonk (Issue 5)

Hear poet Alice Stainer read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Alice Stainer back next the poet Alice Stainer is a lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing on a visiting student programme in Oxford. She is also a musician and dancer. Her work has appeared in Green Ink Poetry , Atrium , Feral Poetry , After… , The Storms and The Dawntreader . Alice has been nominated for Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prizes, and recently submitted her debut pamphlet. the poems Firebird A ‘Golden Shovel’ after Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird (as sung by Eva Cassidy) 00:00 / 01:12 Hair severely chignoned, pearls choking your throat and always, a white-feathered bodice holding you in. But the heats of Brazil are simmering beneath—swans and songbirds are all very well, but you are a firebird. Fervid rhythms are hard to resist, Tito’s black eyes like cinders singing sparks for you alone, Margot, lighting you to dance like all of Covent Garden is watching. Pas de deux. Oh they don’t like it, though fluting your praises. But you know those flights between London and Panama bear the flame of your being, uncontained by a ballet score. Gradient 00:00 / 01:56 A glorious day, Dad, as you would say (that always made us snigger, did you know?) Pull on your boots—you do still need them?— army surplus from the funny shop in Hotwells. We scoffed, but you said they were ‘value for money’. Come on then, Dad—there’s a hill needs climbing. Plastic-pocketed map bouncing on my chest— I’ve learned its language as you did, and more: zigzag up a slope, flex with the contours, pick your way over hummocks. Skirt the bog but don’t cry over lost wellies. Vivid green patches have a forked tongue. Heather helps you to hang on. There’s one path I have yet to find, Dad— but I will. I will. Right, binoculars slung round my neck— chance of a ptarmigan, wouldn’t you say? Those chubby boulders of bird. Once, Mum and I saw a whole flock— consolation, we thought, for a stumbling day when the cloud came down. I remembered, you see, what you said about the hills. Now bog myrtle is spicing the air. Hurry up, Dad! We have got all day but still, this clarity of sky is precious. Mete it out like Kendal mint cake in the high places. My turn to lead the way—although in truth, you’ve climbed this hill ahead of me, and now will never leave it. Jane Austen's Teapot 00:00 / 01:24 Time to bring in the tea-things. Cups rattle like eager chatter; china-blue leaves twine about their rims; stems graft, tighten. The wooden caddy is plundered, yielding riches. Silver spoons refract the light, and in the exquisite pot brooding at the white cloth’s heart, the leaves infuse in swirling heat. Steeped then strained, the tea arcs into cups in a long, dark stream. One sugar or two? White sweetness to mitigate black bitterness. But let’s not talk about that. Round the table, a froth of muslin. Cups are cradled, alliances formed and fractured, fragile as porcelain. Then the ritual is over, the tea-things put away—until the next time. But look inside the pot: advancing up its ivory sides, a deepening stain. Will it ever be time to talk about that? Publishing credits Firebird: After… Jane Austen's Teapot: Paradox Literary Gradient: Atrium

Hear poet Tom Bailey read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Tom Bailey © Holly Falconer back next the poet Tom Bailey, a poet from London, has had poems published in The Poetry Review , berlin lit , bath magg , Propel Magazine , Anthropocene , Under the Radar , The North , Poetry News and the Munster Literature Centre's Poems from Pandemia anthology. Recently awarded the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize , he was also one of several winners of the 2024 Guernsey International Literature Festival’s Poems on the Move Competition . His pamphlet, Please Do Not Touch or Feed the Horses , won the Poetry London Pamphlet Prize, and will be published in spring 2025. Tom currently lives in Edinburgh, and is co-editor of online poetry magazine And Other Poems . the poems Wheatfield with Crows 00:00 / 00:49 The field is on fire obviously. The horizon coughs up a mouthful of crows and the dirt track does not seem to know where it’s going. Funny, how often we are surprised by darkness, like the frontiersmen who went west for gold and found oil instead. Van Gogh once said that a row of pollard willows sometimes resembles a procession of alms-house men. Van Gogh once said The sadness will last forever. The sky is on fire also but it is a blue sort of fire, with a patch of white which is either a cloud or a moon. Poem Granada, Spain 00:00 / 00:53 Anyway frosts thaw in this spring sun, and the river comes melt-swollen down the mountain. Across the valley the plane trees hold up their hands to the light. Swallows flit and flicker in rings, and a pair of griffon vultures float their stillness in the heat. Something everywhere is surprised, and the river threads its noisy voice through the needle of itself. Somewhere a goat clitters over rocks. Somewhere a donkey brays in a field, and morning whittles itself into afternoon. All day a particular sunbeam has been searching for your face, not knowing yet that you aren’t here, that you aren’t anywhere. Please do not touch or feed the horses 00:00 / 01:40 Please do not touch or feed the horses. Please do not approach the horses or walk within five metres of their circumference. Do not try to speak to the horses or look them in the eye, and please do not attempt to befriend the horses. It is important not to interpret the facial expressions of the horses. Nor should you ascribe human meaning to the movements of the horses. Do not imagine the thoughts of the horses, or ponder the philosophical questions that the presence of said horses may or may not lead you to ponder. Please do not make use of the horses as simile, metaphor, or other such figures of speech. Please do not describe the horses in language inappropriate to their equine existence. Maybe you think you love the horses, but you must not lie in bed at night and let them fill your dreams: the sound of the horses cropping thin tufts of Timothy grass, the way their muscle-knitted flanks tense when a tractor coughs on the hill or the kissing gate swings shut. Please, friends, pass through this field. It is late. We have lost so much already. Publishing credits Wheatfield with Crows / Poem: exclusive first publication by iamb Please do not touch or feed the horses: Epoch (Vol. 70, No. 1)

Hear poet Pey Oh read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Pey Oh back next the poet Pey Oh (she/her) is a Bath-based poet from Malaysia. Her first pamphlet, Pictograph , was published by Flarestack Poets in 2018. Her recent work appears in harana poetry , Butcher’s Dog Magazine, Long Poem Magazine and The Scores – A Journal of Poetry and Prose . the poems Penang After Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XXVII (from Cien sonetos de amor ) 00:00 / 01:53 I do not love you as if you were the rasp of heat on my shoulder blades, or the endless cicada song in the night. The hush of humidity is as strong as a hand over my mouth I would lick the salt from. I do not heed the call of your secrets, as if from a distant city with its lure of neon and sweat. The loneliness of 2am stalks me, dark doorways with rusted postboxes, whose sentinels are worn men with bony limbs. I do not find hope from small altars on cracked pillars, ash dusting gilt letters. The burning spirals of incense do not carry the whisper of my prayer between us. Fire everywhere, wicks flare on oil and wax. I do not visit my ancestors' bones to hear the chanting of monks kneeling together on the marble floor, or to see the temple snake dazed by smoke make prophecies, lowering its double eyelid and tasting the air. I do not love you as if you were a mosaic of dragons or those filial tales on florid tiles. Distant hills call me to dusty steps of duty, winding around the tall spire. English is my Second Language? 00:00 / 02:20 Whispers, restless meanings, rocking the cradle. Sleep now, a lullaby of pictographs. Dancing with the seagulls in my first Encyclopaedia of Birds, white wings, black tipped, flashing in the blue sky, white dress, baby feet, flashing in that blue heat – flight and dreaming yoked together as the many-names-of-things. Second language, the ladder to my escape; the way out, the other world – I wrestled for it, asked for blessing; Exile is an English name. In banishment, a faint music still follows me: a bamboo scaffold, wobbly but strong, to build new rhythms in a journey – not home . I go to China, place of my ancestors; I clamber around and wind its golden dragons round my thumbs. Master its ways, gallop the horses of the steppes – on a high plateau, dance with Generals drunken and fat, in gold braid and red caps. I dream in tongues varied and few; in none, come the power of commonality – lonely fragments like us, seeking to be held close. First language follows me like instinct or a beautiful abstract; entirely open in meaning – a stricken mute maiden at my heels. I’ve learned to jump through the hoops now; I am my other tongue, whether right or sinister – bound like a confident wave to the sea. I feel the power and the draw of it; the sensual limning is a careful adornment of bare bones – talisman and relic for dissecting the myth: making it new. The Fox Fairy 00:00 / 01:12 Appearances are deceiving. How do you know I’m not one of those women with secrets. You know the kind – ones who take husbands – then slip out at night to run in the fields; dew wet and odorous after the passion, to hunt for mice. How do you know I don’t relish the crunch of small bones, the death snap, the warmth of raw meat? They’ve always said Fox Women have long black hair and never look in the mirror. How do you know I mightn’t have a fox mate in some mountain lair? His instinct cannot tell him I am fey. His is the innocent way of courting this tawny piece. A moon maiden dancing in the dew. A woman with secrets. Publishing credits Penang: harana poetry (Issue 4) English is my Second Language?: Pictograph (Flarestack Poets) The Fox Fairy: And Other Poems

Hear poet Ysella Sims read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ysella Sims back next the poet Poet, writer and producer Ysella Sims has had her work featured in The Guardian , Brittle Star and the The Blue Nib Literary Magazine , where she was a contributing editor. Ysella produces poetry and spoken-word events, as well as the immersive poetry podcast, Tell Me Something . She published her first poetry pamphlet, you are here , in 2021. the poems Echo 00:00 / 01:45 They watch the screen as the sonographer traces slow circles on her belly and the room dulls to a thick, cloistered hush. In another room, smaller, colder the world rends, roils beneath the blue plastic sofa while they wait for the midwife to tell them, it doesn’t look good. In the weeks between, they lean against the cool bark of the witching tree on the heath whisper pleas into its tessellations stick stray feathers into the sand to arrange their wishes, just so. And when it is time, she lies still oh-so-still on the table holds her breath behaves. Outside, a morning of crows bare-branched, murdering the brumal air with clatter and chaws; a carnival flash of parakeets at the Richmond window. Sun breaking through dank in the gorse-crowned field to colour the sky sugared pink starling egg blue the sweet heft of a pear-sized ghost in her arms. I am turning into all the mothers 00:00 / 00:45 I am turning into all the mothers my younger self condemned; the ones that baulked at journeys, heights, the world beyond the door the diazepam-rattlers cake-offerers, stomach-ragers sobbers the confidence-tricksters told-you-so-ers nitpickers frowners the news-tutters jar-scrapers eavesdroppers sighers – all those felled by their children’s fingers un- – picking the strings. Folk Festival, 1982 00:00 / 01:21 All she remembers is that there was a coach brimful with men and women punchdrunk with Friday night and possibility, the air sun-ripe and sweet kids stacked amongst kit bags fiddles and sticks and as dusk fell a field of yellow and green where they pitched their tents and Big Sue, apple-cheeked and bangled, squeezed her brother into her bosom’s curve in the tent’s zipped orange glow a car park, pulsing with music and bells light spilling from the pub like it was somebody’s front room the electric scent of men their danced-in shirts the velveted whirl of women’s black-chokered throats childrens’ voices in the glow-wormed hedges and a scratchy-faced stranger pinning her, like a butterfly, to the August ground – her brother, reaching in to release her like she was one of his own. Publishing credits Echo: The Blue Nib I am turning into all the mothers / Folk Festival, 1982: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Loic Ekinga read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Loic Ekinga back next the poet Loic Ekinga is a writer from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He's the author of poetry collection How To Wake A Butterfly , and has had his works of fiction and poetry appear in Agbowò , Tint Journal , Type/Cast , Salamander Ink , Ja. Magazine , Poetry Potion , A Long House , New Contrast , Brittle Paper and elsewhere. Loic's experimental mini chapbook, Twelve Things You Failed at As A Man Today , earned him an honourable mention by J K Anowe for Praxis Magazine . A finalist of Poetry Africa’s Slam Jam competition, Loic is also a Kasala writer and teacher, and Best of the Net nominee. the poems For Black Boy 00:00 / 01:29 The black boy—still unfurling, puts his hand over his mouth and weeps. Be a man, we were just joking! Years later, a black boy he knew is said to stand at the entrance of the city—on a motorcycle, looking to feed his black children. Another black boy, the pointy-eared black boy, digs black holes with his black bare hands for anyone willing to pay for water. Another makes music and blames his infidelity on black pain. What happens after you climb a mountain and find no ram caught in a thicket? Years before, around the time the black boy—unfurling, wept into his hands -- they kicked balls on the golden sands of his grandparents’ street until Black God stroked the sky purple. They laughed into each other’s day and rubbed leaves against their black skins until they could taste the trees. There was a time, the night/black was the only thing worth fearing. There was a time when to live too long meant to die. The boys, now, stand on their blood every morning trying to be men, crying into their hands behind walls, away from their fathers' eyes. Nausea (ii) 00:00 / 01:42 This must be what it’s like to chase someone's love to the edge of the self: The groaning, the longing, the dancing At the precipice. The men who taught me love, taught me injury What happens in the body should stay in the body I open my chest, the pulp– the despair Someone, somewhere talks to a friend about me And says he was never a bad person, He was just never in love with me The first rainbow appeared out of regret. I apologise. I multiply. In my apartment, the ants are everywhere. So is the moss. I fall in love and everything aches. How do I say the tragedy meant to end me is growing teeth, without sounding like a poet in reverie? Because there are conversations too uncomfortable For even God, I wonder whether we will ever talk about this body and His plans What is the name of our disease? The men who taught me care, almost starved my mother to death. You tell me, How do I open my mouth into a woman’s without my grandfather marching down her throat? Do you see what ails me? What do our people call it? And for God’s sake, what is it with the longing? No One Is Writing Love Poems About Me 00:00 / 00:36 I say to her— out of nowhere, in a crowded bar, before she brings her mouth so close we eat the night Then I remembered that she had on my favourite T-shirt —black, polyester … two sprays of my cologne behind each ear. She glitters—gold rings within rings within rings In the hallway of my apartment building, she pushes me against the wall & proceeds to swallow the night whole Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jonathan Humble read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jonathan Humble back next the poet The poetry of Jonathan Humble, a retired deputy head teacher who lives in Cumbria, has appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies. He's published a short collection of his work – Fledge – and is editor of the much-praised, much-admired children's poetry website, The Dirigible Balloon . As well as delivering poetry workshops in schools for Wordsworth Grasmere, Jonathan was Poet in a Fridge for Radio Cumbria's Poetry Takeaway during the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in 2020. the poems Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles 00:00 / 00:51 Einstein phoned the other day. Wanted to speak quite urgently with my dog, Derek: said that Derek’s theory of quantum stiles was interesting but lacked empirical evidence and wasn’t supported by the mathematics. Derek disagreed: described the process of walking with me, taking the early morning river route along the side of the Kent under Cumbrian skies. Every gate and stile a quantum barrier, separating countless possibilities of constantly branching parallel universes: facts on the far side of each wall blurred, until the stile is crossed with a new reality created through observation … and sometimes, rewarded with a biscuit. Red Pencil 00:00 / 01:36 I am six years old, my pencil breaks mid-word in Mrs Foster’s class. So I turn to my friend Martin, show him the pencil and whisper, ‘Martin, Martin, my pencil has broke.’ ‘Use this,’ he says and passes a substitute, secretly under our desk. ‘But it’s a red pencil, Martin,’ I say. He smiles a smile. It is an ‘it’ll all be okay’ sort of smile and so I carry on, copying lines of words I cannot read, but which I try my very hardest to replicate, as neat and true to the original as I am able, at six, to do. At the finish, I look down at my page of writing; my teacher’s lines above, with mine in red below, and I wonder about the words I have written. I am happy with the result of my effort; especially the esses, which are smooth and curvy, and flowing and lovely. They are the best I have ever done. So, I walk twenty paces to Mrs Foster’s desk, clutching my paper with pride, and return ten yards with a slapped leg, my work in shreds in a basket, having a brand new perspective on the way of things, and on the reliability of my friend Martin. Early Morning Effrontery 00:00 / 00:59 I fear porcelain is not your milieu and your persistence in performing eight-legged running man dances up sheer white bathroom edifices under the gaze and malevolence of the attentive cat bastard flexing its tail on this toilet seat will prove an effrontery too far. Darwin’s theory of natural selection will happen well before adaptation occurs. Before the hairs on your scopulae develop greater adhesive powers and you are able to ascend unharmed, I suspect you will become terribly broken. So here I am again, 6:30 in the morning, offering toilet paper ladders in the bath tub, before I can shower in peace and the furry purry assassin, so beloved in our household, can be persuaded out of the bathroom to wander off and find something else to murder instead. Publishing credits Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles:Tyger Tyger Magazine Red Pencil: Atrium Early Morning Effrontery: Fledge (Maytree Press)