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 Daljit Nagra read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Daljit Nagra © Martin Figura back next the poet Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Daljit Nagra has pubished four collections of poetry with Faber & Faber. He has scooped the Forward Prizes for Best Individual Poem and Best First Collection, the South Bank Show Decibel Award, and the Cholmondeley Award. Daljit's writing has also been shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and twice for the T S Eliot Prize. A Poetry Book Society New Generation Poet, Daljit has had his poems published by The New Yorker , the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement . He is the inaugural poet-in-residence for Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, presenting the weekly Poetry Extra programme. Daljit serves on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and teaches at Brunel University London. the poems Letter to Professor Walcott 00:00 / 04:48 Hardly worth calling them out , the old masters. Each time a cause gains ground, should their estate become glass house to alleged misdemeanours? Their body of rhyme can be felt, it propagates its own lineage. Should we read poems from a cave, half-witted by the missing forefather? I stand before the compressed volumes of verse across my shelves: who covered their tracks, who’ll outlive their flaws? Who’d topple the marble of some national bard, or gulag their name and the chela guarding them? How many writers, the world over, are behind bars for crossing a border of taste? It seems natural to harm art and the artist. Consider Larkin whose private views were amiss, who, if akin to his father’s brown shirt, who, if published by Old Possum's who laid rats on Jews … and I’ve lost myself, and the Work is no longer the work. If influence imparts bad genes, who to weigh in the scales of my nurture? Weigh Chaucer who forced a minor into raptus? Weigh Milton mastering tongues to bate his women like a whip? Weigh Coleridge pairing the horror of Othello’s wedded stares to those of a black mastiff? Weigh Whitman and Tennyson who’d cleanse by skin? If Kipling says we’re devils, may I weigh the man of If ? How do I edit the Frost-like swamp I’ve swilled – so many poets to recycle either side of this fireplace before sweetness and light. Before I’m woke, in tune with the differentiated rainbow and its crying flames. Should I calmly cease their leasehold if they’ve abused the canonical fortress? Or ride a kangaroo court on its flood of Likes? Take down each Renaissance Man to his manhood? But I hear the poems breathe: We can’t be judged by our birth, or judge our birth as Parnassian. And you, dear Derek. Your Adam-songs for an island sparked paradise from sanderling, breadfruit. Your spade dug the manor and bones fell up. The senate columns fanfared your arrival. They donned a black male and colour was virtue. You opened my mouth and verse came out. Your advocates cleaned your mess, their arms held down the age, as though gods roamed the earth to graduate girls. As though rape were the father of art. You were 'Dutch, n____', Brit, you were my Everyman! Why take on Caliban’s revenge? Your moustache a broom wedging its stanza of nightmare – in how many Helens? Did you lust after lines inspired by whiplash, taunted by sirens for your Homeric song? Intellectual finger-jabbing seems off the mark: in the papers Korean Ko Un’s erased, and who’d fly to a terminal if it was named for a serial pervert, Pablo Neruda? I bet they hunt the dark man, Derek, in pantheon death. Haunted or wreathed – how should you be honoured at Inniskilling? Well, it seems fitting you fall in the West where you carried 'our' burden. Beside the foul spot, I’d test my love again. You are in me: I’d never lose you, if I tried. I’d begin with these, your old books, anew. Now where on my shelves are you, travelling through the old world? Where’s your dog-eared Don Juan ? 00:00 / 01:44 00:00 / 01:44 Publishing credits A Letter to Professor Walcott: Times Literary Supplement (No. 6147)

Hear poet Phillip Crymble read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Phillip Crymble back next the poet Phillip Crymble, a physically disabled poet originally from Belfast, now lives in Atlantic Canada. He's a poetry editor at The Fiddlehead , and has had work published in Poetry Ireland Review , The Stinging Fly , The North , Magma , The London Magazine , The Irish Times , The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 , Bad Lilies , Couplet Poetry , The Honest Ulsterman and elsewhere. Phillip's debut collection is Not Even Laughter . the poems North American Birds 00:00 / 01:21 A world is firstly made of names and labels — what the nascent heart is desperate to possess. For you, my son, the chickadees and finches at the feeding table — nesting in the eaves and calling each to each atop our backyard maple — filled the empty spaces in your head. Next came the illustrations — colour plates you memorized by rote — the simple work of saying like a spell — a song of invocation. All winter long our little house made warm by ornithophily — a reverence of words — the age-old human dream of flight. These days toy trucks and robots dance like planets in your mind. Bird boy, must you leave so soon — sit down with me and stay awhile. Mealworm 00:00 / 00:34 Brought home from school and cast aside — discarded in the mud room — left for me to find by accident weeks later. Confined like one of Bluebeard’s wives — interred beneath a substrate that the kids made out of oats and sliced up orange rinds — the mealworm — newly calcified — abides — waits out its aftertime. Forcing House 00:00 / 01:15 It never worked the way we planned. Our oil furnace always ran too rich. The winter days were damp, and though a grand, romantic gesture, living by the sea was desperate. Socks and underpants on radiators, heating pipes — wet woollens, windows clouded white. A forcing house of laundered clothes, the boiler ticked and bubbled like amalgam in a crucible. The jars of potted jam and marmalade we kept in store. Mornings were the worst of all — the lino kitchen floor as cold as stone. Each day we trundled down for tea and toast you checked the letter-box — as if the news from home might warm us. Publishing credits North American Birds: The New Quarterly (Issue No. 123) Mealworm: THE INDEX: A Quarterly Anthology of Prints (Issue No. 6) Forcing House: Michigan Quarterly Review (Volume 46, Issue No. 1)

Hear poet Ruth Wiggins read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ruth Wiggins back next the poet Birmingham-based writer, poet and educator Louise McStravick says her writing is concerned mostly with extracting the extraordinary from the ordinary. Her recent work can be found in Popshot , Ink Sweat & Tears , Dear Damsels , Aphelion, Porridge Magazine and several other respected publications. Louise's debut poetry collection, How to Make Curry Goat , was published in 2020. the poems Daughters 00:00 / 01:34 When children come out healthy, they are pink. Or the bit when pink meets red like that point in the sky when the sun reminds of its power to make us forget everything that came before it. Even if only a minute. This blood spilled sky an ending. Children are not yellow like a fully baked sun. They said she must have jaundice. My mother tells them her father’s skin holds the burnt ochres of a Caribbean sunset. They do not say sorry when they hand her over. Kallisto From Playing the Bear 00:00 / 01:12 Make the water rearrange its insides, shift shape as it is told, steam rise drip drip vinegar, sour the water to not let things stick. Watch it fight its way to the surface. It is not an easy process, such transformation, if not careful it can erupt, break onto skin that has already learned this is too hot, but does it again anyway. Turn the heat down. Don’t hold the egg too high or it will spread itself open, reveal itself, some things should be left to the imagination. Wand a whirlpool and crack it in watch it bring itself together, composed, despite itself. Let the bubbles teach it how to mature, push it to the surface, fully fledged yolk whole, unbroken, ready for charred bread. In one move, let the knife cut it open watch it pour itself out, ready for hungry tongues. K is for Keats 00:00 / 01:17 Start your day with a cheese board; wear lycra to work; decorate your eyelids with glitter made from reclaimed rainbow tears; slay your greetings—wink with both eyes—say goodbye instead of hello; only consume things that are the yellow of the midday sun; defy winter, wear a bikini, manifest warmth; yoga yourself to a luxury holiday at least 8 times a day—the more you do it the more the universe receives; eat squirty cream for lunch straight from the can and inhale the gas after; go on a 24-hour lunch break—if your boss asks why tell her to read your daily horoscope; stop your thoughts at the click of a notification; order yourself a slice of knowledge; you’re owning it babes you’re shitting out that deposit with every reusable cup. You can do this! Start a petition to ban white bread; teach the bacteria in your stomach to recycle plastic; don’t eat anything that could look sound or feel like it could have been crawled on by anything that can be named. Keep going! You know you’re winning when you wake up and it isn’t raining. Publishing credits Daughters: The Poetry Review (Vol. 108, No. 4) Kallisto / K is for Keats: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet JC Niala read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. JC Niala back next the poet JC Niala’s poetry is influenced by her relationship with the land of the two countries in which she dwells: England and Kenya. She spent the growing season of 2021 recreating a 1918-style English allotment on a site at Oxford as a living memorial to the 1918-1919 pandemic, and to those who served in the First World War. Poems written as part of that project will be published by Fig under the title, Portal . the poems Brood 00:00 / 01:44 You were the odd amongst the keets. The one, who would as I nursed Okelo fall off the earthenware pot-turned-perch by the confusion of black and white spotted siblings on my mother’s veranda. And I did not name you. It was enough that you would not be eaten by my family at least but learn to forage and like a seamstress pick out dudus, from the fabric of soul underneath the bombax and bottlebrush trees. The overhanging roof descended to cocoon us, Okelo at my breast, born on the same morning you all hatched. You who would not be contained. Your bright chirps would unveil my mornings when still wrecked by broken sleep I would slip along, slowly to the outside and listen to the sound of Okelo’s suckles amidst your birdsong she would later mimic and sing, as she toddled on the silken sandpit near where I lunched, while she snoozed. The day you were taken Your mother, would have I am sure, uttered the same warning as when she pecked you back into line. Stay close. Do not go into the open green space. but you strayed and into the talons of Kite so swift you, your mother or I were caught on a breath and did not cry out. We watched you reduced to a cluster of feathers, picked clean. The mobile’s shadow hovered over Okelo’s cot. Okelo stirred, I leapt for her. Sprawl 00:00 / 00:30 Watch me grow. I suck it all in to feed the giant. Out of a swamp I rose like Omweri, Squeezed through poorly laid pavement. Still, I welcome those rich enough And those who put them up. Boundaries vanish. I swallow whole suburbs, kijijis. People forget that I once wasn’t here. Changes 00:00 / 01:11 Insects still tell the seasons here. Dusk, when the cicadas, an environmental tinnitus, obliterate thought with continuous sound soften into a lullaby above which the chorus of bullfrogs arise in a vibrato echo and then fall. Call and response, that talking drummers once imitated across the savannah. Beating out news on carved hollow trees skins tightened over cut trunks to produce sound. Messages that carried over lifetimes until they were dulled by walls of concrete that rise from swampy plains to bring Development. Now, ringtones cut through the night air like a panga shearing elephant grass. Yet just beneath the fired earth, red ants, termites crawl along their regurgitated tunnels up and down and through every building’s crack, dashed lines, urgency on parchment, an invisible shelter-trail to inside where I listen for the smell of rain. Publishing credits Brood: The Lamp Journal (September 2016) Sprawl: peripheries: a journal of word and Image (No. 4) Changes: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Nóra Blascsók read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Nóra Blascsók back next the poet Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester. Her most recent poems can be found in bath magg , Acumen and Atrium . Her debut pamphlet, of work , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2022. the poems Draw Myself 00:00 / 01:17 from behind body of a baby owl sleeping arms limp the small of my back yes turn over childbearing hips like grandmother said we bled for the original sin brackets around sentence drenched it’s fake run pen over thigh line wider and wider leave a gap for the imagination the pause before you go under can’t look roast potatoes would be nice later draw big areolae remind myself my breasts have an underside a lump in my throat as I check for hated them touched now I don’t watch my skin fade colour my teeth into lips draw curtain for hiding off the page amorphous Play-Doh make me in the image of Goddess of Woman or something that passes The Truth About Swans A found poem using text from a website with facts about swans, as well as questions suggested by Google's autofill. 00:00 / 00:48 Can swans fly? The only sound is the wings beating. Do swans mate for life? The male is known as cob and the female as pen. Are swans protected? It has been known for swans to die of a broken heart. Are swans aggressive? Cygnets are grey with black beaks when they hatch. Do swans kill? A cygnet weighs a block of butter. Are swans territorial? A gosling floating. Salvation 00:00 / 00:37 Standing still Misplaced reed Calm summer day Strange new God on spindly legs The congregation In state of trance Thrash around Speaking in tongues Prostrate with beaks Bowed in submission Silent sermon The flock in awe Twitch The heron’s wings Envelop the pond The gulls Briefly silent Resurface Cleansed Publishing credits Draw Myself: Dust Magazine (Issue 5) The Truth About Swans: Dreich Magazine (Season 2, Issue 2) Salvation: Exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Graham Clifford read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Graham Clifford © Martin Juhasz 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)

Hear poet Patricia M Osborne read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Patricia M Osborne 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 Julie Stevens read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Julie Stevens back next the poet Frances Boyle (she/her) is a prairie-raised Canadian writer, long settled in Ottawa, Ontario, whose third collection is Openwork and Limestone . Her debut, Light-carved Passages , was republished after ten years in 2024 as a free, open-access eBook. With her poetry published everywhere from The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly to The Ekphrastic Review and The Honest Ulsterman , Frances has received a number of prizes – among these, This Magazine ’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and Arc Poetry Magazine ’s Diana Brebner Prize . She was a long-time member of the editorial board of Arc Poetry Magazine , and is now on the boards of The League of Canadian Poets, and VERSe Ottawa, which runs the VERSeFest international poetry festival. the poems Piano Practice 00:00 / 01:31 A column of light, not steady but scintillating. I listen for its faint scratchiness, its syncopated silences, its airy breathing. Exhalation of pores, the inhalation of mountains and the sea’s unceasing bellow-lungs. Surf, like horses that rear and mane- shake, rush in, retreat. And spume a spiraling cylinder. A rising, a lifting, finest droplets hovering on the air. What tuning will bring me past static to clarity, to that thrum of silence, voices chiming, twining, a braid of sound within that space between breathing, behind the exhale, pulling the inhale into animate energy, that silent moment that might be death but for the animal compulsion willing our squeezebox lungs to echo ocean, and breathe. Why I Don’t Like Kippers 00:00 / 01:17 Inside your house, the radiator ticks, floors shift and mutter. The skeleton of struts and beams is clad with plaster and paint. You’ve adorned the walls with more paint —on canvas, on paper. A visiting friend admires the art, the book-crammed shelves. Talk turns to what she’s read, what you haven’t. Excuses for uncracked spines. Your dog’s steps are halting now, nail- clack on hardwood more syncopated than staccato. You hear him sigh. In the driveway, a crunch as tires compress the snow. A squirrel traverses wire and bare branches. The tremble at leafless ends. You feel the slow flow of tidal rock how the current supports you, carries you. Them 00:00 / 00:54 An amble of half a mile down to the beach, green on both sides as I carry my pack. I emerge to wave- rush that washes out speech, and set borrowed tent on the sand near sea-wrack. I came on my own to wrench from the mire of my shame over deeds which should have stayed hidden. The campers next site watch me struggle with fire. That woman craves quiet they shush their children. I beachcomb for hours, sand under my feet. Pared down to sorrow, guilt grows slowly leaner. My feeble campfire still gives me some heat while grit, whipped by wind, works to scour me cleaner. Lone nights under canvas deliver release; slow rot, woody moss-scent their own kind of peace. Publishing credits Piano Practice / Why I Don't Like Kippers: Journey Through the Fire (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) Them: Flights (Issue Nine)

Hear poet Kimchi Lai read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kimchi Lai back next the poet Kimchi Lai is a bilingual poet based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has performed at Urbanscapes 2018 and 2019, and won third place in the 2018 Asia Pacific slam at Lit Up Festival in Singapore. Kimchi's work has also featured on The KITA! Podcast, as well as Speak Easy on BFM. She self-published her first chapbook, Solace in Solstice , in May 2019. the poems Waxing Moon, Waning Lover Featuring《水调歌头·明月几时有》by 苏轼 00:00 / 02:21 明月几时有?把酒问青天。 Tonight, the moon is full. She smiles at me, her gaze illuminating the glass in my hand as if she knows I wish it was you I am holding instead. 不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年。 I wonder if we have met in a different dimension; or if we will meet in heaven. 我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。 I would sit with you under an arbour in the gardens. Surrounded by pillars cut from the finest of jade and sharpest of teeth, protecting us from the fierce winds that try to blow us apart. 起舞弄清影，何似在人间? But the air is still tonight, and you are not by my side in this life. So how dare I wish for your presence in another? 转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。 The moon comforts me from my window. She is trying to coax me into slumber. 不应有恨，何事长向别时圆? “You see”, she whispers to me. “I shine brightest in the face of longing. What need is there for my light if your lover radiates enough warmth? What need is there for a full moon if you already feel complete?” 人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。 Perhaps I will never see your crescent smile, or hear your gibbous laugh again. Yet I know this: we are under the same sky. And now whenever the moon waxes or wanes, I will know it is her saying that you are thinking of me. 但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。 Fatal Blossom 00:00 / 01:00 The sprig of leaves I planted the first night we spent together bloomed today. You cup one in your hand, petals the deepest shade of sunset at its final second before plunging into dusk, haphazard but stunning. Ignore the thrum beneath your feet; the tangled vines that pulse and hiss with poison and hidden truths cannot hurt you as long as you keep me near. Let them creep quiet and swift the same way nightfall creeps upon day, curling around your crown to whisper sleep into your temples. Do you understand? This garden started out an angry mess of ivy – it was never supposed to bloom. Do you like periwinkle? Focus on the flowers. I worked so hard on them. Romantic Sentence 00:00 / 00:53 Words are unconfined, not meant to be held. But once in a while I will get lucky and manage to catch some at the tip of my pen, just long enough for me to string them into an ink necklace. Alive with earnest grammar and passionate vocabulary; every dotted 'i' and crossed 't' quivering. Staining my fingers in haste I drape it around your shoulders, fasten the ends with a full stop. The letters startle at your warmth, smudging slightly. They tumble downwards in my clumsy locution and catch at your collarbone. The same way my breath does in my throat when I see them sigh and settle into your skin; dark blue biro etched across your chest. Oh, sayang. You were meant to wear these words. Publishing credits Waxing Moon, Waning Lover / Romantic Sentence: Solace in Solstice (self-published) Fatal Blossom: exclusive first publication by iamb