Hear poet Matthew Stewart read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Matthew Stewart © Marina Rodriguez back next the poet Dividing his time between Extremadura in Spain and West Sussex in England, poet Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade. Following on from his debut collection, The Knives of Villalejo – a work some 20 years in the writing – Matthew recently published his second full collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t . He's also the author of the popular, influential and much-praised poetry blog, Rogue Strands . the poems Los Domingos 00:00 / 00:48 You’ve taught me to sip a café solo , to let its bitterness seep through my gums and mark the end of our tapas and wine, just as you’ve taught me to relish silence in the slow, shared sliding-by of minutes. I no longer force the conversation these never-ending Sunday afternoons while muffled westerns blink on the telly. An ancient carriage clock fights to strike four and your mother pours her glass of water. Perhaps this week she’ll suddenly repeat her suspicion of a neighbour’s illness. Or we’ll sit here without the need for words till your father stirs and cranks the volume to signal kick-off at the Bernabéu. Heading for the Airport 00:00 / 00:40 The cab suddenly turning up twenty-seven minutes late after my ten frantic calls from the pavement outside your block, your dressing-gowned silhouette hovering on the balcony with a halo of wispy hair. My suitcase thrown in the boot, doors slammed, the driver crunching gears, I forgot our goodbye wave while checking my flight. If only that cab had left me behind, longing for Spain. No way to know I’d never see you alive again. The Last Carry El Paseo Marítimo, Chipiona 00:00 / 00:32 You were seven and hadn’t asked for one in months, but the salt wind had whipped your energy away before calamares fritos at our favourite place on the prom left you woozy, slumped in your seat. Even as I threw you over one shoulder and braced for the trudge to our house, my back was hinting at a future without your breath tickling my neck. At you walking, beside us, if we were lucky. Publishing credits Los Domingos: Wild Court (King's College London) Heading for the Airport: The Spectator (July 16th 2022) The Last Carry: The Spectator (January 30th 2021)

Hear poet Andy Nuttall read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Andy Nuttall back next the poet Andy Nuttall hails from Lancashire and is now settled in the North East of England where he's a social worker. A late bloomer (his first published poem appeared in Acumen in September 2020), he lives with Susan and pup Fraser. Andy intends to use all the remaining ink in his pen to write many more poems around diverse themes. the poems The Baker of Idlib 00:00 / 00:40 In Idlib Province a small knot of dough Has risen slowly to its oven spring, Delicately chambered and crusted gold. This day they will again have bread to break Together in the village and the children Who are left to play in the rubble Of their lives will savour a morsel of comfort. What will we give them next to dream of, I wonder? Perhaps the spot where blood smears stone And a man – a baker – lies dying, still proving himself. Cartimandua 00:00 / 01:21 Down the long colonnade of limes The plumed galea of centuries Swept by in martial lines, Forty miles south of Arbeia The great fort of the Arabs Where the wall meets the sea and sky. At Pons Teys , or the crossing ford, The Asturian cavalry paused, Surveyed the coursing water and led Their sandalled ponies through the shallows. Stood by the weathered soldiers Clasped their woollen cloaks a little closer, Unknowing why like loosened stones They had been flung so hard and far Into this northern frigidarium . In the northlands of Brigantes; Old realm of Cartimandua: Regina, loyal subject of Rome; Cunning vixen; self-indulgent snake And, just for good measure, That treacherous Celtic bitch. Tacitus spat her name through curled, Orator’s lips two millennia ago. To the victor echo the spoils; To the literate, as always, the last word. Iron 00:00 / 01:48 She makes her daily rounds for daily bread As the turning world takes up us all In its vast and intricate continuance. Labour has become for her the beginning And the end of all that is worth doing. Life after all is habit forming. She might be otherwise were it not. Were it not for the iron of her control Creasing back some semblance of order And form her determination might falter. Enter a bright, long-limbed, precocious boy, Flooding her world with effervescent joy, His treasure grows as he does notching Up the door frame, his worth accumulating. Lost to time the years work free of her raw hands Like a child’s spinning-top set loose. Gone the glee of that colour and movement, Of the youthful race run rapid to white water And where it slows to a stop in a still pool Much is undone. His milky adolescence Has thickened, curdled and gone sour. Doors open and close. Yard leaves scurry. She is stooped now in the galley kitchen, Sifting through a pile of strangers’ washing, Wishing for the weight of something nameless In her head to shift, to be set right: His appearing quite unexpectedly In time for supper, smiling down on her As fresh as the daffodils in her cut-glass vase, Each yellowing heart wrung out for him. Publishing credits The Baker of Idlib: Acumen (Issue 98) Cartimandua / Iron: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Kitty Donnelly read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kitty Donnelly back next the poet Kitty Donnelly's first collection, The Impact of Limited Time , was joint-winner of Indigo Dreams Publishing's Collection Competition. Her second book, In Dangerous Hours , was published by the same house. Kitty won a Creative Future Award in 2019, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Fellowship in 2021. Her background is Irish, she lives in Yorkshire, and when she's not writing, Kitty works as an NHS Psychiatric Nurse. She cares for several rescued cats and dogs, and has just completed her first novel. the poems High 00:00 / 00:50 An arctic tern will fly 10,000 miles to flourish in two summers worth of light; so I was high after he died, chasing sun on the wing, though directionless. I swallowed three green capsules every night, peristalsis pulsing them through my scorched oesophagus. I took what I could get to alter consciousness, testing my fragmented sense of time against the wall clock’s competence till dawn was salmon red & gutted on the banks of the horizon. I was not or even near myself. Kingfisher 00:00 / 01:18 It was a sign: pure lapis on the post plunged into canal sediment. It surveyed its territory, paused & darted under Lock 9, a featherweight jewel flicked on the wind. Returning fishless, its head revolved towards the glass where I stood, museum-frigid: my first live kingfisher. I should have tailed its poem through the frosted dawn’s distemper. It was tempting me to follow it by pen, to know it vivid & separate from ossified kin: that feathered gift of indurated velvet with scratched black beads for eyes, whose twiggy box I switched for football cards, unable to stand the cloy of mould, too old to poke my finger in the rag-hole. Now it had risen: fallen constellations etched across each wing, it was urging me to drown my work bag, unlace my boots, and flit with it through the waterlogged morning. Test Results 00:00 / 00:38 You’re writing for your life, there’s no mistaking it. Your fingers move in window-light, ears closed to all but music. Coffee's heat evaporates, a shaft of sun bisects the page, the Biro quivers in your fingers. Everything you strived to say is translating itself. Previous verse: untrained lightening. Illness has earthed you, conducting your tongue. Publishing credits High: Ink Sweat & Tears Kingfisher / Test Results: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Samuel Tongue read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Samuel Tongue back next the poet Winner of a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust, and former poetry editor at The Glasgow Review of Books, Samuel Tongue is a widely published poet with a debut collection, Sacrifice Zones , and two pamphlets – Stitch and Hauling-Out (Eyewear Aviator, 2016). His recent work has appeared in Finished Creatures, Butcher’s Dog, The Scores, and One Hand Clapping. A selection of Samuel's poems is to be published in Ukrainian translation by KROK in 2021. the poems Emergent Properties 00:00 / 02:01 a church is enveloped by a forest and the forest is the creator and redeemer of the church. the hermits who can disappear into the trees, are trees. every time a tree moves it is a brustling prayer. susurration as supplication. the habit of the tree is its dwelling in the world. yes, Heidegger was wrong. no, the stone is not worldless; no, the animal is not poor-in-the-world; no, man is not only world-forming. the stone can be ground and underground – a negative capability – and the animals are adept at dwelling. neahgebur – they who dwell nearby. try not to think that clearing the forest is a clearing for thought. leave it dark for all the neighbours who are essential. My life and death are in my neighbour and a church is enveloped by a city and the city is the creator and redeemer of the church. the anchorites who can disappear into their cells, are cells. every time the bus doors hiss open, it is a shushed prayer. pneumatic pneuma. the habit of a tower-block is its dwelling in the world. yes, Le Corbusier was wrong. no, the house is not a machine for living in; no, the streets do not belong to the automobile; no, ornamentation is not a religion of beautiful materials. the tower-block can be forest and bewilderment – a negative capability – and the streets can be recovered. différance – that iterative, unrepeatable stranger. try not to think that deciding on anything will stop more emergence. leave it dark for all the strangers who are essential. My life and death are in each stranger and Fish Counter Fish that have a pebble in their heads; fish that hide in winter; fish that feel the influence of stars; extraordinary prices paid for certain fish. The Natural History Pliny 00:00 / 01:08 Cod that have been skinned. Cod that have a pebble of dill butter in their heads. Cod breaded. Cod battered: tempura or traditional. Smoked haddock. Dyed haddock. Wise lumps of raw tuna. Scaled, pin-boned pollock, de-scented: There are olfactory limits. Bake in the bag; no mess. 'This piece of halibut is good enough for Jehovah'. Fishsticks pink as lads’ mags. Skirts and wet fillets of sole. Fish fingers mashed from fragments of once-fish. Hake three-ways. Extraordinary prices paid for certain fish. Monkfish defrocked , gurnards gurning, fish so ugly you must eat them blindfold. Choose before the ice melts. Farm Boy 00:00 / 01:01 We rattle through the lanes in his ancient Austin Metro, footwells filled with welly boots and dried mud, clutches of sparrows bouncing around the high hedges. We pull off-road into gateways, warm dens of hawthorn; with a wink, he tightens his dog collar, disappears into a field, then returns with cauliflowers cradled baptismal under his arm, or broccoli blooms green as heaven. The Lord giveth and I taketh away , he laughs. One farmer gives us a brace of rabbits, still warm, leg-lashed with pink bailer-twine, and I hold them like newborns in my lap, soft as gloves. His theology is rich stews and a full belly before the Lord, Bible verses broadcast like seedcake on dry ground. I love him without understanding. In the evening, he holds me close and his prayers buzz sweetly in my ear. My pillow is a honeyed God. Publishing credits Emergent Properties: Finished Creatures (Issue 4) Fish Counter: Gutter (No. 17) Farm Boy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Robin Houghton read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Robin Houghton back next the poet Robin Houghton's fourth pamphlet, Why? And other questions was a joint winner of the 2019 Live Canon Pamphlet Competition. She's been published widely in magazines and anthologies, won and been placed in a number of competitions, and was longlisted in the 2020 National Poetry Competition. Robin is the author of A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines , and is currently working towards an MA in Poetry and Poetics at the University of York. the poems Tours of Haunted London #72: Nilsson’s Flat 00:00 / 01:48 etched glass over twin sinks & a chrome stand where they say Mama Cass laid her felted hat – getting her groove on baby after a gig or after dark it was free-fall – highballs of ice jiggling beads on necks – boogying on brandy & speed – playing zig-zag here was a black velvet couch – the one the cops dusted for dabs if the front door goes it's Harry – back from the Playboy Club with Cass gone they modernised the kitchen – it wasn't a sandwich that killed her – Rolling Stone was wrong! – fans still leave flowers in the lift shaft – this room stinks of puke and night sweats any questions? – yes you can use the loo – check out the graffiti at dawn the building shakes with the screams of Moon – cook me a steak or fuck off – just one last wild man story of many breaking Cass's tired heart again – like a scratched rumour you can just make out – can't live if living is without you he was thirty-two as well – some say a ley line was disturbed the block's coming down soon – feel how cold the plaster is Harry sold up to Pete & the couch went to auction – look look! here's Cass about to call home – cream handset off the hook – Missed 00:00 / 01:00 There are five of us in this taxi and my phone rings. The couple in front chat with the driver and my husband holds my hand. My brother is calling me from another country and he's with my mother. The driver sees my face in the rearview mirror and he knows. The plane won't wait for me and we are hours from the airport. The driver is speeding and the couple in front are chatting. My brother's voice is strange and I don't know what to say to him. My husband holds my hand and we are hours from the airport. The couple in front are whispering and the driver is speeding. My mother had asked when I'd be back but she didn't wait for me. I will write about this one day. Maybe I'll change the ending. New Cross Evensong 00:00 / 01:31 we are friends at Surrey Quays swaying like seventies buses at home time your hand holding just higher than mine shifting position with each inch of space won those inexplicable smells – moth balls, bubble gum – all of South London is in the carriage I recognise the glum unspeaking feel some comfort in it everyone in black we are now approaching a blessed silence eyes down for scrolling up for sighing let's take all the time we have idle-time all over us a train gently jilting its payload as usual let's rock along the ginger line hovercraft the old routes the Roman roads unpeeled tram tracks gone the tower blocks we hardly recognise each other now deep south through the gaps in the script old maps clocking off this is where I came to play I sing this time of day this reverie and tomorrow there will be blueprints sheets to spread for some of us skin to tattoo Publishing credits Tours of Haunted London: #72 Nilsson’s Flat: Prole (Issue 32) Missed: Why? And other questions (Live Canon) New Cross Evensong: Live Canon 2019 Poetry Prize Anthology

Hear poet Susie Campbell read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Susie Campbell back next the poet Susie Campbell's poems have appeared in many UK and international journals, visual poetry anthologies and exhibitions. Currently studying for a practice-based poetry PhD at Oxford Brookes University, Susie is the author of six poetry pamphlets – I return to you , Tenter and Enclosures being her three most recent. Her newest work, The Sleeping Place , will be published by Guillemot Press in 2023. the poems A Deictic Miracle, This Boxwood Prayer Nut Exhibit: Waddesdon Bequest, British Museum 00:00 / 01:41 To hold and be held, an uncracked walnut, a little earth. There is something strange about this richness, growing into its own boundaries, rank and subtle as a hunted creature. Time has become a strongbox of interlocking branches. Global complexities, plumbed with pipelines of gold, are reduced to wafer-thin discs, slotted one into the other, light bevelled into a compound syntax of mortise and tenon. An articulation of honest wood, it holds the shape and hard veins of the forest by fitting it to the palm: an armillary sphere circling an internal sun, opened by flicking up a tiny hinge secured on its pin. Ahead, glimmering through a tiny screen, carved and fretted to this terrestrial cage, a thimble saint with his trembling hound bows before the stag. Kneeling here, prayer beads in hand, an intricate system of shadow blows from antler and slender branch to form the cross, thorn-sized and lifted to the wooden sky, as outside bends to imitate this reconciliation. if magic 00:00 / 01:24 if such ordinary box jar tin or burlap and if tested unbought night finds an opening past neighbours fought for squeaking and scratched open by tiny razor- sharp and left beyond and further how the night is done with moss and damp and squelch and how quickly attaching themselves to dark are wet marbles if tied up in a pouch and with mercy new-opened and sticky and still smelling of sleep as sap is and here a soft clink of word against word could be taken for protection a charm new-minted from darkness against theirs ours some dispensable such brittle claims across this globe of glass could be soothed or silenced if won by this as talisman Hush 00:00 / 01:43 A hill beneath and a filled-in door. This bench, its damp wooden flowers. A dead tree stripped clean and time fucking stops. You reach a corner of you are there. You are there. An edge of grief you can park in an empty tongue. The fields are empty. That’s near enough. You expect you have come here to honour the dead. An open field looks like battlefield words: gone, absent, missing. You come to hold it in memory but it becomes spongy underfoot. You do not mean to remember her, the time you brought her here. A list in a notebook of useful words: Blank Nil Null Hush-hush Ssh Shush Sodden ground but your body remembers so you try to follow even as it is hardening and solidifying, becomes a whole, no longer possible to enter nor be held by it. Nil. Null. Hush. Ssh. Shush. You cannot enter nor explore its spaces nor the dead in their apophatic silence that gap in words. Listen. Hush. Publishing credits A Deictic Miracle, This Boxwood Prayer Nut: Shearsman Magazine (125/126 – Autumn/Winter) if magic: Stride Magazine (December 2021) Hush: Tenter (Guillemot Press)

Hear poet Pascale Potvin read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Pascale Potvin back next the poet Pascale Potvin, who writes as Viola Volée, has published several chapbooks – her newest, SEX, GOD, & OCD , arriving in February 2024 from Naked Cat Publishing. Thrice nominated for Best of the Net, she's also had her work put up for The Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction, as well as longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. Pascale's work has appeared in Juked , Eclectica Magazine , trampset and many others. She's Editor-in-Chief of Wrong Publishing, and writer/director of feature film, Baby Fever . the poems Down a Seized Throat 00:00 / 00:38 How can hair be healthy if it’s dead? My bloody earlobe says the most about me. A leaf falls onto the street and it hardens then softens back into a baby. Yet while summer brings old lusts, like birds for others, I never understood song; On the trail, I place a bandaid for blisters in my mouth, till the ridges of my tongue are gone. Because, what if a wasp dove into my Flavor Aid, like taste creates cult? What if it was a bird? It’d have to swim. What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD? 00:00 / 00:38 It means he closes his eyes, like umbrellas stop feeling the rain. It means that, when I wave to him, I make the grass move with the sky. And it means that, when I say hello, he’ll hear a rhyme: je te veux (my therapist said u might have a crush on me, so i need you too scared to become famous cause the people past our deaths might dissect your pages: there, they would find me folded up, up in the letters’ livers like you still tried to get me out). Museum One 00:00 / 01:03 did i ever tell you that i stopped at a museum, just a block from my house for the wifi? i couldn’t wait longer to be touched by you; teenage bodies are too fertile and we were the bodies in the god oh kiss my neck, like cutting a dandelion stem, i’ll do it, like rain water’s submissive to its leaf (i promise if one chair in the history of the world ever got turned on in a flash of unsolved natural mystery, it would be that one) like nature photography (selfie of me in a top that reminds me of u) and so what’s the point of living, or writing, i wonder? if there’s no one left to fall for? if there’s no one to seduce, in that order? i’m free, my pussy against the dirt, like it’ll never taste me again as an artefact or a grave i would’ve worn your name, gone on display Publishing credits Down a Siezed Throat / What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD?: exclusive first publication by iamb Museum One: excerpt originally from Fifth Wheel Press' 2022 calender (Fifth Wheel Press)

Hear poet Jay Whittaker read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jay Whittaker back next the poet Jay Whittaker is an Edinburgh-based poet who grew up in Devon and Nottingham. She's published two collections to date: Sweet Anaesthetist and Wristwatch – the latter chosen as Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2018 in the Saltire Society Literary Awards. Jay's widely published in journals that include The North , Butcher’s Dog and The Rialto , and has recently had work accepted by The Poetry Review . Two of her poems appear in Bloodaxe Books' anthology, Staying Human . the poems Egg case 00:00 / 05:33 My left ovary is smothered in seven centimetres of cyst. A risk to be reduced. ~ A beachcombed husk in my palm, multiple crumpled chambers deflated and dried, bereft of hatched whelks. A self-contained nodule of nothing, pod of naught. ~ Wobbling on a wooden stool in the school biology lab, I clench my sharpened pencil, transcribe the handbag and curved horns into my exercise book. I will keep practising until fluent, ready to reproduce constituent parts in cartoonish simplicity – a handbag and curved horns. I lay my transparent ruler across the paper and draw straight lines, and label (best handwriting): Ovaries, Ampulla, Endometrium, Fallopian Tubes. But I don’t know them. Not viscerally. ~ And how much less interesting than the febrile atmosphere in the school hall on the day one hundred twelve-year-olds are herded in to watch the childbirth video . At the crowning, commotion at the front. The boy who faints will be taunted for years. ~ Imagine: my abdomen crammed with congealed jelly babies. ~ Sometimes I looked up and my mother was watching me, as though wondering what she’d done. ~ My mother told me: It was the bloody ants’ fault. I was pregnant with you. Your father was away. You know how I hate ants in the house. ~ I am possible. ~ Inexorable ant-march across a kitchen floor. No one to talk her down or reassure. Scrubbing. Safe to use ant powder inside when pregnant? Not sure. Read and reread the packet. Relentless. Ants keep marching. Need to empty the cupboard under counter anyway, in case the ants find it, find the flour and sugar inside. Visions of a never-ending ant army carrying their sugar lumps aloft, victorious, back to their queen. Lifting and bending – getting up and down – panicking about ants and – wet in her knickers – a pooling. Blood – I am choosing A punishment for leaving it so late to have a child. For thinking, in their cleverness, with their science, they were above this. The thought of her mother’s told-you-so triumph. ~ The GP said his wife took these tablets too; I would never have taken anything when I was pregnant, I even stopped smoking, I was so careful but I thought I was miscarrying — A risk reduced. I am possible. ~ Alone in bed, sleepless, praying to the god her husband denies. ~ She tells me when I am eighteen, have left home for a university ninety miles north, It was in the Sunday Times a few years after you were born. All the cancers in the daughters are at puberty; you’re safe. She tells me now because of course maybe you shouldn’t go on the pill . I am already on the pill. She tells me in such a way that makes it clear we won’t talk about it again. ~ A hunt for the unknown, the untold, the unnamed. In the Science Library, I turn the handle on a microfilm reader, not too fast (nausea). Oestrogen. Estrogen. Diethylstilbestrol. Diethylstilboestrol. Stilbestrol. DES. Leading me to the long shelves of Index Medicus , metres of cloth-bound volumes, to rifle Bible-thin paper. I school myself in libraries, their tools, fiche readers, bibliographies, catalogues, all they contain. All that was withheld. All that was never vocalised. All the swallowed words. ~ My inheritance: Great grandfather – dies of sarcoma. Grandmother – dies of breast cancer. Mother – exposure to DES in pregnancy. Two breast cancers. Dies of ovarian cancer. Me – exposure to DES in utero . One breast cancer (and counting). I am choosing. ~ Buried deep in my pelvis and scheduled for excision: tissue, but more than tissue. My snail shells, my coiled snakes. Mysterious, seen on scans, analysed by faceless medics, discussed in front of me in medical language by my partner and my consultant, doctor to doctor – I have no clue, really. I am excising a possibility. ~ Absence is a poke of pain when I bend forward too quickly, a stabbing gyroscope, a whirligig of knife-ache when I lie on my left side. ~ A risk reduced. From the 1940s till the early 1970s, synthetic oestrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) was given to at least 300,000 UK women whom doctors believed were at increased risk of miscarriage. A clinical study in 1953 found DES did nothing to reduce such risk, yet it was administered until 1971 – when it was discovered that daughters of women given the drug were at heightened risk of rare vaginal/cervical cancers. Later research linked DES to greater risk of breast cancer in both mothers and daughters. Clearly something was up 00:00 / 00:42 Every time I drove, plink and ricochet, stones on metal like popcorn in a lidded pan. I blamed the untarmacked track, recent resurfacing on the main road – until a warning light came on – under the bonnet, rats had stashed birdseed in every crevice, nestled pebbles into crannies, built a cairn of stones on the engine. The shock of rat shit on the camshaft. Chewed wires betrayed them, building a haven of warmth and food in the heart of a machine I thought was mine. Canopy (Day 20: First chemo cycle) 00:00 / 00:46 Do tree tips tingle, niggle like my scalp? Most people’s hair (I’m told) comes out on day eighteen. White hairs work loose first, waft down. This late summer evening, my scarfed skull as bald and vulnerable as a fledgling’s, I stand under the row of sycamore, my neck sore from looking up to the abundance of leaves. Whatever happens to me, the earth is turning. At the same hour in winter, haven’t I stood in this very spot, watching bare branches implore the sky for light? Publishing credits Egg case: Sweet Anaesthetist (Cinnamon Press) Clearly something was up: The Rialto (Issue 97) Canopy:Wristwatch (Cinnamon Press)

Hear poet Leeanne Quinn read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Leeanne Quinn back next the poet Leeanne Quinn's poems have been widely anthologised, appearing in The Forward Book of Poetry 2013 , Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916 , and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Before You , was published by Dedalus Press and highly commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry 2013. Her second collection, Some Lives , was also published by Dedalus Press, and was noted as a 2020 Book of the Year by The Irish Times and The Irish Independent . Originally from Ireland, Leanne now lives in Munich, Germany. the poems Interference 00:00 / 01:15 Try not to listen, avoid admission. Electrical currents emit perceptible sounds. Don’t power down appliances, let sound carry. Try not to think in terms of the body, the racket of the blood is not your concern. Learn the habit of distraction, above all don’t personify, don’t permit, this is not a human voice. Electrical currents do emit perceptible sounds. The trick is not to listen. Avoid admission. The racket of the blood is not your concern. Don’t power down. Learn the habit of distraction. Don’t think in terms of the body. Electrical currents do emit. The racket of the blood. Above all, try not to listen. Don’t personify, learn the habit. Let them carry perceptible sounds. This is not a human voice. Accidents (An excerpt from a poem of the same title) 00:00 / 00:59 Winter has culled the city, edging all colour out. Salt covers ice, stark and stubborn, on the pavements below. You walk with your thoughts elsewhere, think of the different worlds you have known. There is little here to love—this is a place where loneliness grows, where memories wake you like a gun going off in the night —a night that takes care of what you have done or not done, of who you have loved or not loved, of those you have saved, or forgotten. You walk the winter streets, hoping to catch the last of the light, as it fades where the snow falls. On a Flat Earth 00:00 / 01:07 What colour is the sky? Why does a ship’s hull disappear before the mast? What is the true distance of the Sun from the Earth? Explain the cause of tides. What is the dip sector? What causes the Sun to rise? Explain lunar and solar eclipses. Account for daylight. Explain winter and summer. Account for loss of time when sailing. Explain the deflection of falling bodies. Elaborate on experiment three. Account for the moon’s phases. Discuss the planet Neptune. Elaborate on experiment six. Explain the stages of the Earth. Give Earth’s true position in the Universe. Account for formation. Account for destruction by fire. Publishing credits Interference / On a Flat Earth: Some Lives (Dedalus Press) Excerpt from Accidents: Before You (Dedalus Press)

Hear poet Louise McStravick read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Louise McStravick 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 My sister was born a sunset 00:00 / 00:44 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. A daughter’s guide to poaching an egg 00:00 / 01:17 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. Bake yourself some unicorns After Rishi Dastidar 00:00 / 01:19 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 My sister was born a sunset: How to Make Curry Goat (Fly on the Wall Press) A daughter's guide to poaching an egg: Porridge Magazine Bake yourself some unicorns: Ink, Sweat & Tears