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Hear poet Mona Dash read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mona Dash wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Mona Dash is the author of the memoir A Roll of the Dice: a story of loss, love and genetics , the novel Untamed Heart , and poetry collections A Certain Way and Dawn-drops. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (with distinction), and her work has been both long and shortlisted in leading competitions such as Novel London 2020, SI Leeds Literary Award, Leicester Writes Short Story Prize and The Asian Writer Short Story Prize. Her short story collection, Let us look elsewhere, is due out in 2021 from Dahlia Publishing. Mona has an MBA and an engineering degree, works for a global tech firm, and lives in London. the poems Implications 00:00 / 01:10 Born and raised an Indian; not living in India implied: not Indian now British, not born in Britain implied: not British a mother, working full time implied: not a mother a sales manager, a mother implied: not a sales manager a woman, a mother implied: not a woman a writer, a technocrat implied: not a writer an engineer, an artist implied: not an engineer a businessperson, a poet implied: not a businessperson becoming more than I was meant to implied: a sense of erosion Venn-diagram like I seek implied: commonalities finding intersectionality implied: a pinpoint Unsaid, Unwritten 00:00 / 00:59 Unseeing, unthinking piece words unrelated like flowers in a vase on the kitchen table lark, larkspur, lavender When the night calls answer in words swallowed in a past forgotten eels, egalitarian, eccentric then it is morning slicing sun through clouds unopened eyes, sleepy sex a day to use, misuse harvest, hyacinth, harbour a month is over the thought still shattered ravaged and unformed the words meant to disappear in bloodstreams vapid, victory, vilify like Rodin’s Thinker count words on fingers the tongue struggling still to form the unformed the pen curling, curling to write the unwritten For Plath, for Love 00:00 / 01:25 Let us then recite Plath Let us wear white bikinis and smile up at the sky, blue in our hearts as in the heavens Let us sing mad-girl love songs and in its rhymes search for a thunderbird, hold the bird close dip into its heart, tasting its blood, mine, yours Let us find these Hughes-like men who love deeply, amorously, thick-honey words that choke so well, filling us, filling us with still, deep water, cleansing and drowning who twist deep into us, severing every self-belief, every little hope we have burning away the mind-body-soul chain Let us write, write crazily into the night and let our words howl in the still dawn and let us then open the oven door and lay ourselves in, breathing in purist like a single strain of air, lying still, lying while our children lie in their beds, dreaming, dreaming Publishing credits Implications: May We Borrow Your Country (Linen Press UK) Unsaid, Unwritten: Sarasvati 057 (Indigo Dreams Publishing) For Plath, for Love: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ruth Wiggins read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ruth Wiggins wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Ruth Wiggins is a British poet, based in London. Her work has been included in UK and international journals & anthologies. Her first pamphlet, 'Myrtle', was published by The Emma Press and her second, 'a handful of string', was published by Paekakariki. Her first full collection, a lyric history of Barking Abbey, is forthcoming from Shearsman. the poems Daughters 00:00 / 01:34 The feral dogs can smell the glitch inside the cardboard box – two salvaged female pups, not yipping much as they are carried across the un-adopted lot, their sister discarded on the sidewalk. The tourists (like us they are here, and yet they are not) can't quite get with the program. We have three weeks on them and watch as they make for the grocery store, cardboard crib fading in their arms. Next morning, we see them outside the temple. The pups have spent the night in a tee shirt, dining on peas and tuna. A food bowl improvised from the bottom of a bottle, moulding not unlike their mother's paw print. They have a sign that reads – TO TAKE – a little heart to encourage the monks and stallholders. But no one wants a girl pup. In the National Gallery behind Sükhbaatar there is a bust entitled Give Me a Daughter. Give me a daughter, one with a soft-furred belly, fat with peas and tuna. Make her golden eyed and skittle legged, and with a bark to raise the dead. Kallisto From Playing the Bear 00:00 / 01:12 Do you feel my weight pressing on the atmosphere? Out here, circling. Jointed with stars, my dazzling exile. Not to touch the Earth, nor wet my toes – Hera's vow, extracted from the Ocean. But gingerly the Earth shifts its hip and I am dipped, a claw to prise off the lid, to get at something sweet. As one entering sacred water I will tear away the sky and climb back in. Your woods recede, do you think of me? The girl that once ran at your Virgin side. Me, who could bend the bow like no other, spit olive pits further than the rest. O thumb away the black smudge upon my lip kiss me again, the winner. K is for Keats 00:00 / 01:17 In bright white sparks I try to pick your whole name from the night sparkler in my hand the whip of the upright the K that is gone the K that is velar plosive tongue against soft palate pulmonic consonant after which all airflow ceases gone before the flourish of t into s really takes in the air And so instead I slip you finger deep into estuary mud that holds you holds until tide yearning to be held by reeds steals back into the creek lifts you out to sea how cease holds the sea which does not cease how cease holds the sea holds the sea which does not cease Publishing credits Daughters: The Poetry Review (Vol. 108, No. 4) Kallisto / K is for Keats: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Roy Marshall read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Roy Marshall wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Roy Marshall's publications are Gopagilla , The Sun Bathers (shortlisted for Michael Murphy Award), The Great Animator and After Montale – these most recent three all published by Shoestring Press. Roy is a former coronary care and research nurse now working in education. the poems The Weight 00:00 / 00:46 My friend, Christine the beekeeper, tells me that honey is heavy. How heavy? I ask, and Chris says arm-achingly so. Later, I Google the heaviness of honey, find that a gallon weighs one and a half times as much as the same volume of water. And so, I think about the curation of sweetness; how it requires so much more strength than the nurture of its opposite. Trace 00:00 / 00:51 My fingers walked to the fourth intercostal space. This is where I placed the first gel-backed tab. The next went opposite, across the sternum, on the nipple line. Easy then to make a descending arc, attach the leads until a trace appeared; the heart. Unlike in films when it stopped for good the line was never completely flat, but wavering like the slap of water against the dock long after a boat has passed. Relic 00:00 / 00:45 I’d rather take this road to that chapel of larch on the hill but my boy insists, so we step into a nave of pines screened by webs where sound falls dead, except for the rattle of cones. Each breath is sealed with resin: he finds a long bone, lifts it from the needles: fox or maybe badger, I tell him taking his hand suddenly aware of our temporary skins. Publishing credits The Weight: Finished Creatures (Issue 3) Trace: The Great Animator (Shoestring Press) Relic: The Sun Bathers (Shoestring Press)

Hear poet J-T Kelly read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. J-T Kelly wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis who lives in a brick house with his wife, their six children and his two parents. His poetry has appeared in Bad Lilies , Vita Brevis , Amethyst Review , Agape Review , Neologism Poetry Journal and elsewhere. J-T's debut chapbook is titled, Like Now . the poems Sousveillance 00:00 / 00:56 God has bugged the human heart. There are things in there God wants to hear. I imagine most of it is noise. Maybe God has something set up like a bobber on a fishing line. Talk to a friend about how you need a new toaster, and … Wait. That might be Facebook. God is the one who tells you that Santa can’t give you what you asked for. Behind a series of decorated wooden screens, God is moving, moving always. And muttering. But what is God saying? The language around God is all baffles: mystery this and can-you-catch-Leviathan-with-a-fishhook that. Well here’s the big secret: The listening device works both ways. You can hear God speaking whenever you want. Like now. Like now. Art History 00:00 / 01:42 I don’t know what you know about painting— house painting, I mean—but there’s an art to it. House painters are known to be drunks. So, of course, are painters of art. Caravaggio used models who were drunks and murderers. It takes one to know one. It may be that the mystery is not in the art but in the drunkenness. To be a drunk you don’t even have to paint anything. To paint a house you have to show up every day. You have to outlast the guy who caught the dropcloth on fire with his cigarette, the guy who fell off the roof because he found the safety harness restricting, the guy who cursed and threatened the homeowner in the homeowner’s own home. You have to show up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and on your birthday. You have to show up on the Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Bologna, patron saint of painters. You have to show up on the Feast Day of Saint Matthias the Apostle, patron saint of drunks. Matthias is the one who, when Judas Iscariot didn’t last, was chosen by lots. It seems to be up to chance who turns out to be a drunk, although, if you’re a painter, the chances do seem to be higher. Who makes it out of drunkenness alive sometimes feels like chance, sometimes like something more personal. There is a mystery. There is an art. My Wife Says Loving the Fall is Short-sighted 00:00 / 00:23 The racing clouds of autumn make my heart race, as if life had no bottom, no top, just space and time to love what is, one thing by one, without this wintry business of being done forever. Publishing credits Sousveillance / Art History: Like Now (CCCP Chapbooks) My Wife Says Loving the Fall is Short-sighted: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Claudia Gary read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Claudia Gary wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Claudia Gary is a three-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and a 2013 semi-finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as American Arts Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle Journal of Poetry, Antiphon and many more. Her work has also been widely anthologised: in Villanelles , The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology , and Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle . Claudia is a health science writer for vvaveteran.org , a composer of art songs and chamber music, and an online instructor of Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter and other topics at The Writer’s Center . the poems Blues Manqué 00:00 / 01:15 I've suffered, but I can't quite sing the blues. My troubles are occasional, not chronic. My angst is true, but not the kind you'd use against the everyday, to find or lose your heart. My chords are major and harmonic. I've suffered, but I don't dare sing the blues. Any attempt would probably amuse, but not in ways your songs have made iconic. Your angst is true, while mine's nothing to use in threatening to blow a major fuse or skip to Paris on the supersonic. I've not suffered enough to sing the blues. Saying I have is asking for a bruise. You'll throw tomatoes. They'll be hydroponic. This angst is true, but nothing I can use to make you say mine is the pain you'd choose. The plates I spin are porcelain, not tectonic. I suffer from a need to sing the blues with insufficient angst, too kind to use. Anthem 00:00 / 00:54 Do me a favor: when you go outside, look over toward the harbor. If you squint you'll see it – or you won't – but it can't hide from sun, setting or rising. There's a hint, a remnant where a spangled patch embroidered above the rosy contrails of the dawn still waves, as if the stars had reconnoitered their sister light. Why do I ramble on? There was a battle once to tear away that piece of cloth and burn it while we slept. We triumphed – but the gremlins are at play, sowing confusion as to what we've kept and what we're losing now unless we save more than a recollection of the brave. The Reopening / What’s a Virus to Do? 00:00 / 01:40 COVID’s next door and quiche is in the oven. Not even trying to be nonchalant, I listen to the news, learn what’s been proven and what, so far, has not; see who can govern and who can barely read. All that I want with COVID next door and quiche in the oven is to keep breathing, not become a sloven, somehow remain in a creative slant. I listen to the news, learn what is proven, miss more the ones I miss, keep clothing woven or cut it up for masks. (Am I still gaunt?) COVID’s next door and quiche is in the oven. Now sirens wail, although few cars are moving through the abundant spring whose flowers flaunt and glisten. In the news, it’s being proven: For each nation and state, northern and southern, actions reopen, inactions may haunt reopening the door. Quiche in the oven, I listen to the news COVID has proven. Epilogue ... What’s a Virus to Do? A quarantine to mope in? Corona doesn’t buy it. What can it put its hope in with this starvation diet? But wait: they scream “Reopen,” and at long last—a riot! Publishing credits Blues Manqué: Angle Journal of Poetry Anthem: Measure The Reopening / What’s a Virus to Do?: Snakeskin (Issue 275) / The Asses of Parnassus

Hear poet Charles G Lauder Jr read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Charles G Lauder Jr wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet Charles G Lauder Jr was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Having lived on both coasts of America and graduated from Boston University, he moved to Leicestershire in the UK where he lives with his wife and two children. His poems have been published widely – in print, and online. From 2014 to 2018, he was Assistant Editor for The Interpreter’s House; and for over twenty years, he's copyedited academic books on literature, history, medicine and science. Charles' two pamphlets are Bleeds and Camouflaged Beasts . His debut collection is The Aesthetics of Breath . the poems The Color of Mourning 00:00 / 01:21 The colour of morning in a San Diego autumn: you displaced here twelve years note sunlight’s silent taint and fade trees stained not with the blood of a slain midsummer god but with the knick of his finger. Dressed in the hues of fallen leaves you fill kitchen corners with apples and acorns corn husks and pine cones brew cauldrons of thick chowder and beer dropping hints that August has outstayed its welcome. This is the time of spiders gossamer-veiled doorways thresholds scorched by the shadow of scarred tattooed pumpkins eyes spooned out in grief over summer’s supposed passing. From here you scry distant clouds of smoke: seasonal wildfires fuelled by desert sage and dried brush that will touch many hands before put out like the sparklers once waved around a bonfire as if casting a spell lights danced off your fingers before extinguishing. The Pissing Contest 00:00 / 02:24 Little boys with their penises in hand gathered about a porcelain trough, the drain a silver dome, when all they know of politics is what they overhear their parents declare, so though they know nothing of Watergate and eighteen minutes of missing tape, nor of Ehrlichman and Hunt, Mitchell and Dean, they know ‘Nixon’, with its hard ‘ks’ lump, and Congressional hearings, the long, droning table of men in a dark wooden-panelled room and the high smack of a gavel, broadcast on all three TV channels, stealing away afternoon cartoons and Mother’s soaps for weeks on end, they stand there, penises grasped in little hands, following the biggest boy’s lead and aim their streams at the silver dome drain: Look at me! I’m peeing on the Capitol! Only a few of the arched golden flows have the strength to splatter against the dome, burst through its holes like a water cannon against windows, offices and corridors flood with desks and sofas floating away in the foam, interns and PAs swim to get clear. It doesn’t matter if they really meant the White House, or Congress, or Washington in general, this is for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and, if their mothers were here, The Guiding Light and As the World Turns , little boys peeing until penises run dry and the pee drains away, leaving a stink and a stain, the little boys are proud of their new game, as penises are waved and shook, then tucked away. This before the days of separate urinals, like older brothers and fathers already use, where they’ll stand, distracted by size, and brag to one another that the water is cold , and the biggest boy will reply, And deep too . The Guest 00:00 / 01:25 Bellying up to the night in neighborhoods as dark as the street corners of my mind I meet him fully for the first time, lucid, bug-eyed manic but not ugly, his frightened grasp handcuffed to my wrist as he circles, circles about me like wagons on the open, empty plains. What folk birthed and nurtured him, caged him, then set him free with few words in the ear as guidance? Like a cousin, or brother, last seen as a child —he’s not a stranger, but he is. Back home, thieves have broken in and he breathes their air, the money they stole, the television they broke, the window they crawled through, the colorful oxygen of their skin. Like a dead grandfather or drunk uncle at Christmas he collapses on the sofa mumbling like a ventriloquist, lending me his tremulous voice, his pinched nose and clouded sight. Rubbish spilling from his pockets is quickly brushed under the carpet. Publishing credits The Color of Mourning: The Aesthetics of Breath (V. Press) The Pissing Contest: Atrium The Guest: Dreich (Season 4, No. 2) Author photo: © Julian Lauder-Mander

Hear poet Georgia Hilton read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Georgia Hilton wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Georgia Hilton is a poet and fiction writer originally from Ireland who lives now in Winchester, England. In 2018, her poem Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh was joint winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize – her debut pamphlet, I went up the lane quite cheerful , being published by Dempsey & Windle that same year. Georgia’s first collection, Swing , is also published by Dempsey & Windle. the poems Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh 00:00 / 01:26 On Raglan Road I saw you first a dishevelled man with heavy black-framed glasses. So severe you looked but you had a wound that made you beautiful. After we talked that first day, I dreamt of you. You were walking towards me very fast and purposeful with an intent that might have been mistaken for malice, had I not loved you. I abandoned caution at first. But my father gave me a great gift when he said to me, Hilda, you cannot eat words and air, so I became a doctor and married the engineer. But not before I had given you poems with your own name in them, given you my youth. Let you open the catch to a window in my mind, thinking I would fly, but you had me chained to a pedestal. I, no marble idol, just a flesh and blood woman. And you were always an awful man for the drink, you said so yourself, Patrick. Oh to think I might have been one of those sorry women who follow their husbands to the pub screaming for them to come home before they spend the rest of the housekeeping. I might be a creature made of clay, Patrick, in fact, I’m sure I am, but you have a brass neck calling yourself an angel. Cinderella 00:00 / 01:19 If I were to slip into the river, it would not be at Poor Man’s Kilkee, where teenagers and vagrants take their ease with cans of lager. Nor would it be on O’Callaghan’s Strand, where the grey silt is deep, deep and a dozen swans are on the slipway. Nor would I make a dramatic leap off Sarsfield Bridge by the boat club, where an indecisive light flickers over the martyrs of 1916. No – I would choose this stretch, just downstream of the Curraghower with views of King John’s Castle and Thomond Bridge. By day the seagulls swoop and dive, swans fight the estuary current, and you can see the hills of Clare beyond the bend of the river at the Island Field. But by night my eyes are drawn only to the water – the roiling inky black inviting me to shed my history, surrender my skin. The old stone steps are there, I would not need to climb or jump but simply descend like a debutante – keeping both shoes on. On the Naming of Convict Ships 00:00 / 00:45 It seems cruel to name a convict ship the Eleanor. Eleanor, after all, is the parson’s daughter, who smiled at you once or twice. You could no more touch her than you can touch thin air. Eliza is the girl who took your hand at the county fair. Caroline is your sister, Georgiana the grim mistress you have only glimpsed on horseback. Jane is the governess at Manor Farm. Mary is the dairyman’s daughter. Elizabeth the name you sometimes murmur in your sleep, and Isabella is someone you will never meet. Isabelle, Isabella, Bella, Belle. Publishing credits Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh: I went up the lane quite cheerful (Dempsey & Windle) Cinderella: Lunate On The Naming of Convict Ships: Swing (Dempsey & Windle)

audition for iamb record send wait Record yourself reading an original poem (published or unpublished) by you in English. Save it as MP3, M4A or WAV. Your poem doesn't have to be one you'd like to appear in iamb – you'll get to choose which three poems you'd like published if your audition is successful. Please don't choose an 'edgy' poem that has offensive or hateful language or imagery. This will be rejected. Submit your details in Step 1 (below). Then upload and submit your recording AND your poem's text file in Step 2 – using Word, TXT or PDF only please. Both your recording AND your text's filenames MUST include your full name plus your poem's title. Check for an on-screen confirmation message after Steps 1 and 2. If you see an error message, try again. If you don't get an invite to iamb by Nov 30th 2025 , please audition again in September 2027. If you accept a place in iamb, your invite email will explain everything. If you accept one of 12 places on the reserves list, please note that you could be asked to submit work at short notice at any time in 2026/27. who can audition for iamb? iamb is a journal – but it's also a directory of poets, their work and their voices. To give as many poets as possible a chance to be part of iamb, each poet can appear only once. how to audition Step 1 Send your details Send details Your details have been sent Step 2 Send your poem Your recording Filename MUST include your full name and poem's title Your poem's text Filename MUST include your full name and poem's title Send poem Your poem has been sent ** Please submit both audio and text **

Hear poet Thomas March read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Thomas March wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Essayist, performer and poet Thomas March is the author of Aftermath . His work has featured in The Account , The Adroit Journal , The Good Men Project , Evergreen Review , OUT , RHINO and Verse Daily . Thomas hosts and curates bi-monthly 'variety salon' Poetry/Cabaret – a performance series that unites and invites poets, comedians and cabaret performers to share responses to a common theme. A contributing editor to GRAND , he's called New York City home for more than 25 years, and teaches at both The Brearley School, and in Barnard College’s Pre-College Program. the poems Connected 00:00 / 00:39 Absence can’t be absent until the waiting stops and every holiday or date that celebrates something of ours can pass without my noticing when I get into bed that I’ve been expecting to hear from you, maybe an accidental call— maybe no accident. Until then, we remain at the opposite ends of widening silence, nothing between us but an unseen wire, pulled taut— a trip wire, a guard wire held by a ghost, a string vibrating soundlessly between two Dixie cups. Separate Now 00:00 / 01:12 Most of the stemware has shattered, and the plates have chipped, of living together, never replacing anything we still had two of. Whatever is broken or worn I guess we kept for the having of only one of us, one day— so now that you’re leaving, you leave whatever is replaceable. Our suitcase is yours now, and mine you can have, too—now that I have your closet space, and all these drawers. (I’m keeping one drawer just for you— with bracelets from a Pride parade, our hotel soaps and small shampoos, a key to your old apartment, the corks from two bottles of Veuve, some ticket stubs, a metrocard, your extra checkbook. All of it remains, as if the heart were not a reliquary of its own.) But what will we do with the shoes? We were sharing our shoes before we settled our sides of the bed. So who’s to say whose shoes are left behind this door that has to stay unlocked, with one of us per side? Hello, Future Crossing the Pont des Arts, Paris, 2019 00:00 / 01:30 'Hello, future,' I say. 'Just say, "Hello, future."' We don’t stop, but you wave to the camera and sing, 'Hey, future!' in that way you sing 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Hey, you!' if it’s me when you open the door. I imagined that day we would watch this, after everything we could be had already happened. We’d look at each other in a comfortable room at the quieter end of our well-traveled life and reassure ourselves by telling your fortune— that everything to come would be worth all the rest of everything to come. It wasn’t innocent, asking you to mark this point from which we’d measure whatever time was left. I knew it might be sad for at least one of us to watch someday—sometimes I watch it on behalf of the future we planned, sometimes one we might have escaped. What if I had stopped you there to confess my fear—that we’d never be happier? We could have parted on that bridge and never said a thing we never should have said. But as long as we live in this future you greet, there might be so much more to say—when we’re ready no longer to be two idiots on a bridge, assuming it will hold. Publishing credits Connected: exclusive first publication by iamb Separate Now: Out Hello, Future: Evergreen Review Author photo: © Matte O'Brien

Hear poet Daljit Nagra read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Daljit Nagra wave 7 autumn 2021 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) Author photo: © Martin Figura

Hear poet Damien B Donnelly read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Damien B Donnelly wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet After 25 years as a pattern maker in the fashion industry, Damien B Donnelly is now Head of Programming at the Irish Writers Centre. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, and he's the author of two pamphlets and two collections – most recent of which is Back from Away . Genial host of popular long-running poetry podcast Eat the Storms , he's also editor-in-chief of its sister title, The Storms : a printed journal of poetry, prose and visual art . the poems The Retreat, Early On 00:00 / 01:26 First day of school, first glimpse of what it’s like to be eaten, slowly. There is no room for insecurity in the playground. You must learn this quickly but no one will tell you this until it is too late. There are beasts in the jungle of the yard, hungry to swallow up all the others haven’t learned has value. By lunchtime, you will have taught yourself to remove pieces in order to preserve. As poet, I start with the mouth, in order to hone words. By the second day, wear only one eyebrow, drop the left eye below the right, remove both ears – anything that can be a hook or can hear. Paint yourself with the yoke of a stale egg, banish any hint of perfection, too young to know you’ll never be able to reclaim this upon release. Hook After Sun in an Empty Room by Edward Hopper (1963) 00:00 / 01:24 He locked the door, after she left, after that time she never spoke of but the disappearance of her scent from the sheets in the days that followed, twisted itself around the truth of her no return. He locked the bedroom door, hoping to catch her shadow, particles of skin that had fallen, a droplet or two of sweat cycle saliva or one of the many tears he knew she’d expelled in the dark behind his back after he’d cum & she, while in situ, appeared to depart. He spied, at times, through the keyhole, how the outside light slipped in, how it cast a door upon solid wall from the shut window and he imagined her frame, unfading into focus, coming back for things she’d left behind like the ring that he hoped would hook. In the End, Light Filters Down 00:00 / 01:54 to a point beyond projection and on the side lines; all we sidelined mother father friend, the things we took and the time that was taken from us that we could never take back. There were tracks but this desert had no desire to be soiled, swept away all we had scuffed. We prayed but for Gods’ sake nothing was permanent. We were building blocks in others' hands we didn’t see growing tired whose tongues never knew the taste of our own thoughts which, like flames, were only bound to ash. When the light fell it was sand, not sky, we are corroded from birth like the coast not destined to the constellations – not plough nor star. We formed words fucked words flung words but the language was never ours to comprehend. We were bits, in boxes yokes – scrambling to be something other for someone else. In the end, all we leave is a howl a haunting to rattle through a space that never really held us in place. Publishing credits The Retreat, Early On / In the End, Light Filters Down: exclusive first publication by iamb Hook: Fevers of the Mind (Apr 13th 2022)

Hear poet Laura Warner read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Laura Warner wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Laura Warner (she/her) is a poet, teacher and researcher. She grew up in Luton but lives now in Devon, where she's a PhD student at the University of Exeter. Her creative writing thesis, Menstrual Poetics , looks at the impact of menstrual culture and politics on unwell menstrual bodies. Her poetry has appeared in Dear Reader , Poetry Wales , The Moth , Acropolis Journal , and Lucy Writers Platform . the poems After Watching The Craft 00:00 / 01:53 We are a teenage coven, cross-legged around our brown bottled brew, that we, with our spells, our bewitchment, our camisole tops, charmed a man into buying from the Happy Shopper. Nice man. We are going-on fourteen, we are going out tonight, we are tasting beer for the very first time. I am the dark-haired witch. I have the biggest pentagram and the thickest rings of eyeliner. I am the one they will blame when our bottles are found slung behind the period bins; I am the one Zoe’s mum will corner, saying, you’ve ruined her 13th birthday. That’s what they say: you are the ring-leader – you are the one who needs reining in – you are the liability, the wildchild, the total fucking nightmare. We are a teenage coven in lace tights, black boots, and pink fluffy pigtails, wearing each other’s clothes – hot-pants, tie-tops, we are thrown out, bringing the party to the carpark. I am the one who downs the whole beer, though it tastes like gone-off pop from grandma’s coal barn, because I want to say, yes, I drank the whole fucking thing. Watch me hold the empty glass above my head, the warm foam curdling in my hair mascara, dripping down the front of my crop top – watch me single-out a friend to push my body against – spreading knees wide, thrusting hips low, working the beat, the strap of my cami slipping off my shoulder as I loll on the bonnet of Zoe’s dad’s car – Zoe’s dad’s eyes glued to the tarmac as he fumbles for his keys – I said watch me. Just watch me. First Full Day of Bleeding 00:00 / 02:10 Change your knickers within thirty minutes of putting them on. Answer your daughter’s questions. Let her see the brown blood in the cup. Point out the lumps. Make an insufficient amount of porridge. Leave it to clot in the pan. Cut the bread poorly. Talk into the wrong phone. Put on clothes that resemble pyjamas, dark at the crotch. Let a friend pick you up and take you for coffee in a café she can park right outside. Cry because they’re out of their vegan chocolate spread. Stare into space. Feel your legs fizz as you climb the stairs to the exit. Lean against a doorframe on the main road. This is you, typical you, imagining yourself exhausted. Lay your head down on the passenger seat. Follow your friend around M&S clutching a pot of coconut yoghurt that is too expensive, readying yourself for the feeling of blood spilling. Buy the yoghurt. Eat it in bed with a heat pack in your knickers. Another pair of knickers. Wipe blood from the toilet seat/lino/sink. Call yourself a lazy prick because you know you should write this but don’t know how to make yourself start. Read instead. Call yourself a stupid lazy prick because you can’t follow the words in the book you are trying to read about menstrual cycles. Look at the pictures instead. Call yourself a self-obsessed stupid lazy prick because you keep thinking about how bad you feel when you’re meant to be studying the diagrams. Wish your heat pack was still hot. Get teary. Text your partner that you miss him. Find an episode of Escape to the Country hosted by Alistair Appleton. Enjoy his woollen waistcoat. His beard. The way he has aged and rounded with you. Fall asleep before he reveals the mystery property. How to Fish 00:00 / 01:36 It’s not my job to teach you how to fish. You can’t keep splashing around in rockpools with a cane-handled net declaring yourself a fisherman, sitting in your beach hut, boasting state-of-the-art binoculars. Oh, you’ve identified a buoy? Bobbing far out? You've photographed it, considered it, and can report the outlook to be ‘as benign as dimpled buttocks’? This is not fishing! ‘Boning up,’ you call it: online tutorials, squeezing ships into bottles, boasting your dexterity tugging those tiny strings. Slow. Hand. Clap. Just saying, I hate your personalized logbook: You’re a reel catch isn’t funny, and what do you have to record? You spend days admiring your arse in your yellow bib and brace. Where are your bait fish? Where is your tackle? You’ve no pots, no spear, not even a sharpened stick. Meanwhile, here I am, night after night, paddling in the shallows, feet all snared up in your ghost nets. Imagine: they’ve never caught as much as a crab, but somehow, I’m entangled. Now, the tide’s coming in, it’s as dark as an ultrasound, and where the hell are you? Occupied reciting the shipping forecast, grilling fishfingers, combing your beard. Dock-talker! Cock-walker! Aye-aye, Captain Bird’s-Eye View – pedlar of bycatch and discard. Publishing credits After Watching The Craft / How to Fish: exclusive first publication by iamb First Full Day of Bleeding: The Moth (Issue 51, Winter 2022)

Hear poet Jenny Mitchell read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jenny Mitchell wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Jenny Mitchell is the winner of the Poetry Book Awards 2021, and joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize 2019. She also won the inaugural Ironbridge Prize, the Bedford Prize and the Gloucester Poetry Society Open Competition. Her best-selling debut collection, Her Lost Language , was one of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 as chosen by Poetry Wales. Jenny's second collection, Map of a Plantation , was an Irish Independent ‘Literary Find’, and is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her latest collection is Resurrection of a Black Man . the poems Bending Down to Worship 00:00 / 02:42 Church Mary said her God was in the ground, not Satan but all the things that grew, and flowers were the gems upon His crown. She made a garden all around her house – a broken shack she called a palace where she reigned. You couldn’t step beyond her door unless you brought her a bouquet or something green and pulsing full of life. She filled each glass and bowl she found with blooms she called her jewels though they were better as they gave a lovely scent. She tended to her tiny Eden till the flowers reached above her head – the colours bold against dark skin, so filled with shining light. Her headwraps were like floral wreaths, and every dress was made of faded flowers, the age-old boots like clumps of mud. The days when she was forced to work out in the fields, she feared the sun might scorch her garden. She ran out of the cane the moment that the whistle blew and went to fetch pure water from the stream. Her flowers had to live as they were all the freedom that she knew. On nights when she was grieving, she went outside to kneel amongst the plants, bend her head and talk to God. He answered back by showing her another rock or stone she had to move, revealing yet more ground on which to grow more buds. One Sunday, when the white priest tried to make her go to church, she offered him her shining patch of land with one sweep of her arm. She said I never saw your Jesus, but when I die I’ll end up in the ground to feed the things I love to grow, and that is all the heaven I will need. He damned her as a Godless slave. But when he left, she heard the voice of God again. He spoke to her of flowers as she bent to ornament His crown. Black Men Carry Flowers 00:00 / 01:23 red blossoms on their palms. hibiscus blooms from fingertips. waterlilies circle wrists in contrast to their shade heavy-laden with this crop, they move with grace. vines cling to arms. ferns worn as green insignia. warriors of peace they grow on any street. if you look up. see men are grand estates. a wealth of plants. once torn from land. they burgeon in the wild reach out in dappled light. wide shoulder blades replete with yellow orchids. chests are dappled lawns rolling to a bank of leaves delicate but strong morning glories shape their legs. bougainvillea bends the knees. ripples as it clings to thighs tumbling to the shins. agile on the ground jasmine moves the feet. every step a heady scent rising through a man-made-plant. flourishing. their words fall out as petals. The Seamstress For my grandmother 00:00 / 01:33 I’ll be the dress she never owned – immaculate for special days, the only burden heavy frills and English lace along the hem. I’ll never trail in dirt or suffer dust from cane fields. My heart will burst to make a bodice, stitched with bold Jamaican flowers: yellow orchids, red hibiscus. There will be a giant fern appliqued on her back: my ribcage opened to its full extent. I’ll raise my chin to make the high, firm collar – a throat so elegant, with space to hold my voice. I’ll ask her what she really wants – plain cuffs or golden buttons. Underneath the dress, I’ll make myself silk underwear, a soft and pretty petticoat. Its one equivalent will be her newly coddled skin. My feet will make such dainty shoes, and she will go like Cinderella to the ball. But if she doesn’t want the prince this time she’ll dance away without a care. The English lace will shimmer as she moves. Publishing credits Bending Down to Worship: Map of a Plantation Black Men Carry Flowers: Resurrection of a Black Man The Seamstress: Her Lost Language (all collections from Indigo Dreams Publishing) Author photo: ©Billy Grant

Hear poet Angela Dye read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Angela Dye wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Angela Dye is a writer, editor, podcaster, teacher, reviewer, interviewer and radio broadcaster. She runs many literary events and projects in Kent, England, and has worked for various magazines and businesses creating audio content. Angela's work has appeared in several print and digital magazines. She's currently writing a novel, as well as her second poetry book. the poems The Ruby and the Con 00:00 / 00:50 Oh you patriarchs who regulate the calyx vase, who decree the mix of wine, milk and honey, who place me on the shelf to admire, to tame, to spill. Know this: I possess myself. I hug my curves tight, I vibrate myself within my jar. I unsteady the shelf. I smash the walls. My mother’s chambers no longer constrain me. I escape as viscous perfume, filling all the cracks. I, woman, am so wonderful and vast, I will fill boots, books, beds, babies, benches and brains. We shall run the Rubicon. We shall fill the Earth. And that shall not constrain us. The calyx is the female reproductive part of a flower. A calyx vase holds the mythical wine, honey and milk – different combinations of which denote women’s purity and immortality. Soup 00:00 / 01:33 Before the baby sun had been hurled hot into an unmade bed of sky, before earth was made, compliant and lush, we were dreaming the world, cooking up ideas, where nothing matters – he coerced me. Just once. Asked for soup. Just soup. Soup? Yes! I want it without humans in! Just a refreshing bowl of soup for the soul. Little things matter. Soup matters. Matter's in the soup: illusion and dreams, hopes and art, his dark materials to stir the soul. Season with love. So much love. Love to be made. There are many ways to kill a man. One could harm with charm, cut, drown, crown, disown, dismember, diss, hiss, piss take, mistake, disarm, cut, drown, burn, spurn, tickle, taunt, tar and feather, strap with leather, hail, nail. But remember this … the easiest way, by far the surest method to kill a good man, once and for all, is to slowly, ever so slowly, keep ... him … alive. The Borderline 00:00 / 02:11 We live in another world now, where forgiveness is no longer a magic spell, where potions are stolen, cannot be wolfed down, and Lupin cries to the moon. He wants to be good but he has this suit ... They say six foot is the best depth. This is so the stench doesn’t arise and the body is not taken so easy – for cannibalism, or even necrophilia. But five inches in, and we have hit hard strata. At first we thought we knew what we were looking at – two bodies at most, possibly, lying atop, a third. But after a while we needed the experts, the archaeologists, the social diarists and the film crews. The first cut was the hardest: that slice through still warm sinew and the gleam of bone. And now ... I cannot go any further than this. The spade has hit the denying rock that yields no more. Please say no more. I would have met you half way – I even wanted to hide the murderer in the cupboard, feed him warm milk from these old breasts. I thought that knowing we were monsters would keep us safe, our brushes with death keeping us alive. You didn’t tell us where the bodies lay. Keen senses of smell led us, dogs baying, that spotting of the perfect lawn perturbed, the fountain in the patio off kilter and the water killing the birds, the keepsakes shining in a window display. But she is a forensic expert – she will find them all. Although destroyed and with their souls sucked out, we have set them free roaming in a street near you. There can be no forgiveness now. It isn’t even needed. A monster can’t help but devour, doing what it is made to do. All one can do is run and hide. Publishing credits The Ruby and the Con / The Borderline: exclusive first publication by iamb Soup: The Echo Chamber (Whisky and Beards)

Hear poet Rowan Lyster read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rowan Lyster wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Bristol-based poet and physiotherapist-in-training Rowan Lyster is currently living with Long COVID. Her poems have been published widely: most notably, in Bath Magg , Magma , Poetry Wales and The Rialto . Rowan is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective 2022-23. Her pamphlet, We Will Be Fine , is forthcoming from Little Betty. the poems It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar 00:00 / 01:08 I am having a flare-up of brain fog. In the heat, the nurse said many patients report feeling a weighted blanket on their limbs. There is no timeline for recovery. Everything is always the hardest thing. I am having a bit of trouble with my breathing. A flare up of weighted blankets and elephants standing on my head. The nurse said sometimes your brain is cornflour mixed with water. It is important to live inside the fatigue diary. Actions causing fatigue, like completing a diary or self-blame, should be listed in the fatigue diary. The air is exhausted, a weighted blanket. Sometimes it is cornflour mixed with elephants. There is nothing new to offer here. The sofa and I resent each other. I have been referred to an app for patients and sucked all the sugar off the ibuprofen. Once again he has been pulled from a sea 00:00 / 01:03 the barnacles on the harbour wall have taken his hair and part of his scalp he is vomiting on my coat we both apologise then laugh the ocean recedes uncovers pieces of him I hadn’t noticed he is carrying my shoes for me lemon cake is arriving for his birthday the middle is full of poppy seeds people singing we are riding the dodgems when he drives straight into a metal spike it protrudes between his shoulder blades while he keeps asking me why they’ve let the signs get rusty a sound like fingers through lentils beneath us the ground is becoming thinner I stack shingles to resemble a beach it would be easier without his hand pebble-dry and cold in mine Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy 00:00 / 01:18 I suggest a fun night out, in which we will visit and destroy a series of homes. It seems proper to begin with the mansion, which, of course, we burn down. From below the ha-ha, we watch inhabitants flee in dressing gowns. Despite the flames reflected in your eyes, you lack a certain zeal. We move on to more conceptual methods: ant eggs in the curtain linings, floodlights installed outside bedroom windows, disheartening messages daubed on walls. We deal with colleagues, and then friends. You sleep with someone else’s husband; I steal a newborn and exchange it for a cabbage. Our family homes are less of a challenge than might have been expected. Through the letterbox, a manila envelope containing a warning note and new passports. At dawn, when nobody else is left, you bundle yourself into a cupboard, duct-tape your own mouth and ankles while I take a clawhammer to the fuse box, block the sink and leave the tap running, finding a little peace in the knowledge that I did everything I could to help. Publishing credits It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar: And Other Poems (November 8th 2023) Once again he has been pulled from a sea / Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jonathan Davidson read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jonathan Davidson wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Jonathan Davidson is a writer, poet and memoirist. He has been published widely, and his most recent book is A Commonplace: Apples, Bricks & Other People’s Poems , which appeared in 2020. Jonathan has also written audio drama for the BBC, and produced touring poetry theatre shows with Bloodaxe Books. He lives in the English Midlands. the poems A Letter to Johann Joachim Quantz Do not be sentimental or in your art ~ W S Graham ~ 00:00 / 01:15 Sir, You tutored me to not expect applause, and I was not disappointed. Though it was still chilblain weather, my fingers lifted like lapping water, letting and stopping the sounds, to make – I hardly reckoned how – one of your capriccios . So they stood me – my hands hard from hauling ropes, my face weather-reddened – in a sweating corner of a silk room and pretended to listen. What forced and servant music rippled through the chambers of the recently rich and along the canals! I was a carrier – as the barge, the smack, the wherry is – of freight or ballast, and out I went into The Baltic or The German Sea. So they kept me for this purpose only, and great service did I do them all, bearing away the frightening silence. Johann Joachim Quantz (1697–1773) was a flautist, composer and teacher, remembered mostly for his book On Playing the Flute. Father 00:00 / 00:49 I walked with my invisible father out into the fields on the edge of town. But they are gone now: new roads, new names, new people. Dad, stay here for a while, I said, and I’ll go and find out what has happened to our lives. He sat on the newly installed bench. And when I returned, furnished with stories of change, I found him utterly dead, his cold eyes on the cold world closed. So many years he had lived here and then this: his roads renamed, his fields built over, his people coming into view as strangers. A Quadratic Equation 00:00 / 01:17 A dad and a daughter are solving a quadratic equation. They are seeking the value of x using the appropriate process, beginning with factorisation. A solution is proving elusive; they are outside the problem looking in at curtained windows. Upstairs a son, who’s employed in the building trade, plays guitar unaware of the mathematical impossibility of ‘equal temperament’. And a mum is in the front room working out the likelihood of character a killing character b before the end of the episode. The daughter and the son cross on the stairs. She is fractious and has been sent to bed, while the dad puts in a couple more hours, but to no avail. Whatever the value of x they shan’t know tonight. And perhaps x has no value. Or perhaps it has many values. Perhaps it is discovered in the dissonant chords that the son untangles, or in the loaded silence between character a and character b before the gun goes off, or perhaps it is simply that which cannot be expressed although it is known to exist. Publishing credits All poems: A Commonplace: Apples, Bricks & Other People’s Poems (Smith|Doorstop) Author photo: © Lee Allen

Hear poet Zelda Chappel read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Zelda Chappel wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Zelda Chappel's first collection, The Girl in the Dog-tooth Coat , was published by Bare Fiction Press in 2015. Her work has also appeared in a number of journals, anthologies and collaborative projects online and in print. Formerly the Editorial Curator of the now defunct Elbow Room mixed arts journal, Zelda continues to work as a creative mentor and workshop facilitator. She won the National Poetry Library's Battered Moons in 2014 , and has been commended in a number of other competitions. the poems PTSD season 00:00 / 00:42 It is at the most inopportune of moments I am caught remembering the pressures of lip on lip & needing the salt of something to savour it, remembering there is a sea & it is ravenous for gritty light & bare skinned sky, all vulnerable & daring it’s delicious & blasphemous to think of what I wasn’t, what it was, what failures I wore instead of you I was sinking still gladly taking on water, unknowing This time of year 00:00 / 00:50 they’re out pushing leaflets through the doors again asking if we left our baby at St Peters if we know who did and it gets me every time I want to confess I left my baby in a chapel too once but she had already left me on Skype we joke about time travel me six hours ahead and you ask for no spoilers so I tell you a have a new desk plant that I called her Callie that there’s a delay on the line and I can hear myself and it’s strange I ask if you’re coming back soon you don’t know your aunt survives another season and no one thought she would Bad air 00:00 / 01:07 and it was in this place I got caught growing light-sick weed’s damp smell a bitter vexation, sweet urine stench a warning in the alley we take every time this is the beginning of the line and the end and the light is tight as a lime, under-grown between my lives, bad air is a grievance I can’t settle this is the beginning of the line and the end and I mutter our griefs constantly, solitude a scream in a fist kept closed, the beginning of the line, the end and water absorbs everything or simply unmakes what we made beginning, the line, the end is tether and death gets proved in our kneading so hard I am breaking, breaking this beginning, end Publishing credits PTSD season: exclusive first publication by iamb This time of year: The Interpreter ’s House (Issue 72) Bad air: Luminous, Defiant (Listen Softly Press)

Hear poet Claire Orchard read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Claire Orchard wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet A Pākehā poet from Aotearoa New Zealand, Claire Orchard is the author of Liveability and Cold Water Cure . She's had poetry published in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Turbine | Kapohau , Sweet Mammalian , NZ Poetry Shelf and 4th Floor Journal . Claire's work was also picked for Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems in 2014 and 2016. A Hawthornden Fellowship recipient in 2016, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and was a poetry columnist for Capital Magazine from 2015 to 2021. the poems After one storm, before the next 00:00 / 01:19 Packing sandbags, hand over hand, against the crumbling bank. Some days it all dribbles away, although they say the human brain retains everything somewhere or other, if I only knew exactly where my subconscious laid it down and the noise rain makes on a corrugated iron roof when heard from beneath the covers of a warm bed is still the best sound in the world. Opening drawers, things overflow, and where to start? Chickens come home to roost but what of these mental bantams, flapping about? Sometimes, moving in the shiny eye of it, I’ll catch sight of your photograph and I’d swear you’re just some model I’ve never met, posing with a full wine glass in an interior design magazine. When I bring up advance care planning 00:00 / 01:46 Mum says oh yes, I keep changing my mind about whether or not I want to be cremated and I say Mum, once you’re gone you won’t care and we’ll just do whatever we want. I’m not talking about after you’re dead, I’m talking about when you’re still alive, about what you want us to do if you can’t speak for yourself, if you’re unconscious or can’t understand what’s going on anymore. Oh, she says. Well, I don’t want to be put in a home, that’s for sure. Unless there’s no other option. So, if the only other option is being dead, you’d rather a home? Yes, I think so. I really don’t want to be in a home but I suppose if it’s that or being dead then I’ll have to consider it. Mum, I’m talking here about when you won’t be able to consider it. Like, do you want to be kept alive if there’s a good chance you won’t wake up, and if you do, you’ll not be able to wipe your own bum or feed yourself? What if you can’t recognise people, if you can no longer hold a conversation? What if you have a massive stroke, and then you stop breathing, would you want CPR? Do you want artificial ventilation if you can’t breathe on your own? These are the sorts of things, the kinds of scenarios you need to consider and then tell us what you want us to do. I suppose so, she says doubtfully. Where duty lies 00:00 / 01:05 It seems my great-grandmother and my grandmother did not get on, even though (or perhaps in part because) one fell in love with and married the other’s son. Yet, when the time came, the younger passed on to me the elder’s Sunday School award she’d kept safe through six weeks sea voyaging and forty-odd years up and down the country on trains. A novel by Silas K. Hocking, gilt embossed, illustrated, awarded in 1899 as first prize to nine-year-old Annie Entwhistle of Albert Road Congregational Sunday School for punctual attendance and good behaviour. And indeed what more could be asked or expected? Publishing credits After one storm, before the next: Sport (No. 46) When I bring up advance care planning: Mayhem (Issue No. 9) Where duty lies: Liveability (Te Herenga Waka University Press) Author photo: © Ebony Lamb

Hear poet Thomas Zimmerman read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Thomas Zimmerman wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet At Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center , and edits The Big Windows Review . He's been active in small press publishing since the 1980s, and his latest poetry book is Dead Man's Quintet . Thomas' poetry can be found in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal , Pulp Poets Press , Green Ink Poetry , A Thin Slice of Anxiety , Grand Little Things and elsewhere. the poems Few Good Things 00:00 / 01:00 A sluggish walk in dewy woods with Ann and Trey, who nearly snagged a fresh-dead bird. The sun burned off some brain fog, thoughts began to breach, and then submerged without a word. Unshowered, stubble-chinned, I had a bad night’s sleep: Trey licking, barking in his dreams. Or maybe it was me, poor poet sad enough to nurse his ironies and memes. And now black coffee’s coursing through my wan and tepid blood, spring-gleam in glacial shade. Yet ennui clings like moss, chill hanging on. Not hard to see how few good things get made. How long this search for beauty, truth, gods’ signs? Ad infinitum? No, just fourteen lines. How Slowly 00:00 / 00:54 Some days, how slowly flows the river: that of consciousness, and I a crumbling cork in it. Oh rudderless. I think of all the swimmers in my streams, some surfers too. All hunted down: white sharks. My screen glows whiter than potential, clean blank canvas stretched, which I, most days, mistake for nothingness. Last night, twice, thunder shook the house. An inch of rain. So muggier than hell today. But after work, I saw a fawn, curled cool in backyard spruce shade, looking at me with intent, or so it seemed. But I admit I often think that you are looking at me that way too. You like to say you’re not. Dispatch 00:00 / 01:10 My dad would have been 94 today, and I’ll be 63 next Saturday. Regardless of which Zimmerman’s alive or dead, years fall like rain to swell the river, same mad god still counting drops. Now, drowned gold sun, dry champagne in your glass, strong ale in mine. I slept in late this morning, haven’t showered. Mind’s a dark pavilion, fairness in the shadow turning blue, and temples gray. I write because I want to feel alive: the poet in the book I’m reading says the same. New moon: late birdsong, whine of tires on the interstate, the bedroom window cracked to let the night air in, death floating lonely and austere. I feel it pass but know that it and I will cycle back. This dispatch from the planet, time, my molecules: so slightly all coheres. Publishing credits Few Good Things: Beakful (November 28th 2023) How Slowly: Disturb the Universe (February 13th 2024) Dispatch: Litmora (No. 0, August 2023)

Hear poet Rae Howells read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rae Howells wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Rae Howells is a poet and journalist from Swansea, UK. She's won both the Welsh International and The Rialto poetry competitions, and her work has featured in a wide range of journals including Magma , The Rialto and Poetry Wales . Rae's poetry has recently appeared in anthologies including The Result is What You See Today and A470: Poems for the Road , in which she also translated her poem into Welsh. She was one of ten poets selected for a digital residency and exchange between Wales and Vietnam, resulting in the collaborative trilingual multi-media showcase, U O | suo . Rae co-authored the pamphlet Bloom and Bones with Jean James, and her collection, The language of bees , is out in 2022. the poems Merchant Vessel Defoe, 1941 00:00 / 01:51 Moon nights were the worst like being on a ruddy stage with the spotlight shining in your eyes the audience somewhere down there in the oily stalls beneath your feet you couldn’t look them in the eye but they saw you all right unblinking periscopes with the waves clapping. we’d clank across the water a band a moving factory waves riddling on the rivets and the machine of the ocean grinding they knew exactly where we were of course they did we were the great flywheel rattling over and they, iron whales, waiting in the tide’s deep belt. So we kept our backs to Brazil and breathed our hope to Swansea. We were bananas tucked in our skins sweating in boxes in the tin stomach of the hull our hands worrying black spiders in our sleep I couldn’t swim a stroke y’know kept my steel helmet on so I could drown the quicker I hated the watch all that starless black stretching out like a long ear listening our convoy was the world we could have been the only people alive the others wavering candles alongside lamps and smoke the cigarette ends flaring and then – BANG! you always saw the white flash of death before you heard the whump of it before you retched at the cordite stink chlorine fire and oil burning on saltwater and the shouts of tiny men flung into the moonroad you couldn’t help but wonder when your turn would come I’ve still got my medals somewhere, y’know, tucked up in a tin box round as faces. The swing 00:00 / 02:02 Six years on but still, sometimes, I wake and find you in the dawn, the woman from the mother-and-baby group, pushing the swing, still there, in that playground – do you remember? both of us in the park: your older daughter is straddled into the safety swing, her legs flying up towards the sun as she leaves you and comes back, leaves you, and comes back and I am with you, the wind insisting itself into everything, the row of boats along the foreshore with their metalwork ringing, crying out, my own baby snug in the hull of her pram, and her small, reliable, heart working, winging in its chest so that when I gull myself next to you – squawking too noisily about motherhood – I almost miss your daughter’s eyes, locked onto you, airborne tight, as she reluctantly leaves you, and leaves you, a series of small griefs, her swoop, her snag of delight, each time caught uncertainly in that belly-drop moment between soaring joy and parting. I was too slow to notice you were a cracked egg, albumen leaking out of you, the way you forced yourself to push the swing away, willed your muscles to obey, each push a wrench of the heart. I presumed you had simply left your baby boy with your mother. But of course, there are your daughter’s eyes, fixed on you as you slowly implode – you, with your heart strung up on a pendulum – transfixed, watching you caught in that terrible moment between: oscillating, flying away, hands outstretched for the miraculous return. The winter-king 00:00 / 00:52 little-word bird little wren feathered lung only built for singing purifying freezing air through a feather ball chitter chatter piper little wren little brownleaf keeneye built for singing round like a minim little wren pink wire feet gripping winter’s branches holding on to cold little bird only built to pipe built to whistle keeneye watching snow fall crowning the holly little thornbeak feathered bauble hanging on the pine only built to sing turning cold air into arias too quick for the ice to catch little keeneye raised eyebrow jingling the dead leaf bells surely too small to be – but they say you’re the winter-king only you can sing us into light Publishing credits Merchant Vessel Defoe, 1941: Magma (Issue 74) The Swing: Please Give Me Your Heart to Hold – longlisted for the Winchester Poetry Prize 2019 The winter-king: The Rialto – winner of The Rialto Nature Poetry Competition 2018