find a poet

Hear poet Radka Thea Otípková read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Radka Thea Otípková wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Though her first language is Czech, Radka Thea Otípková fell in love with English as a young adult. Her poetry has been featured in B O D Y , The North , Moria and Tears in the Fence . In 2017, her pamphlet The Edge of Anything was shortlisted in the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition. Her poem Coup de grâce was shortlisted in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition that same year. Thea won the Waltham Forest Poetry Competition in 2019, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. the poems Tut’s Tomb Talks 00:00 / 01:17 I am waiting for you. Part of my wall will need to go to get you in. It will never heal, this is how they'll find me, small, perfunctory, unfit for a king, but I'll hold it all: chariots, thrones, trumpets, perfumes, precious oils, lapis and gold, and apricots, oh, apricots, I'll often imagine them perishing in the dark long after they have gone, I'll recall the odour of lamb changing in strength, from a mere waft to a putrid punch – who'd ever think in cessation there is so much life – no, no eternity's resins and balms can stop the bustle of dying in the jars housing your liver and lungs, or in the muffled echo of your anatomy's final sarcophagus. I'll never miss you. You will never not be with me and when even the deaths have died and there's nothing left but desiccated time, I shall still keep the breathing riddle of you inside your missing heart. Marble 00:00 / 00:45 Trace its veins and swirls. Speak of impurities. Say clay, silt, sand. Say chert. Say guilt. Forgive me. Send the light unstonily deep, let it spill onto its ashen wax. Mramor, marmor, marmo, marmori, go, look for it, find it in any language, any it, any us, any you, any torpor, any suspended hope, close its cold graceful finger in your warm, wet, mortal mouth and wait for it to prune. Coup de grâce 00:00 / 01:08 In the end his body puked him out as if it were only a stomach and a mouth. It didn't let him just slip away. But maybe it matters less than we think. Look at his mother. There she is. No longer tearing at the meat of what remains, but opening the window. The night is there. What can you do but make a simple gesture that might mean anything. Hand on chest. Fingertips on lips. Or just stand however gravity wants you to. The night is launching a skin boat. No prayers are heard. If you lean out a little, you’ll see it too. The night. The moon. The overflowing eye of a fish cooking. Publishing credits Tut's Tomb Talks / Coup de grâce: B O D Y Marble: Tears in the Fence

Hear poet Thomas McColl read poems for wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb. Thomas McColl wave 17 spring 2024 back next the poet Thomas McColl lives in London and has published two collections of poetry – Being With Me Will Help You Learn and Grenade Genie . He's read as a featured poet at many events in London and elsewhere, including Hearing Eye , Paper Tiger Poetry , Celine's Salon and The Quiet Compere . Thomas has also been featured on East London Radio, BBC Radio Kent, BBC Radio WM and TV's London Live. the poems Susan Sharp 00:00 / 00:59 Susan Sharp was what my first employer, the local butcher, called the knife he’d use to slice the meat. By way of explanation, he said he spent more time with Susan than he ever did with his wife. ‘Tis pity she’s a knife,' he’d joke, but most of the time he was simply singing Susan’s praises – saying how much he loved her serrated, lop-sided smile, her blood-red lipstick, her lust for naked carcasses, and the ease with which she’d split a heart in two, yet always give in to his demands. On my first day, he threatened to slice off my hands when I went to touch her. ‘There’s only one commandment in a butcher’s shop,’ he scowled. ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s knife.’ Working at that butcher’s shop was my first job, and I didn’t even manage to last a week with that paranoid psycho freak, and Susan Sharp, his knife, who he’d fallen in love with and spent more time with than he ever did with his wife. Look at That! 00:00 / 01:01 'Daddy – look at that! a top hat on a tea pot,' you shout, as we stop just a little too close to a china display in the shop and, with a swipe of your hand, you make a fat pot-headed Victorian gentleman involuntarily doff his hat, and a second later, you realise why he doesn't do that – even though he's Victorian and you're a lady (albeit a little madam) – when his hat (which, foolishly, he'd had made out of posh china rather than plush silk) smashes into pieces on the floor. And while you sob and sulk at the realisation, I pay the bill for the damage, while keeping an eye out, as I'm carrying you, that you don't knock any of the many ornate objects crowded round the till, but instead your damned dinky destructive digit starts prodding the top of my face, and my invisible top hat (which, foolishly, I'd had made out of frayed nerves rather than woven silk) is once more pushed to the edge, and once more (just about) remains in place. Hard Tears 00:00 / 00:43 I often cried in front of you – sometimes when you hit me, once when, as you were teaching me to ride a bike, you let go of the handlebars and losing control I fell off, and once, when teaching me DIY, you gave me a heavy claw hammer to bang some nails into wood and I proceeded to bang my thumb instead. ‘For Pete’s sake!’ you said, disgusted. ‘You’re thirteen. Don’t you think it’s about time you managed to resist the urge to blub like a girl every time you get hurt?’ Well, I never cried in front of you again – not even years later at your funeral. Though I was devastated, the tears just wouldn’t come. I wish you could have seen it. You’d have been proud. Publishing credits Susan Sharp: Co-incidental 4 (The Black Light Engine Room) Look at That!: Ink, Sweat & Tears Hard Tears: Burning House Press

Hear poet Jonathan Humble read poems for wave 17 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jonathan Humble wave 17 spring 2024 back next the poet The poetry of Jonathan Humble, a retired deputy head teacher who lives in Cumbria, has appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies. He's published a short collection of his work – Fledge – and is editor of the much-praised, much-admired children's poetry website, The Dirigible Balloon . As well as delivering poetry workshops in schools for Wordsworth Grasmere, Jonathan was Poet in a Fridge for Radio Cumbria's Poetry Takeaway during the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in 2020. the poems Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles 00:00 / 00:51 Einstein phoned the other day. Wanted to speak quite urgently with my dog, Derek: said that Derek’s theory of quantum stiles was interesting but lacked empirical evidence and wasn’t supported by the mathematics. Derek disagreed: described the process of walking with me, taking the early morning river route along the side of the Kent under Cumbrian skies. Every gate and stile a quantum barrier, separating countless possibilities of constantly branching parallel universes: facts on the far side of each wall blurred, until the stile is crossed with a new reality created through observation … and sometimes, rewarded with a biscuit. Red Pencil 00:00 / 01:36 I am six years old, my pencil breaks mid-word in Mrs Foster’s class. So I turn to my friend Martin, show him the pencil and whisper, ‘Martin, Martin, my pencil has broke.’ ‘Use this,’ he says and passes a substitute, secretly under our desk. ‘But it’s a red pencil, Martin,’ I say. He smiles a smile. It is an ‘it’ll all be okay’ sort of smile and so I carry on, copying lines of words I cannot read, but which I try my very hardest to replicate, as neat and true to the original as I am able, at six, to do. At the finish, I look down at my page of writing; my teacher’s lines above, with mine in red below, and I wonder about the words I have written. I am happy with the result of my effort; especially the esses, which are smooth and curvy, and flowing and lovely. They are the best I have ever done. So, I walk twenty paces to Mrs Foster’s desk, clutching my paper with pride, and return ten yards with a slapped leg, my work in shreds in a basket, having a brand new perspective on the way of things, and on the reliability of my friend Martin. Early Morning Effrontery 00:00 / 00:59 I fear porcelain is not your milieu and your persistence in performing eight-legged running man dances up sheer white bathroom edifices under the gaze and malevolence of the attentive cat bastard flexing its tail on this toilet seat will prove an effrontery too far. Darwin’s theory of natural selection will happen well before adaptation occurs. Before the hairs on your scopulae develop greater adhesive powers and you are able to ascend unharmed, I suspect you will become terribly broken. So here I am again, 6:30 in the morning, offering toilet paper ladders in the bath tub, before I can shower in peace and the furry purry assassin, so beloved in our household, can be persuaded out of the bathroom to wander off and find something else to murder instead. Publishing credits Derek’s Theory of Quantum Stiles:Tyger Tyger Magazine Red Pencil: Atrium Early Morning Effrontery: Fledge (Maytree Press)

Hear poet Ysella Sims read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ysella Sims wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet Poet, writer and producer Ysella Sims has had her work featured in The Guardian , Brittle Star and the The Blue Nib Literary Magazine , where she was a contributing editor. Ysella produces poetry and spoken-word events, as well as the immersive poetry podcast, Tell Me Something . She published her first poetry pamphlet, you are here , in 2021. the poems Echo 00:00 / 01:45 They watch the screen as the sonographer traces slow circles on her belly and the room dulls to a thick, cloistered hush. In another room, smaller, colder the world rends, roils beneath the blue plastic sofa while they wait for the midwife to tell them, it doesn’t look good. In the weeks between, they lean against the cool bark of the witching tree on the heath whisper pleas into its tessellations stick stray feathers into the sand to arrange their wishes, just so. And when it is time, she lies still oh-so-still on the table holds her breath behaves. Outside, a morning of crows bare-branched, murdering the brumal air with clatter and chaws; a carnival flash of parakeets at the Richmond window. Sun breaking through dank in the gorse-crowned field to colour the sky sugared pink starling egg blue the sweet heft of a pear-sized ghost in her arms. I am turning into all the mothers 00:00 / 00:45 I am turning into all the mothers my younger self condemned; the ones that baulked at journeys, heights, the world beyond the door the diazepam-rattlers cake-offerers, stomach-ragers sobbers the confidence-tricksters told-you-so-ers nitpickers frowners the news-tutters jar-scrapers eavesdroppers sighers – all those felled by their children’s fingers un- – picking the strings. Folk Festival, 1982 00:00 / 01:21 All she remembers is that there was a coach brimful with men and women punchdrunk with Friday night and possibility, the air sun-ripe and sweet kids stacked amongst kit bags fiddles and sticks and as dusk fell a field of yellow and green where they pitched their tents and Big Sue, apple-cheeked and bangled, squeezed her brother into her bosom’s curve in the tent’s zipped orange glow a car park, pulsing with music and bells light spilling from the pub like it was somebody’s front room the electric scent of men their danced-in shirts the velveted whirl of women’s black-chokered throats childrens’ voices in the glow-wormed hedges and a scratchy-faced stranger pinning her, like a butterfly, to the August ground – her brother, reaching in to release her like she was one of his own. Publishing credits Echo: The Blue Nib I am turning into all the mothers / Folk Festival, 1982: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Olivia Dawson read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Olivia Dawson wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Discovering poetry as a mature Open University student, Olivia Dawson went on to publish her debut pamphlet, Unfolded , in September 2020. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Magma , Under the Radar , Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal , 14 Magazine and Eye Flash Poetry. Her work is also in the anthology, Time & Tide . Originally from London, Olivia now lives between there and Lisbon, where she's the area's Poetry Society Stanza representative. the poems Kylerhea Ferry Slip – Isle of Skye 00:00 / 00:36 Two moon jellyfish tremble close to shore where chill water licks slippery rocks. The sea pleats like accordion silk until an otter stirs the surface, twitches drops from whiskers, peers about, chases his tail then deep dives to re-emerge alongside the white flash of a fin zinc against teal, tacking a seam through spindrift like running stitch. Uncertain Coast Found poem with words from the Met Office online 00:00 / 00:46 Sunnier drizzle will probably spread through variable conditions with a risk of wet and dry. Somewhat changeable, but more settled, however perhaps cloudier thunder in odd spots should be expected, at times from the West, even the South. Elsewhere a chance of mist, the spread of an average, the possibility of breezy seas, scatterings of outlook, bright fog interspersed with isolated dying. Cold spells bounce back slowly, wintry snow patchy in occasional places, uncertain coast likely to last until May. Cosmetologist Creates Shampoo Infused with Sound 00:00 / 00:51 It’s hard to trap snuffles of a baby’s breath, the sssh of foam at low tide or the exhausted sigh of a heart when it breaks. I need silence, a sleight of hand, butterfly nets, Blu Tack to catch elusive threads, a freezer set to hoar frost until echoes split ready to be grated and mixed with white peach. Of course I make mistakes: the last batch picked up the zing of a trampoline spring from over the garden wall. But uncork this flask and what do you get? Why – use your imagination! Publishing credits Kylerhea Ferry Slip – Isle of Skye: Coast to Coast to Coast (Special Aldeburgh Issue) Uncertain Coast: 14 Magazine (Series 2, Issue 2) Cosmetologist Creates Shampoo Infused with Sound: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Anna Saunders read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Anna Saunders wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival , Anna Saunders has been described as a poet 'of quite remarkable gifts' (Bernard O’Donoghue) and 'a modern myth maker' (Paul Stephenson) who 'surely can do anything' (The North ). She's the author of five collections – including Communion, Kissing the She Bear and Ghosting for Beginners – with her sixth, Feverfew, due out later in 2020. the poems In the Flooded Woods 00:00 / 01:23 It's not as if we were together long, I tell my heart, but it isn’t listening. In the flooded woods long blades of garlic have been crushed by the storm and water lilies float like white crowns knocked from sunken kings. A bough drips ivy, clings to another tree, like a drowning man grasping his rescuer’s arm. The pine tree is full of goldfinches, their metallic chatter a teasing squabble. There is a dove, fluttering to a settle. A male bird flies down and lands on its back. There's a fury of pearl and platinum, a flourish of wings like skirts billowing up. The coupling is brief, but beautiful, and in the spring light, the birds resemble angels. I have all the symptoms of grief. I am wide eyed at night, and my heart races. But oh – the memory of two creatures colliding, that airborne heat, before they both flew off into separate skies. I am pedigree I am snow fox I am Siamese 00:00 / 01:36 In the asylum they shave off my fur so they can electric me. When I mew they show me a clump of blond in a flat palm and I say I am pedigree I am snow fox I am Siamese. At night the janitor creeps into the ward where I sleep without blankets – tells me I should be on all fours. I used to lie in a man’s lap, my belly rising and falling like a swelling tide, my pink tips like tiny gems. I’d try to sew myself on him – my claws, glinting stitches. When my warmth sent him under I’d creep back out into the dusk, bring back bloodied gifts that I ripped down from the sky. I brought a rat once, its entrails ribboning. They say I have a severed self – as if to love the warmth of a soft cushioned room and the spiky and musky dark equally were an aberration. In the asylum we are given cold meats. I do not hunt because I am hungry. He hit me when I brought the first mouse, kicked me for the blackbird. It’s not out of love that I lay these trophies at his feet, but I let him think so. What I Learnt from the Owl 00:00 / 01:05 What I learnt from the owl how to hunt in silken plumage tooled up with talons and hooks how to split the seam of the night with saw-tooth wings how to consume all I kill yet stay hungry. What I learnt from the owl how to haunt sleep my head – a phantom full moon how to be outcast and avenger spectre and seraphim, winged god and ghoul 　 bladed angel dropping from the sky. What I learnt from the owl 　 how to voice my darkness in hisses, in shrieks 　 how to drop from the heights, heart-shaped face falling to earth 　 as if love itself were plummeting. Publishing credits In the Flooded Woods: As it Ought to Be (August 26th 2019) – originally appearing as In the Drowned Woods I am pedigree I am snow fox I am Siamese: IceFloe Press (January 17th 2020) What I Learnt from the Owl: Dear Reader (June 5th 2019)

Hear poet Faye Alexandra Rose read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Faye Alexandra Rose wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Faye Alexandra Rose is the author of four chapbooks: When Memory Fades , Incognito , Mortal Beings and Pneuma – the last of these shortlisted for the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Faye's forthcoming release, Wild Women , is due out with Sunday Mornings at the River. the poems A Force of Nature 00:00 / 00:28 We are Earth’s daughters, hips like rolling hills, moss-laced breasts quench your eternal thirst. We contain the ocean, unpredictable beauty, one pull of the moon creates a ruinous storm. We weaponize life’s sting like the blazing sun —even wildflowers can survive barren lands. We grow lungs like the roots of a birch tree, and nest fragility out the reach of beasts. Womb of the State TW: SA 00:00 / 00:33 Humanity is no longer human when people dig out their souls with coat hangers. Fearful of others with needles for hands waiting to thread their bodies to a backward piece of legislation. Two lines on plastic equate to a cross, righteousness woven with power like thorns in the skull. Wombs are crime scenes wrapped in yellow tape, for conceiving from brutality and not from being raped. Whilst stained white flags sway in limp hands, cursed tongues pray for their bodies to be cut free. My estranged father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 00:00 / 01:12 Dad, if I can still call you that, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt entitled enough, for your silhouette has always stood empty within photographs but your presence has always lingered, like a punch in the gut, as I’ve lived my life mourning a man who has never been and never will be. For I heard whispers through grapevines that your brain is a ball of yarn, your memory unravelling, forgiving you for all past sins. And I’ve spat bile at empty pages since I read that news, but each time it only ever seems to poison me as I pull at my skin to prove to myself that I’m real, trying to fathom that you no longer remember I exist. And I clung on for dear life Dad, I did, I never lost hope that I could hear your voice for the first time, an apology. But I must continue living with the pain of being forgotten, You don’t know I exist; I didn’t exist; I don’t exist. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Literary magazine iamb is an archive of contemporary poets reading their own poems. It's also a quarterly journal of contemporary poetry from around the world. about iamb Part library of poets, part quarterly journal, iamb is where established and emerging talents are showcased side by side. Not just their words, but their readings of them. Expect new poems, every three months, free to your device of choice. ~ Mark Antony Owen, Creator & Curator, February 2020 ~ how you can support iamb The simplest way is to share your favourite poets' pages on social media. You can also donate whatever you can afford to help keep this journal online, ad free and free to all. Thank you for coming, for reading, perhaps donating. Above all, thank you for listening.

Hear poet Dominic Weston read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dominic Weston wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Dominic Weston makes wildlife programmes for television, runs over the Mendip hills, and writes poetry. His work has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, journals and anthologies, including Ink, Sweat & Tears and Green Ink Poetry . Once, he even slipped off the page into poetry film . Dominic's work veers into the natural world – often with a healthy undercurrent of darkness. Adopted as a baby, and having lost both parents to prolonged illness in recent years, Dominic treasures most the poems he writes about his family. the poems November 00:00 / 01:35 Scissoring volleys snip across the dripping field call and counter-call sewing lines of reassurance between fleets of long-tailed tits as they slip westwards from the cider orchard through the beeches to infiltrate a long thorn hedge Half the front leg of a roe deer is sheathed in mud-washed fur, a finger of matt bone protruding at one end, a black flinty hoof at the other – rejected by the nose of a curious hound articulated by the shunt of a cautious boot Ghost memories of deer appear along the Fosseway in the dun flanks of fallen field stone greenish with algae half-light fashioning their features Pale flashes on the path, peroxide husks look like Bambi tails not the fallen maize wraps from a squirrel’s overhanging store Thwud! Strikingly rigid and damp-dense Millie claps my knee backs with an over-long branch Labrador trots her pride in the mimic trophy – her own piece of Jane Doe Beneath our feet limestone knucklebones push up through the blackspots of let down sycamore palms yellowing gloves smooth the naked crevices November is the time when the ground is made. The Daedalus I Knew Inspired by the bronze statue Daedalus Equipping Icarus by Francis Derwent Wood 00:00 / 01:28 The father of Icarus is on his knees, left hand deftly lacing a leather cuff around his son’s bicep, while the right carries the weight of the wings It was not my father but my mother who knelt before her own boy wonder to tie the laces on my new school shoes and launch me into the world Daedalus’ rapt attention to his son as unimaginable to me as flight itself, a pantomime played out on a mythical isle, nothing I could know My mother sprang my father from the loveless island his parents confined him to determined that her own children would never see its brittle shores My father’s skills earned the salary that paid for tan sandals in the summer and black lace-ups in winter, that put food on the table year round So no, he never did kneel before me to tie my laces or straighten my wings, but he lent me his place in my mother’s heart and that selfless act let me fly And The Third Wish 00:00 / 02:41 It would be an unseasonably warm afternoon when I would turn myself inside out start to roll the skin back from my crown unrooted hair flopping down onto my chest the skin slinking over shoulders to the ground An unexpected easterly wind would rise making it a very good day for laundry so into the tub with it, and half a box of soda to scrub, scrub, scrub with the old bristle brush and then three times through the mangle The hottest part of the day would see me sitting in the shade on that stool from St David’s with its three clawing rhododendron legs me thinking about nothing in particular until my freed skin flapped bone dry in the wind Once the steam from pressing had dissipated I’d take out my reglazed glasses and look for the first time into every crevice and wrinkle survey the landscape supported by my fingers and audit my own hide for scars Out of the long-crushed grey shoebox I’d lift the gold leaf embosser I’d liberated from Reading Grammar’s library stores retired from inscribing Dewey’s digits on leather spines in favour of cold hard print Plugged in the mains and finally hot to its tip I’d parsimoniously press through foiled tape to fill in the full extent of every scar I’d found with a thin shield of gold, soon gone cold the chink in my cheek where it kissed the steel-lined typewriter case in the hall the dent in my forehead where it struck the brake lever of my Raleigh Tomahawk the grave accent over my right eyebrow inscribed by an open can of baked beans Then my hands, oh my hands! my pride, my strength, my means the scenes of countless crimes and remedies so many nicks, so many cuts, so many gouges painstakingly gilded into delicate koi scale gloves At the end of this burnished afternoon I’d slowly pack my tools away for the last time then burn my clothes in that rusting rubbish bin carefully step back into my newly sequinned skin and shimmer my way to Gomorrah. Publishing credits November: exclusive first publication by iamb The Daedalus I Knew: The Language of Salt (Fragmented Voices) And The Third Wish: Gallus supplement of Poetry Scotland (Issue 101)

Hear poet Penelope Shuttle read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Penelope Shuttle wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall, and recently published her 13th collection Lyonesse – an Observer Poetry Book of the Month – and her pamphlet Covid/Corvid , a collaboration with Alyson Hallett. Recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award, Penelope was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and The Forward Prizes for Redgrove’s Wife . She is president of the Falmouth Poetry Group, founded in 1972 by her late husband, the poet Peter Redgrove. Her radio poem set in Falmouth, Conversations on a Bench , was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2020. Penelope is a contributor to BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and is currently at work on a new collection, History of the Child. the poems one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life 00:00 / 00:39 but mild clouds hold you drawn water settling in the pail holds you the old walnut’s cracked and serviceable trunk these parched purple and white autumn cyclamen circling its gnarly foot hold you the sapling at breast height the wing that’s folded in mild clouds drawn water they bear everything for you Noah’s notes (preliminary) 00:00 / 03:12 there’s meaning in the various colours of doves the blood of a he-goat is so hot it can dissolve diamonds the spider is an aerial worm that feeds on air a drink made from the tears of a stag cures heartache bees are the very smallest of birds, born from the bodies of oxen the cat is a shadow animal, the Bible has never believed in cats the eagle will not converse with falconers but a she-wolf will take communion from a priest the blue-eyed phoenix lives on a diet of dragons hunting dogs are just as beautiful as the tallest medieval horses, the destriers, or the soul when it is first spied as some tiny thing, a maggot or a grub when the starling speaks in French, you must listen the hare may not always be a Christian the moth found on a young boy’s kimono sleeve brings sorrow hawks stare at one another without moving their eyes, this is how their young are conceived the dragonfly never stops working on the twelve volumes of his memoirs the pig takes mercy on the vineyard, and is the world’s best wet-nurse the he-wolf must be tricked into sleep, then bound with a rope made from the sound of an ant’s footfall, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird the snake is the best dollmaker you could ever wish for the elephant! he takes up so much room, he won’t tolerate the crocodile he’s so wise, how can I forbid him? the three-toed sloth is nothing but a bundle of leaves, and so is the brown-throated sloth with her iron jaw and massive clitoris the beauteous hyena is no more and no less than a Queen The lion is the strangest of messengers, with his Tsar’s face, the chakra of his tail give him your full compliance the swan bids the rain leave off with a swirl of her meekly-shaped wings the oriole is an unimportant bird but proud as a hornet the winter-sleeper ignores the moon, and the two little toads only the mouse comes in with the blessing of God reforming the calendar 00:00 / 00:54 january turns the other cheek february pulls the moon through the hole in its heart march blows such fine fanfares he’s crowned Trumpet-Major of the Trees april’s a dark horse in may the roses are great with child june wears a hairshirt of gorse july considers the lilies or glides in the longboat of light august has the gift of tongues september blames no one but herself october paints doors to war rooms red november sucks blood from the world’s wrist and december? he hides his light under a bushel Publishing credits one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life / reforming the calendar: exclusive first publication by iamb Noah's notes (Preliminary): The Poetry Review (Vol. 106, No. 4) Author photo: © Katrina Naomi

Hear poet Michael Conley read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Michael Conley wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Michael Conley is a writer of poetry and prose from Manchester, England. His latest pamphlet is These Are Not My Dreams And Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple , and his work has been highly commended by judges of The Forward Prizes. Michael's short fiction collection, Flare And Falter , was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, and he's a co-host of The Other: a regular literary night in Manchester. the poems Meat Sofa 00:00 / 01:06 The best way to sit on the meat sofa is naked. It warms to your particular temperature: the sirloin cushions yield like the inside of a cheek and the myoglobin stains your thighs a pleasant pink blush. The meat is beef, from massive bespoke cows, probably. Surrender to the dead hug of the meat sofa whispers the voiceover in the advert, sexily. When you move, the sound is not tired springs or groaning wood, but the welcome squelch of a knuckle rubbing a tired eyeball. In just a few days, it will have become a stinking liability, hot and juddery with maggots. The removal men will refuse to go near it. But for now it’s beautiful, undeniably beautiful; gamey, marbled, glistening on the patio. Curl up and sleep here: nobody deserves this more. At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings 00:00 / 00:51 Possibly somebody loves, or at some point has loved, this man. But it’s hard to imagine right now. It’s hard to imagine that for most of his life he hasn’t been stuck at this ninety-degree angle, arms waving, jeans sagging at the waist. He’s so angry with the railings, with the mud under his boots and especially with the teenagers who are laughing at him from the picnic benches. You could empty a whole tub of vegetable oil onto his neck and lug him out by his belt loops but he wouldn’t thank you for it. And of course you can’t ask him what he was trying to do in the first place. He doesn’t know what his pain looks like from the outside. Ekphrasis 00:00 / 01:35 It’s unlikely that this painting, entitled Self Portrait Of MEL GIBSON Throwing Away Disposable Coffee Cup [By MEL GIBSON] is actually by Mel Gibson. How would it have ended up at this car boot sale, for a start, and besides everyone knows that neither professional actors nor anybody with right-wing views are at all capable of serious artistic endeavour. (Look at George W Bush, for example, his stupid little drawings, or Johnny Depp playing guitar.) To me, it seems worth more than the £20 sticker price: the blue background is as striking and pure as the memory of the first time you visited a nicer country and woke to the wine-dark sea, in the dawn. The majority of the frame concerns a photo-realistic rendering of Mel’s arm (or whoever’s arm). With those thick fingers crushing the white polystyrene, with the blood-red sleeve rolled to the elbow, it oozes masculine sex appeal. The silver circle of the wastebasket is a Blakean sun. I intend to buy it and slice off the bottom three inches where the aforementioned title is scrawled then hang it in my office cubicle where I will pass it off to interested colleagues as entirely my own work. It really gives you a sense of what's at stake, doesn't it I'll say, cryptically, and they'll nod. Publishing credits Meat Sofa: berlin lit (issue 2) At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings: These Are Not My Dreams and Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple (Nine Pens Press) Ekphrasis: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sarra Culleno read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sarra Culleno wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Sarra Culleno is a British writer, mother and English teacher. Author of Bonds: A Short Story Collection , Sarra has had her fiction and poetry published widely in print, as well as performed in audio-dramas, podcasts and on radio. Longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Prize and the 2020 Nightingale and Sparrow Full Collections competition, Sarra was also nominated by iamb for Best of the Net in 2020. She's a frequent contributor to Fevers of the Mind , Alternative Stories and Fake Realities , and co-hosts Write Out Loud at Waterside Arts. Sarra also performs as both a guest and a featured poet at numerous literary festivals. the poems Eidolon Tolling 00:00 / 01:03 The running tap might pour pounding froths of furor over your divested protests, drown your clamour. I cannot help but imagine your loud discord. Yet, when I check in, you're sleeping sound, mi amor. There's always your call-to-arms from another room. Conjecture presumes your disinherited roar, for fear your alarm may be sucked up by vacuum, your tumult aches covered with crackling hiss of chores. When hurly-burly bubbles from kettle rise up, under din, your siren alerts. It's like sad cats. If the rumble lasts too long for either of us, I hallucinate pealing cries bringing me back to small, smarting pangs of your dissonant phrases, vibrating dispossession, under white noises. Paradise Found 00:00 / 01:50 A spot in her garden is perfect for placing my face, so it's under her fig tree’s shading. On terracotta tiles my legs are sunning, as busying bugs buzz to jasmines, unstopping, while gusts from honeysuckle perfumes are puffing sugary breezes somehow, to me reaching. Persepolis’ Paradise, here a patch cultivating, by medlar and quince trees of home she is growing in the changing climate of England’s permitting. As if in the East, are passion fruits clinging over her washing-line leisurely draping under which we sit, her mint-teas a-sipping. On the horizon, Wembley’s Arch is bridging. On Harrow’s Hill, St. Mary’s spire’s soaring. Zooming Heathrow planes are low-flying. Bakerloo Line tubes behind bushes are swooshing like waves on an island resort softly washing rhythms ebbing, breaking, to-ing, fro-ing. I don’t know names of the colourings bursting through her lush greens, first hiding then popping, but I know how to keep from missing by blinking, printing the strobes of my camera’s shuttering each butterfly’s poised cameo fit-for-Vogue-ing, saving frame by frame my memory’s capturing, for when in the future my dementia’s time-hopping my infirm finale laps here will be looping. I hold it, the moment clear for reliving, rooting in her happy blooms, I’m promising. Burst 00:00 / 01:08 We enjoy our surface soapy membrane. Here, it is right and just to rove our sights over silky swirls of coiling spectrum hues, distance what’s inevitable, beneath and above, of happy's precarious precipice: on this bubble's thin skin. We breath honey scents from where the detergent's aroma is most perfumed. In big aeroplanes we wave stamped passports. Cornucopia shelves thrive shops and sweet spots. We gulp manna's syrupy foremilk till full to rest. Tête-à-tête, we eskimo-nose loved freckles close enough to see with bare eyes, then we sleep like babies. At this lucky alignment the satin sheets are slippery. The layer in-between is rendered in fragile-gifts, so one touch is the end. Publishing credits Eidolon Tolling / Burst: exclusive first publication by iamb Paradise Found: Places of Poetry Author photo: © Sonya Smith

Hear poet Gill Macdonald read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Gill Macdonald wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Gill Macdonald has enjoyed a diverse and wide-ranging career. Selling shoes, cleaning houses, painting murals, then on to film editing: first for documentaries, then commercials, then feature films – the most famous of which was Kubrick's The Shining , which Gill helped edit when the editor was taken ill. Poetry has long been a love of hers, so she was thrilled to have her poem Beech Wood longlisted in The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition in 2024. More recently, she was a 2025 runner-up in the Ver Poets Ten-liners Competition. Gill's currently at work on a pamphlet, with her sights set on her debut collection. the poems Physog 00:00 / 02:20 I’ve missed your fine and lovely fun and frubtious fickle fulsome pretty witty smooth and hairy downright scary wrinkly wise and dutiful beautiful ugly smugly pimpled dimpled weird and wonderful mugs your fizzogs boat races and faces I’ve missed smiling blushing blanking frowning kissing scowling grinning and growling lips lined and luscious meaty and peachy rose red eat me or taut as twine pursed and rehearsed pining and prissy smiley wily Botoxed and refined And eyes glittery glassy angry and arty doe eyes duck eyes don’t give a f*ck eyes eyes that are troubled and muddy as puddles or shiny as stars translucent as bubbles jeepers creepers beady little peepers curious little sneakers sleepy and sly And noses shaped like hoses pink as roses fat as toeses honkers conks snubbed and sniffy proud as a prow haughty and whiffy hawkish shiny aquiline and fine or toffee nosed and up in the air and sprouting hairs like nobody cares And lugholes shell likes neatly curled or fearsome flappers proudly unfurled ears all two of them like satellite dishes filtering sounds and words and wishes Faces on screens we’re all there to be seen but a screen cannot kiss or hug or touch like the skin we’re in that we love so much More mobile than any phone more expressive and impressive than any Facebook Twitter or Instagram post influencer or virtual host that connection that spark in your eyes it’s life it’s living it’s being alive Real faces like weather are changeable unrearrangeable as infinite as stars in variety and form despite fashion and fakery they defy the norm fickle fantastic flawless warts an all nothing is as marvellous as you and I've missed you oh I have and I do Ask the Sky 00:00 / 01:41 Now I know one or two random things like the age of a turtle by counting its rings I know how to chase the wind with a kite and that hush when snow falls like magic in the night I know the sweet smell of a new baby’s head and the lazy warmth of a rumpled bed I know jazz and Jacuzzis how to grow jasmine make smoothies but when it comes to the how the what and the why you might as well ask the birds and the sky for if life is a story written in sand to be swept away by an invisible hand and love a rainbow made from wishes and sighs don’t ask me how many tears we must cry to keep it blazing – ask the sky I know quantum entanglement is not a form of strife and that 23 genomes make up the book of life I know about men with moon in their eyes warm hands cold hearts and kisses and lies I know the futility of hate and greed and the shattered lives of the helpless in need but if you’re looking for answers the how the what the why don’t ask me ask the birds ask the trees ask the sky I know about kindness and love you can’t fake friendship wine and laughter and making mistakes music and dancing sunshine and romancing Karma charisma and curry and cake I know the silent swoop of the barn owl’s ghostly wings all these and so many many diverse things but when it comes to the how the what and the why ask the birds ask the trees ask the sky not I Beech Wood 00:00 / 01:10 There’s only so much you can fit into the cabinet of days and navigating work traffic unforeseen delays time at last for a walk in the woods the whisper of winter is already in the air but summer still has unfinished business that final dazzling display the russet red yellow and pink colours of decay who but a tree could make dying so beautiful and rustling through the fallen leaves you leave the path find yourself drawn into a small wood a canopy of golden browns branches like crowns blotting out cloud and crowd and soft underfoot living earth not tarmac the dog snuffling like a truffle hunter in the leaf litter and as if the trees have taken you by the hand all those beehive thoughts melt away just the silence the in and out breathe the tall grey trees their roots and rhythms and mellowing leaves and you’re off the lead at last Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Eleanor Hooker read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Eleanor Hooker wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Eleanor has published two books with Dedalus Press: A Tug of Blue and The Shadow Owner’s Companion . Her third collection, Mending the Light, is forthcoming. She holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. Currently collaborating on two new poetry chapbooks, Eleanor has recently been published by Poetry magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Agenda. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a helm and press officer for Lough Derg RNLI lifeboat. She lives in Tipperary, Ireland. the poems Nailing Wings to the Dead 00:00 / 01:37 Since we nail wings to the dead, she calls ravens from the sky to inspect our work. 'For flight,' they say, 'first remove their boots.' She leans in, inspects a fresh hex behind my eyes, takes my feet and lays them on the fire, to burn it out, roots first. We're the last, babička and me. We've survived on chance and bread baked from the last store of grain. And as we're out of both, we will die soon. They are gathering in the well. We disrobe. She hums whilst I nail her wings, she tells me a tale, her last gift — 'This dark stain, passed kiss to kiss-stained fevered mouth, blights love, is pulsed by death-watch beetle's tick, timing our decay. They know this. They wait by water, gulping despair. The ravens keep watch, they say the contagion's here, they promise to take us first.' Her tale done, we go winged and naked to the well. We hear them climbing the walls, caterwauling, but ravens are swift, and swoop. Guardian Angel After Guy Denning 00:00 / 01:21 Mine is perpetually undressed, though not ingloriously so. He's illustrated too, yet I can tell his new tattoo, Paradis Est Ici, does not improve his spirits. When he splays his charcoaled wings, the wrench of skin, feather and bone makes a sound like splintering wood, I hear him mutter, 'fuck that hurts'. He shaved his head when I shaved mine aged twenty-two, and though my hair's grown back, still he calls me 'baldylocks'. I've been called worse. With a devoted sense of wickedness he feeds rosemary to lambs, 'pre-seasoning', he winks, 'no salvation for the lamb'. He's at his most morose in a boat; it reminds him of biblical times and fishing trips that brought him little cheer. He gets cantankerous at my dithering, Tells me I need a 'swift kick up the arse'. 'You must rid yourself of your demons' he chides. 'What', I snap, 'and lose you?' Well Worn Wings After Jeanie Tomanek 00:00 / 01:52 That cabinet in my mind, where I put things I'd rather not consider, is almost full. Row upon row of stones stacked behind its vast yew doors, collapse in on themselves daily – like bones in a graveyard. The cabinet sits above high water in a backroom named, Unutterable. I didn't name the room, and don't know who did, but I'm conversant with its synonyms. The creature that guards the room is not an eel or a terrible fish, it just is … and occasionally, is not. Where I trace the damp blue walls, a soft mould chalks the paint with my impressions. This room is a dark and broken sea, where disturbed waters drown time. I catch sight of my well worn wings – their hooked vanes patched blue and green – old wounds. With effort, they wrench me from the waters pull, settle me on a rusty puckane, protruding from the wall. Nearby, all my birds, obsidian and raven, caw – what, what, what-what, at the question of my unsettling. I unfeather, back to the rachis, I pluck quills from my shoulder-bones until, dismantled, I am back at source – flightless, woman, and unutterably sad. Publishing credits Nailing Wings to the Dead: POETRY (October 2015) Guardian Angel: Southword (Issue 30) Well Worn Wings: first broadcast on Evelyn Grant’s Poetry File

Hear poet Marc Alan Di Martino read poems for wave 19 of literary poetry journal iamb. Marc Alan Di Martino wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Marc Alan Di Martino is the author of Love Poem with Pomegranate , Still Life with City and Unburial . His poems and translations from Italian can be found in Bad Lilies , Autumn Sky , Rattle and several other journals and anthologies. Marc is also the author of Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell'Arco – the first English-language translation of the Romanesco poet’s work. Currently a reader for The Baltimore Review , Marc lives in Italy. the poems Runaway 00:00 / 04:23 My mother is sitting alone on a park bench in Villa Borghese, eating a sandwich. It isn’t an easy thing to find a sandwich in Rome in 1966. She's had to root out the Bar degli Americani on Via Veneto, near the Embassy, in order to find ham on white bread. No mayonnaise. Imagine that: a Jewish girl eating a ham sandwich on a park bench in Rome with no mayo. What's she doing there, so far from home? And where is home, anyway? Her parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts? That isn’t home. Not anymore. She ran away from that home and came to Rome via Paris via San Francisco. Anywhere but at the shabbos table with that tyrant her mother and her ineffectual father. A ham sandwich on a park bench is better than that, she says to herself as a dapper man appears dressed in a smart black suit. She notices... his teeth. Naively, she thinks he might be Marcello Mastroianni, her singular destiny to meet a movie star, fall in love and become his wife. Live happily ever after. The fantasies that run through a young woman’s head. This man is not Eddie Fisher. Nice Jewish boy. Dungaree Doll. This man is a smooth-talker. He wants to sell her something. Realizing she's American, he begins speaking in broken schoolboy English. He turns on the charm, and she is charmed. What is he selling? Wine—what else? You're in Italy, poor girl, eating a sandwich, all alone. He overwhelms her, makes her feel like Audrey Hepburn. She, in turn, is an easy target. Not like Italian women. To get into their pants you have to go through their families. He knows. He has two sisters. He’s always beating up guys in his neighborhood for putting their hands on them. He’s got a reputation. But everyone knows American women are unmoored. Why else do they come here? To get into trouble. To meet a Casanova. To have what's called a ‘fling’. (He learned that word in a movie.) Then they go back home and get married to a Rock Hudson or a John Wayne, have two kids and two cars and pursue their dreams of happiness. Europeans have history, Americans have dreams. That seems to him a profound insight. My mother crinkles the cellophane into a ball, rolls it in her palm, brushes the crumbs from her skirt. He looks at her knees, the skin boldly exposed, wonders what’s beyond them. She isn’t thin, he thinks, as he absorbs her body with his eyes. He isn’t subtle. You don’t need to be in 1966. All you need to have is charm, and he has excellent charm. She decides in that moment she will go anywhere with this man. She'll do anything he asks. She has nothing to lose, no one waiting for her on the other side of the ocean, no Eddie Fisher. Her brother is married to a German. Her brother the magician, who disappeared into a German woman and never came out. How she would like to disappear into this man, fall into the black hole of him, learn to curse her own parents in his tongue, allow the sensual inflections of Italian to evict the Yiddish gutturals lodged in her throat like fish bones. How she would like like to learn to trill her Rs, double her consonants, put a crucifix around her neck for the sheer pleasure of seeing her mother’s dumbstruck punim , bury her alive with Roman invective: li mortacci tua —fuck your dead ancestors—tear the crucifix off and flush it down the toilet, having exhausted its usefulness. She smooths her skirt, a little flushed. Cartography 00:00 / 00:28 There are maps of knowing and unknowing. Seven thousand species of bird locked in a glass cabinet, brightly colored males & unpretentious females. Almost every living thing on Earth has already perished. My daughter carries a dog-eared copy of Maus in her backpack. I have questions. She has questions. Arboreal 00:00 / 01:00 Leaf’s gold lies guttered, silhouetted to concrete: battle-borne, world-wounded, crenulated by a thousand woes, tossed and torn by turning winds & war-waging weather, stampeded, flattened, distilled into a constellation of shattered veins. Again merciless rains pour down, pound it into mud, in- to less than nothing- ness. It’s spun face down under a new dawn unlacing waterlogged gold to tattered filaments mutated, transformed by bare bludgeoning blows sky clear now crabshell-blue-to- sapphire. Sad fire leaks from lesions, spreads its net over the crackling street shedding evaporate mist of holy hell water, peeling off pavement, this ghastly arboreal face. Publishing credits Runaway: Baltimore Review (Spring 2019) Cartography: Orange Blossom Review (Issue 10) Arboreal: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Victoria Punch read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Victoria Punch wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Voice coach and musician Victoria Punch is curious about voice and identity, the limits of language, and how we perceive things. She has had her work published in Poetry Magazine , Mslexia, Magma and One Hand Clapping – as well as in Christmas Stories: Twelve Poems to Tell and Share . the poems A cold striding 00:00 / 00:54 Bridled with ferns in April, a year uncurled. Up – yet feeling low on the blue fuzz of new rain – the brush of a wing on the eave The earth, it seems, has turned on the warming drawer and laid the plates inside, crockery carrots and cucumber, cutlery laid in lines and rows, potatoes, peas and purple sprouting broccoli babies The earth rises like dough. Proven, prickling with spring, the lick of blackberries prophesied, the implacable hedge, laden with strings of wildflower childlings, seeded by flight, small mice and hiding birds, a little shy I’m asking, but I can’t recall the question in the face of the morning an ode to the unexpected find 00:00 / 01:08 I marvel. oh my, oh you – small lime green lurker how did you – damp smirker – get there. armpitted and puckering gloop grip in my top sneak under my collar your squeaky sneaky ways and hazy origins amaze me you have umami, by the look of you tang of salt on my tongue, you tiny appetiser, so phlegmatic, enigmatic part of my one point five daily litres of mucusy nasal secretions little air crumb catcher, dust, dirt and pollen snatcher, crunchy bacteria beguiler you are crisper as you dry your quasi-spherically makes me queasy, I quease I am uneased by your tacky feel, your unexpected gloop your roundness – rolled who rolled you, oh green one? wherefore and what nose did you come from? oh how I’d like to know or maybe (s)not Last Flight on the Road 00:00 / 01:54 that morning – stung by cold blankets on and steam-breath in the air low motor hum of the old car, road ticker-taped and on for miles grey and dim in the husky half-light sidled by the frosted trees thick as thieves the trees stood, still and stoic, lime-cold leaning on the morning light that came in waves upon the air replicating pine for miles they lined the open, empty road we made our way along the road surrounded by the stream of trees counting down the miles and miles curled and hunched against the cold hats and coats and frosty air looking for the early light his silence was a kind of light he joined our vigil down the road cut through the still and lingering air the owl came softly through the trees I held my coffee long gone cold and I forgot about the miles I felt he stayed with us for miles orange wingtips in the light his face was braced against the cold level with my eyes, along the road he slipped like water past the trees gold and russet on the air I held his presence in the air carried it for miles and miles wings the colour of the trees wings the colour of the light eyes held fast along the road I forgot that I was cold his face – the air, his wings – the light I sat for miles in silence on the road I watched the passing trees and felt the cold Publishing credits an ode to the unexpected find: Invitation to Love – Issue 3 (the6ress) A cold striding: Magma (No. 85) Last Flight on the Road: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Erika Benjamin

Hear poet Lisa Tulfer read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. Lisa Tulfer wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet Dutch-to-English translator Lisa Tulfer is a UK-based writer of non-fiction articles, poetry and reviews (as well as an occasional blogger ). Her work has appeared in The Pilgrim , The Cardiff Review , the Earth Pathways Diary , Redemptorist Press , Green Ink Poetry and as part of The Poetry Archive's Poetry Archive NOW . Lisa is also a poetry submissions editor at Full House Literary Magazine . Exploring ideas of identity, belonging and home, Lisa is currently working on her first book. the poems Telling the bees 00:00 / 00:54 We told them because we knew it was something that had to be done. Trying to speak the words out loud our voices broke, fragments swept away on our tears, so instead we whispered the words, standing by the hives holding hands, the ‘she is dead’ barely louder than the buzzy breath. Did we imagine that the bees paused for a moment in their vibrating lives? Afterwards, it felt not better, but that the worst was behind us. We had told the bees, said the words, made it real. The average human body is 60 percent water After We’re All Water an art installation by Yoko Ono 00:00 / 01:30 we’re all water and DNA and cells, dividing shared genes and history we’re all blank canvasses and memory intuition and reflexes synapses and electricity we’re all cruelty and pain, potential unrealised or twisted energy discharged in violence against ourselves or others we’re all creative makers of bread, words, art love or babies makers of mischief, belief war, peace we’re all alive, dead fear, hope past, future we’re all strong, weak holding hands and killing clinging to life and dreaming nightmares and visions we’re all hate, fear and othering we’re all love, surprised, consumed we’re all water Blue 00:00 / 01:53 There is a certain kind of blue that happens at six o’clock on a February evening, when the sun has slipped off the edge of a clear day, trailing strands of candyfloss clouds – improbably pink – leaving behind a grey dullness that feels like a bereavement. Then paradoxically the sky begins to brighten, gains a depth not only of colour but of dimension, and as the colour shifts from grey to blue it begins to glow, luminous, greenish at the horizon, indigo overhead, striped with lines of cloud now darkest midnight against the cerulean blue. The bluest blue, bluer than a Cornish bay, bluer than the skylark-thrilling sky of summer, lying in the grass, squinting sunwards, bluer even than my lover’s eyes. Backlit blue, achingly fleeting, the blueness reaching a climax, unbearably intense and then suddenly dying, fading, becoming flat, two-dimensional. Now Prussian, darkening, dark. And into the darkest blue a sickle of silver rising, cold and clean, scything across the stars to gather the last blueness and leave the sky black. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Karan Chambers read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Karan Chambers wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet Poet, tutor and former English teacher Karan Chambers (she/her) has just completed the first year of a Creative Writing MA at Royal Holloway. Highly Commended in the 2023 Cheltenham Poetry Festival International Poetry Prize , she's had work in The London Magazine , The Honest Ulsterman , Gutter , Anthropocene , Butcher’s Dog , Mslexia , Propel Magazine , Under the Radar , 14 Magazine and Ink, Sweat & Tears . Her pamphlet woman | folk appeared in February 2025, and her second pamphlet with Atomic Bohemian is due in 2026. Karan lives in Surrey with her husband, three lively children, and a long-suffering cat. the poems hebridean spring 00:00 / 01:20 here is land like an upturned fist. darkknuckled. jutting. awkward angles & uncanny places. a stretch. rock & shingle. skerrystruck. between jawopen seas. here are its quiet hollows. its openreach heights. its spiked invitation. here is the gorse. furzespine prickle. brindlecoated. here is the heather. a restless unfolding. lingslung fire. smoulder & tongueflicker. here is a melody. scattering its way through the leaves. softkeyed promise. fertile ground sings to fallow. here are the women. working. & tending. & growing. & raising the bairns. & dreaming of more. here are the men at sea. except when they’re not. except when they’re shadowstood. landlooming. claiming what’s theirs. it’s fine if you’re willing. want makes flames of us all. but what if you’re not? what if your body can’t bear another. we’ve all seen his hands round her ankles. seen submersion in her eyes. i know how a woman drowns google tells me that summer 2023 is the northern hemisphere’s hottest summer in 2000 years 00:00 / 01:14 fish are dying from shropshire to sussex across the channel the loire has almost completely evaporated silver scales gasp in shrinking waters here reservoirs run dry gardens crumple under heavy heat & blackberries shrivel on hedges before we can stain t-shirts lips little grabbing hands purple clusters hanging parched listless i do my best to conserve resources turn taps off while soaping hands & brushing teeth take short showers clothes crack with dirt & sweat before i wash them my mind is air above hot asphalt shimmering late into the night i wonder what next summer & the ones after will bring how much difference can i make i’d like to believe but it all feels so futile a few weeks later the weather breaks & we dance in the muggy evening skin sweating even as rain slicks pavements i feel relief but then watch the news chest tightening as what seems like half a continent is washed away woman: drowned 00:00 / 00:28 silt-tongued, stonepocketed, her body a riverbed eroding its banks. surfacing with pondweed hair, she is pearleyed, staring, a glossy reflection want untethered. the drift of mouth of cheekbones seawards, lips & lashes currentstricken spurred into confluence a warning for all those who never learned to swim Publishing credits hebridean spring: Anthropocene google tells me that summer 2023 is the northern hemisphere’s hottest summer in 2000 years: exclusive first publication by iamb woman: drowned: woman | folk (Salò Press) Author photo: © Paula Deegan

Hear poet Zannah Kearns read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Zannah Kearns wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Freelance writer Zannah Kearns has had her poems featured in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal , The Dark Horse , Finished Creatures , Under the Radar , Ink, Sweat & Tears and Atrium . A members’ winner in a summer 2021 competition run by The Poetry Society, Zannah co-runs the Poets’ Café – a monthly open mic in Reading, Berkshire. the poems High Tide in the Morning 00:00 / 01:13 It strikes me the moon controls more than our tides just as these children surge into my room, my bed crash into my heart, flood me with chatter, their energies zingy as sea spray. Lockdown: the house is awash with unfinished projects, dirty socks scrunched-up sheets of abandoned drawings. I’m scrolling news that’s rolling in story upon story too many names, too many splashes. I can lose hours gazing at friends’ pictures their perfect reflections mirrored in lakes but we’ve all of us blown far out to sea, swung on each wave at the whim of the moon. Under sunlit windswept skies we cast off into this day its dip and swell into its lull helming as best as we can. Love as a Mutt 00:00 / 01:25 We run — our laughter bouncing against bricks and the fence we threw mud at last Wednesday. We run with faces turned for a moment to the sun, feeling its glow as a kiss on our skin, held for all memory. The Earth has halted her turning to say our names. Then, coats flapping with busted zips we’re away again — hair unbrushed, fingers raw, some nails bitten to bloody quicks, but none of it matters because now snow falls! Gentle flakes spiral through air stilled. Skin bright, breath visible, our small hearts are as hot as baked potatoes. We spread our hands while the sky pegs out her grimy sheets. Near some dustbins, a mangy dog cowers, all ribs and bald patches. Some throw stones, but Jamie tosses her coat, scoops the mutt — ears cut off, bones a collection of loose rods she can hardly keep in her arms. I’ll call him Princess. Bet you can’t keep him. But Jamie, smiling, doesn’t hear. On Holding On and Being Held 00:00 / 01:31 In Aviemore, I climbed a wall of ice glittering in the winter sun — an edifice of glass. I led the route, kicking crampons to make shelves, reaching up with yellow-handled axes, chipping holds; scaling a ladder, right then left like Jack climbing his beanstalk through the cloud, snowflakes falling so thick they looked furred. And my heart full. It’s the first time I’d ever winter-climbed. Everywhere, white was all I saw so, even though I was several storeys high with nothing much to hold me if I fell, something about the surrounding cloud, the mountain’s bowl like a cupped hand, felt substantial. I, who am often consumed by fear, had none. Sometimes now, far out on one of life’s edges, I like to remember that day on the mountain when the tips of my toes were hooked in its snow, how the flat of each boot rested on air. Publishing credits High Tide in the Morning: Locked Down | Poems, Diaries and Art from the 2020 Pandemic (Poetry Space) Love as a Mutt: Under the Radar (Issue 25) On Holding On and Being Held: The Dark Horse (Issue 43)

Hear poet Eleanor Holmes read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Eleanor Holmes wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Eleanor Holmes is a writer, doctor and educator living in Valencian Country, Spain. Her poem yolk was nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize by Black Bough Poetry . Her debut digital chapbook Born in a Pandemic was published by IceFloe Press in May 2020. Eliot was commended in the National Poetry Competition in 2014 for her poem The Crab Man , and her work in various forms has appeared in Firewords, Structo, Acumen, Re-side, Dovecote, The Broken Spine Artist Collective, Perhappened and Ink Sweat & Tears. the poems Moonrise over the candyfloss hut Bordeaux, France 1994 00:00 / 02:15 I wander through Aqualand at night, muggy evening, Bordeaux-sticky. The place is closed to the general public, choir off-duty. Thirteen years old in my saggy blue Speedo suit, arms hugged tight to my budding chest. Inside my own head most of the time, I enjoy conversation with myself. Silence wraps me in a bubble. I stand on the edge of the high-board, toes curled over the ledge, naked urge to make the jump: an unobserved leap into dark. Emboldened, I climb metal stairs towards the death slide, bare-footed, alone with fear. I sit with my hands crossed at the top, stare down the vertical drop. Senses alive to cicada wings, pine resin, cold starlight. I lean back. Nobody is there to witness my fall, that weightless feeling: knowing I might leave the confines of the narrow black plastic, smash into French grey concrete or fly. Then the rush of water, it cuts me in two. The pain only adding to my sense of triumph as I walk, legs shaking, towards the main pool. Sit on the water jets, one by one. Watching moonrise over the candyfloss hut, I soak it all up. Waves of pleasure rippling my flush pink face. Granny Loved To Squeeze It 00:00 / 01:10 Grandpa Freeman was as tall as he was round. I remember his neck the folds of flesh, that huge blackhead nestled at the join. How Granny loved to squeeze it. For years she’d been trying to pop it out, puffing on her cigarette, sweat beaded on her brow. We used to encourage her, watch in awe as she tried, their arguments always ending in a squeeze. A punishment he seemed willing to endure until the day it came out, that plug of grime. Years of dead skin and dirt gathered in one expansive pore. WHOOSH! It flew across the kitchen, left a crater as big as my thumb. But after that day, there was nothing left to do, Grandpa seemed deflated, their arguments less heated. And not long after, he died. On the day they let the children out 00:00 / 02:05 On the day they let the children out it was a Sunday towards the end of April. Nature had taken over the intervening weeks: swallows raced along narrow streets, house martins nested under every eave. Butterflies danced in pairs, on pavements, decorating the path to the river unabashed and blousy. Bees hummed a new tune, saddle bags full of pollen as they tumbled past waving flower to flower. Dazzle of dragonfly keeping pace with our pram, parakeets squabbled in giant palms by the old Muslim wall. Familiar rustle of silver birch leaves shivered down the city’s spine, two heron slipped past the repurposed police station, hawk-drawn circles overhead. We couldn’t help but look directly at the sun, similar to the crows, worry melting in the uncorked springtime air. Wood pigeons cooed to us like newborns from struts of the old iron bridge, the opal Xúquer river, gurgling below our feet. Sugar canes creaked and cracked birdsong so loud, it seemed nature had been dialled up especially. A white dove, branch in its beak flapped overhead. We scuffed our feet, the hour allotted over too soon. On the day they let the children out peals of laughter joined in joyful riot, their animal selves unlocked, at last, parents blinked, all startled deer: a safe two meters from each other. The Spanish government relaxed lockdown on 26th April 2020 so that children were allowed outside for the first time, for one hour, accompanied by one parent. Publishing credits Moonrise over the candyfloss hut: Perhappened Mag (Issue 1) Granny Loved To Squeeze It: exclusive first publication by iamb On the day they let the children out: Born in a Pandemic (IceFloe Press)