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Hear poet Sarah Frideswide read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sarah Frideswide wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Teacher, soldier and marketing manager Sarah Frideswide is a lifelong poet and fiction writer with a varied career. She was first published at the age of 17, and would go on to achieved a distinction for her MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. Sarah's poetry has been published by the Oxford School of Poetry Review and Dust Poetry Magazine , and she was selected for the 2025 Poetry School/TLC Free Reads Scheme. As well as writing for Pen to Print, Sarah is among the speakers for the 2026 Bournemouth Writing Festival. the poems Erosion 00:00 / 01:52 In your kitchen, the planes of your face remind me of a cliffside, stories worn into the rock, soft where it has crumbled. Wrinkles that shine like sun on the sea at dusk, eyes a wave moving in and out of the light, they have trapped laughter and song. Every line of you splits me apart. “A person who’s dying is the greatest source of life,” you said, as though the loss of you wouldn’t rip a hole in my sky. Your falling cliff, eroded by time; your empty shell buried on a beach; your raindrops, only ripples on a pool after they cease to exist. You were an antiques dealer. You restored each piece, touch by careful touch, with a magnifying glass. You cradled universes. Resurrected history with your hands. Later, you taught me how to draw, all neat orderly lines. Then you tore up the page, tumbled scraps of me to the floor. You took me to a mansion with windows into a closing world, Said this was where you used to live. You did it up yourself. Wide pebbled drive, sculptures on the walls, granite fireplace. All I could think about was a home without you; empty rooms, furniture frozen under dust sheets. You say you feel lucky to know in advance, to live every minute, but I am disintegrating. The cliff looks solid until water pulls it apart. Stone worn to rubble, sunk and tossed, sand dragged over beaches. The white chalk of you slips in to the sea. Segsbury Fort 00:00 / 00:34 This is not death, this is a crescendo. At the top I sit, legs over the drop, a train rattles across the valley, the hedge is bright in low light, drooping with fullness, mottled with bronze. Downhill, the smell of mould and dung follow. Broken tarmac shines, glowing cobwebs span the road. Darkness falls as winter enters, light lost, waiting. 20th Birthday 00:00 / 01:41 My prayers had all dried up, I knew there was no mercy. The floor was slick with bile and mother begged for Jesus who showed up naked, body of criss-crossed scars that wouldn’t heal, tied my hands behind my back so I couldn’t save her from herself, stood to watch the end. She yelled at me, I saw parts of her no daughter ought to see, then she pissed herself all over the bed, gave up her mind, became a wired machine, full of pipes, liquid fed the mass of her while she slept. I couldn’t eat, I spent that whole week in hospital nurses said what a devoted carer I was, but I was just a body with no mind, when I took her home, still in torn pyjamas, You’re useless , she said, You haven’t done the washing up. You haven’t done the washing up You’re useless, she said, I took her home, in torn pyjamas, a body with no mind, nurses said I was a carer, because I couldn’t, spent all week feeding the mass of her she slept in liquid pipes, a wired machine, gave up her mind all over the bed, yelled displayed parts of her no daughter could save watched the end, hands tied behind my scars that wouldn’t show naked, body full of criss-crossed mother slicked with bile begged for Jesus, my prayers had all dried up, I knew there was no mercy. Publishing credits Erosion: Dust Poetry (Issue 14) Segsbury Fort / 20th Birthday: exclusive first publication by iamb

Search A-Z by first name for any poet in online literary poetry journal iamb. poets A-Z a # b d c e f g h i j k l n m p o r q t s v u x w z y A R Williams summer 2024 wave 18 See this wave Aaron Caycedo-Kimura spring 2021 wave 5 See this wave Aaron Kent summer 2020 wave 3 See this wave Abigail Lim Kah Yan autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave Adam Cairns autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave Aki Schilz spring 2020 wave 2 See this wave Alan Buckley winter 2023 wave 16 See this wave Alan Kissane spring 2021 wave 5 See this wave Alexandra Citron spring 2022 wave 9 See this wave Alice Stainer summer 2023 wave 14 See this wave Alina Ştefănescu spring 2026 wave 25 See this wave Amantine Brodeur summer 2020 wave 3 See this wave Amelia Loulli autumn 2020 wave 4 See this wave Andrea Small spring 2025 wave 21 See this wave Andy Breckenridge autumn 2023 wave 15 See this wave 1 2 3 4 5 1 ... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ... 27

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

Hear poet C Daventry read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. C Daventry wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet A linguist, writer and poet living in Scotland, C Daventry has won several awards for her work. These include first place in the Bridport Prize for Poetry (her work appearing in its annual anthologies several times), winner of the 2019 Hippocrates Open Awards for Poetry and Medicine , and The John Ruskin Prize in its inaugural year. A finalist in the 2019 Moth Poetry Prize , she's also chalked up multiple shortlistings and nominations elsewhere. Her work has been published throughout the UK and beyond, and her solo poetry chapbook is titled, The Oligarch Loses His Patience . the poems Mother’s Ruin 00:00 / 01:38 She comes home and takes gin gin deadbeat, gin strayed-from-the-fold takes its own back again, robs families of fathers, rips the roof off terraces, shows off mould and wallpaper in flapping strips gets inside the cistern, the milk bottle, the baby’s bottle, filled up with gripe and mither to the neck with Dutch courage, gin-Jenever; make baby silver make her gold liquid witch, my juice of the juniper take with you my lumbago my gallstones my gout take with you his droop and ague gin swills in our gutters, our runnels, swirls down the drains and out through the grilles, up to the gunwales mammy’s boots go out slap-slap on slimy cobbles. Gin is the colour of her moon-clout her eyes her rouged knees her grey lips gin with lemon gin with lime gin will be damned gin laced with turpentine will take oranges to Scotland and pish on England gin will fackin rhyme if and when it likes gin and whey out of the teats of her into the mouths of babes stiff after three days in winding sheets gin from the ankles up, bad as brown apples in the bottom of the barrel soft ribs teeth like cheese maggots in the brain in every port be mine in the estuarine brine croons the seaman biting her tongue I’ll give you gin up your skirt for your pains dump the bairn come away to Mandalay to the East Indies to the straits so she gave him a dose of gin to take away for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner 00:00 / 00:57 Beloved, it’s because of the way your parahippocampal gyrus glows green under pressure. The way your parietal lobe (which, try as I might, I can’t see as inferior) shows hyperactivity when I whisper sweet nothings. For this alone I want to sail away to your bilateral insula in a precuneus coracle, drag it high on white sand, dance the cingulate cortex breathless and wild, then pull you close and do the fusiform gyrus as the fiery plate of the sun drops below the horizon. You are my frontal and limbic regions of interest. You alone are my dorsal hypoactive cluster. You have declared cerebellum on my own amygdala, o, stroll with me under the globus pallidus of the moon. I do not appear in photos 00:00 / 00:53 anymore. There was a time my face was green hills covered in buttercups, I walked with bees hovering above the clover of my hair which was perpetually ruffled by the light breeze of your breath, of anyone’s breath, of the breath of a man standing over me on the bus, his feet planted too near the saplings of my legs, the hive in my belly, the bird of heart in my feathery breast, us swaying a little; everything I owned slung over the waterfall of my shoulders. My bangles had the clink of pebbles in a burn, and me, averting my eyes – changing direction quick as a shoal of silver fish – from my own aristocracy, my neck a stalk of willow under the heavy crown none of us ever knew we wore. Publishing credits Mother's Ruin: MAGMA (No. 67) for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner: 2019 Hippocrates Prize Anthology (The Hippocrates Press) I do not appear in photos: shortlisted for the Moth Poetry Prize 2019

Hear poet Jorie Graham read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jorie Graham wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Jorie Graham is among America's most celebrated poets of the post-war generation. She's the author of numerous collections, including Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts, The End of Beauty, Region of Unlikeness and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1992 , for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry . Later came Place – winner of the 2012 Forward Prize for Best Collection – From the New World, and in September 2020, new collection Runaway . Jorie has taught for many years at Harvard University as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory – the first woman to hold this position. the poems Employment 00:00 / 02:34 Listen the voice is American it would reach you it has wiring in its swan’s neck where it is always turning round to see behind itself as it has no past to speak of except some nocturnal journals written in woods where the fight has just taken place or is about to take place for place the pupils have firelight in them where the man a surveyor or a tracker still has no idea what is coming the wall-to-wall cars on the 405 for the ride home from the cubicle or the corner office—how big the difference—or the waiting all day again in line till your number is called it will be called which means exactly nothing as no one will say to you as was promised by all eternity “ah son, do you know where you came from, tell me, tell me your story as you have come to this Station”—no, they did away with the stations and the jobs the way of life and your number, how you hold it, its promise on its paper, if numbers could breathe each one of these would be an exhalation, the last breath of something and then there you have it: stilled: the exactness: the number: your number. That is why they can use it. Because it was living and now is stilled. The transition from one state to the other—they give, you receive—provides its shape. A number is always hovering over something beneath it. It is invisible, but you can feel it. To make a sum you summon a crowd. A large number is a form of mob. The larger the number the more terrifying. They are getting very large now. The thing to do right away is to start counting, to say it is my turn, mine to step into the stream of blood for the interview, to say I can do it, to say I am not one, and then say two, three, four and feel the blood take you in from above, a legion single file heading out in formation across a desert that will not count. Runaway 00:00 / 03:58 You wanted to have vision but the gods changed. You wanted to feel the fraction of the degree of temperature enter the water, feel the minute leave the minutes behind. Why not be happy. What are they doing to the minutes. Each one takes that minute of you away. Takes away hope. We stand around, we have the sensation we dreamed the whole thing up, we didn’t, & all around us how alive rot is, & damp that never ceases kissing everything in- discriminately—yr hands, yr skin fixed to fit everywhere tight, yr lids holding yr gaze, the rubble, the anti-microbial skins, the layers of cello- phane, the rare & treasured paper sack, everything delivered up to us as if spectacular, as if an emergency of the spectacular, & new data-sets showing more new hours days debt melt faster rising than ever anticipated, also those fleeing told no no, not you, you are not allowed, where are yr papers—oh those—we know we gave them to u but here u see we change our mind—look, here is a changed mind, a mind whose house burned, here is melted chromium & ash where yr life was—stay calm, listen to authorities, re- build, imitate, believe, wait, b/c it will come again, over the ridge, the licking flare, as if pure hunger, or curling all over u now the fire of the flashlight, don't move, I beg u, never move, figure out what the they is, what the they wants— pretend it's laughter, it's a refrain—pay up—as for the recent past it's got too much history a mind can set the match to—but see, the fire prefers not to die, no, & we oblige, we feed it, we keep it unpayable. The Hiding Place 00:00 / 05:21 The last time I saw it was 1968. Paris France. The time of the disturbances. We had claims. Schools shut down. A million workers and students on strike. Marches, sit-ins, helicopters, gas. They stopped you at gunpoint asking for papers. I spent 11 nights sleeping in the halls. Arguments. Negotiations. Hurrying in the dawn looking for a certain leader I found his face above an open streetfire. No he said, tell them no concessions. His voice above the fire as if there were no fire— language floating everywhere above the sleeping bodies; and crates of fruit donated in secret; and torn sheets (for tear gas) tossed down from shuttered windows; and bread; and blankets; stolen from the firehouse. The CRS (the government police) would swarm in around dawn in small blue vans and round us up. Once I watched the searchlights play on some flames. The flames push up into the corridor of light. In the cell we were so crowded no one could sit or lean. People peed on each other. I felt a girl vomiting gently onto my back. I found two Americans rounded up by chance, their charter left that morning they screamed, what were they going do? Later a man in a uniform came in with a stick. Started beating here and there, found the girl in her eighth month. He beat her frantically over and over. He pummeled her belly. Screaming aren’t you ashamed? I remember the cell vividly but is it from a photograph? I think the shadows as I see them still—the slatted brilliant bits against the wall—I think they’re true—but are they from a photograph? Do I see it from inside now—his hands, her face—or is it from the news account? The strangest part of getting out again was streets. The light running down them. Everything spilling whenever the wall breaks. And the air—thick with dwellings—the air filled—doubled— as if the open had been made to render— The open squeezed for space until the hollows spill out, story upon story of them starting to light up as I walked out. How thick was the empty meant to be? What were we finding in the air? What were we meant to find? I went home slowly sat in my rented room. Sat for a long time the window open, watched the white gauze curtain sluff this way then that a bit— watched the air suck it out, push it back in. Lung of the room with streetcries in it. Watched until the lights outside made it gold, pumping gently. Was I meant to get up again? I was inside. The century clicked by. The woman below called down not to forget the loaf. Crackle of helicopters. Voice on a loudspeaker issuing warnings. They made agreements we all returned to work. The government fell then it was all right again. The man above the fire, listening to my question, the red wool shirt he wore: where is it? who has it? He looked straight back into the century: no concessions. I took the message back. The look in his eye—shoving out—into the open— expressionless with thought: no—tell them no— Publishing credits All poems: From the New World: Poems 1976-2014 (HarperCollins)

Hear poet Kitty Donnelly read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kitty Donnelly wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Kitty Donnelly's first collection, The Impact of Limited Time , was joint-winner of Indigo Dreams Publishing's Collection Competition. Her second book, In Dangerous Hours , was published by the same house. Kitty won a Creative Future Award in 2019, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Fellowship in 2021. Her background is Irish, she lives in Yorkshire, and when she's not writing, Kitty works as an NHS Psychiatric Nurse. She cares for several rescued cats and dogs, and has just completed her first novel. the poems High 00:00 / 00:50 An arctic tern will fly 10,000 miles to flourish in two summers worth of light; so I was high after he died, chasing sun on the wing, though directionless. I swallowed three green capsules every night, peristalsis pulsing them through my scorched oesophagus. I took what I could get to alter consciousness, testing my fragmented sense of time against the wall clock’s competence till dawn was salmon red & gutted on the banks of the horizon. I was not or even near myself. Kingfisher 00:00 / 01:18 It was a sign: pure lapis on the post plunged into canal sediment. It surveyed its territory, paused & darted under Lock 9, a featherweight jewel flicked on the wind. Returning fishless, its head revolved towards the glass where I stood, museum-frigid: my first live kingfisher. I should have tailed its poem through the frosted dawn’s distemper. It was tempting me to follow it by pen, to know it vivid & separate from ossified kin: that feathered gift of indurated velvet with scratched black beads for eyes, whose twiggy box I switched for football cards, unable to stand the cloy of mould, too old to poke my finger in the rag-hole. Now it had risen: fallen constellations etched across each wing, it was urging me to drown my work bag, unlace my boots, and flit with it through the waterlogged morning. Test Results 00:00 / 00:38 You’re writing for your life, there’s no mistaking it. Your fingers move in window-light, ears closed to all but music. Coffee's heat evaporates, a shaft of sun bisects the page, the Biro quivers in your fingers. Everything you strived to say is translating itself. Previous verse: untrained lightening. Illness has earthed you, conducting your tongue. Publishing credits High: Ink Sweat & Tears Kingfisher / Test Results: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear the poets of wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for summer 2023 . wave fourteen summer 2023 Alice Stainer Aysegul Yildirim Dave Garbutt Deborah Finding Devjani Bodepudi Ed Garvey Long Hannah Linden Ian McMillan J L M Morton Jamie Woods Jerm Curtin May Chong Ramona Herdman Valerie Bence Victoria Punch

Hear poet Maggie Smith read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Maggie Smith wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Maggie Smith is the author of four books, most recently Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017) and the forthcoming Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster, 2020). Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Poetry, The Believer, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Paris Review. Maggie is a freelance writer and editor, is on the faculty of Spalding University’s MFA program, and serves as an Editor-at-Large for the Kenyon Review. the poems Ohio Cento 00:00 / 01:18 The sun comes up, and soon the you-know-what will hit the you-know-what. But this is what it means to have our life. We need a break from this ruined country. Sometimes it feels like it has just begun and it’s over. What we know of ourselves gets compressed, layered. Remembering is an anniversary; every minute, a commemoration of being, or thinking—or its opposite, a strip of negatives. Some days, I don’t even know how to be. I sink my feet past time in the Olentangy as if loneliness didn't make us in some absurd blessing. —If there even is an us. When are we most ourselves, and when the least? Is it too late except to say too late and hear the whole world take a rain check? I worry it is. Porthole 00:00 / 01:11 I was hoping the world would earn you, but it rains and rains, too busy raining to win you over. Child, I count ten rivulets shining down the bedroom wall. Let’s pretend we’re on a boat at sea and watch the neighbour’s magnolia trees pitching through the porthole. The leaves slosh and thrash against the glass. Some days I think, What have I gotten us into? This tearstained wall and constant dripping into buckets, the mould a wild black shadow. Child, I promise you the rain will stop. Let’s read another chapter in the book about the kingdom of crows. It has to stop. Let’s count as high as we can while I braid your bath-damp hair. At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees 00:00 / 00:29 When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like finally, and rushes in. Even when you trim a tree, the sky fills in before the branch hits the ground. It colours the space blue because now it can. Publishing credits Ohio Cento: American Poetry Review (Vol. 47, No. 4) Porthole: Crab Creek Review (Vol. 2, 2012) At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees: Iron Horse Literary Review Author photo: © Patri Hadad

Hear poet Julian Bishop read poems for wave 22 of literary poetry journal iamb. Julian Bishop wave 22 summer 2025 back next the poet A former environment journalist turned poet, Julian Bishop lives in Barnet with his family and dog, and runs a small media company. He’s worked for many years as both a reporter and a producer with the BBC, and also on ITV’s News At Ten. Julian's first collection of eco-poems, We Saw It All Happen , appeared in 2023, and his poetry has been published widely. He was a runner-up in the International Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry, and is currently writing a series of poems about masculinity, as seen through the life and times of Italian painter Caravaggio. the poems Lobster 00:00 / 00:58 Pepsi – it was the brand he grew up with – the sweet memory of it, the familiar tang of aluminium. Each night cradled in a cot of cans, suckled on bottles, sleeping on a seabed littered with plastic toys, tops spinning on the floor. Every one of them Pepsi. He dressed up in armour – it became a habit (with a Pepsi logo) – hung out with a pile of drifters, washed-up types who didn’t even look fine on the surface. They all drank Pepsi. He got a tattoo – festooned in red and blue, he soon became a brand ambassador, the extravagant fandangle spangled on a hand. But he threw it all away. Bottled it. Abandoned, he washed up on a beach – that’s where I found him. Junked, with only a Pepsi filigree. Even his mother had sent him packing. Sitting for Caravaggio 00:00 / 01:46 Ground floor of the Palazzo Madama – I walk into the blasphemous dark, black as a Vatican bible. The air hangs heavy with myrrh, hint of dead flesh. He wants an assistente – a boy to prime canvas, grind his earths and ochres. The pay – two soldi less than my age, dieci per una seduta . Then the Master appears, brighter than The Crucifixion, blinding rays of mezzogiorno sunlight stabbing a straw-covered floor. He thrusts towards me a set of predator’s feathers, angels’ wings cadged off Gentileschi. My heart flutters; just like the others his eyes strip me before I can undress. Shucked and pinioned, I edge onto a set cluttered with props: crumpled bed-sheets, bawdy musical scores, violin, plated armour, a dead flower. I don’t feel sweet like Cupid. Legs wide, an angel’s wing brushes my thigh – I’m his Love Conquers All, unadorned. My right arm aches from clutching arrows without a quiver. I grin. The Master spits grape pips as he paints. Although we never touch, I feel his fingers flicker over me. He spits another pip, his temper sweeter than the flesh of a maturated fig; Bellissimo Cecco, next time I make you a saint. Pangolin ‘ ... a splendor which man in all his vileness cannot set aside ... ’ Marianne Moore, fromThe Pangolin (1936) 00:00 / 01:07 Part botanical, part mechanical dragon – Marianne considered you more Artichoke than mammal, more plant than ant-eater, your pine-cone whorls Nestled snug among the jungle under-scrub. Ardently pursued for your aluminium Glossiness – armoured dinosaur, your snakeskin plates were scraped quite clean by Opportunistic traffickers; exotic crocs served up as mysterious elixirs to quicken Lactation or help drain pus. Alas, uncanny pangolin, maybe your foil-covered flesh Incubated more than a quick fix, your silver plates Stripped by unscrupulous poachers, Name made notorious by those who sickled open the last cans of your slatted metal backs. Publishing credits Lobster: Ginkgo Prize Ecopoetry Anthology 2018 (Ginkgo Prize) Sitting for Caravaggio: winner of the 2021 Poets and Players Poetry Competition Pangolin: runner-up in the 2020 Ver Poets Open Poetry Competition

Hear poet Dale Booton read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dale Booton wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Dale Booton (he/him) is a queer poet from Birmingham whose poetry has been published variously by Verve Poetry Press, Young Poets Network, Queerlings , The North and Muswell Press. He has work forthcoming with Magma , and recently hosted the Young Poets Takeover at Verve Poetry Festival. Dale's debut poetry pamphlet, Walking Contagions , is available to pre-order from Polari Press. the poems Church 00:00 / 01:05 when told that God is not meant to be understood I crumbled felt the weight of expectation as it dragged my body below the floor and held it there if knowledge is power then why can I not know why I am so powerful is it that my voice can be used as a weapon that my thoughts can soar beyond these four walls I’ve heard it said captivity is a state of mind I’ve been told theologists are the wisest of all well I beat Pastor at chess at pool broke out of the cage he put me in little child the Lord moves in mysterious ways but is never wrong so you tell me why you tried to darken my heart denied my being why the spirit of someone can only be what you say it is Classroom 00:00 / 00:54 how strange that want to preserve what is so obvious I have heard parents speak how they don’t want their children to know of people like me just like I don’t want my classes and colleagues to know how alone I feel we erase what we fear what we cannot understand drive it into the shadows in the hope it will never make it to light again here my voice is foreign this place where sexuality is a question-and-answer session each one a stone’s throw further from purpose no room for growth no stature that can define a willingness to teach those whose kin would want you dead Nightclub 00:00 / 00:52 I have heard the music speak to me it was the bodies of friends and strangers that introduced us kindred arms wrapped around the uncomfortable relax we move as one there is strength in physicality there is softness in letting go that not-so-sober shove onto the dancefloor that not-so-innocent rush to be close to some other proximity is breath a closely guarded secret here my breath is not foreign this place where love and lust are two words that begin with l like living Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Pratibha Castle read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Pratibha Castle wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Much of Pratibha Castle's poetry reflects on her childhood growing up in England in the 1950s and 60s as the daughter of working-class Irish parents. Her poetry has been published in Under the Radar , Lighthouse , Southword , The Honest Ulsterman , Tears in the Fence , One Hand Clapping , Words for the Wild and elsewhere. Pratibha followed her award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers with Miniskirts in The Waste Land – a winter 2023 Poetry Book Society selection. In 2025, she was a finalist in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition , highly commended in the McLellan English Poetry Competition , and shortlisted for The Fish Poetry Prize . the poems Loving 00:00 / 01:24 A convention of china dolls / on a shelf beside the window / heartless as Delft /neat feet / bound in black bombazine / poking out / beneath satin strict skirts / thoughts / tight lipped / behind pink-pout smirks / corpsed eyes / promise little / of warmth / though a child / frowning over fractions / under Sister Brendan’s codfish glare might / ache / to gussy tresses / chestnut arctic gold liquorice gloss curls to / cosset / covet / coil / about a mayfly finger / dream of ice-tulip cheeks / lace edged pantaloons / frothy petticoats of / cradling chilly porcelain into her chest / contrite enough / to birth a purple bloom / hopeful / to blush chalky skin / for crockery eyes to weep / cherry blossom petals The New Neighbour Introduces Himself 00:00 / 01:21 holds out his hand and though cat sense cautions do not touch I freeze. That same cat caught grubbing in a bed of broccoli, that leveret on Windmill Hill, thralled in enchantment of a ferret. My throat seizes so I cannot utter handshakes not my thing . Puppet to his will jerking its string, my arm lifts, hand – crushed in his – flaccid as a bludgeoned fish. I snap out of this trance, mumble must get dinner stumble to the house scrub passive fingers to a laundry girl flush, purge the clammy imprint of his intuited intent. One more blot to bloat the image of a boy’s tobacco touch improvising on my ten year old fanny as if it was a junk yard flute. Hug 00:00 / 02:15 My mother’s heart was a lake, its frozen surface cracked, when I was young, with insults hurled her way, and I hurled many, wounding like rocks, till her cool glaze became a starburst of splintered love. Even her delight in daffodils, withered, since the bunch of yellow bells she gave me on my 15th birthday, whose whole heads I bit off, mad for some imagined slight and in an acid spritz of blame, spat her way. At which my mother, murmuring to herself, sure the poor girl’s tired , patted my arm, our only physical exchange: we never hugged. Having learnt, years later, how an infant monkey languishes if deprived of its mother’s touch, I subjected her to a lingering clinch. Not just a brief ooh-la-la peck on either cheek, stay two feet away from-one-another sort of hug, but a bellytobelly chesttochest squeeze, palming up and down her back as though grooming the silk-eyed Persian hunkered on the couch, glaring. On a normal day, the only flesh my mother or myself would handle. And when my mother tried to edge away, I fastened my grip like now I’ve got you ma, you’re going nowhere. The way, when small, I ached for her to hold me, limpet tight. Publishing credits Loving: Stand Magazine (Vol. 21 No. 4) – originally appearing in a different form and titled A Child's Dream of Love The New Neighbour Introduces Himself: finalist in the McLellan Poetry Competition 2025 Hug: London Grip (Winter 2021)

Hear poet Kate Caoimhe Arthur read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kate Caoimhe Arthur wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet Kate Caoimhe Arthur lives in Co. Down, Ireland, having spent time in Cambridgeshire as the 2017 Fenland Poet Laureate where she collaborated with fine art printmaker Iona Howard . As well as winning the award that secured her the poet laureateship, Kate also won the 2023 Spelt Magazine Nature Poetry Competition with her poem, The Irish farmhands mourn the death of a child at Denny Abbey . Currently at work on her first collection, Kate has poetry in The Stinging Fly , Blackbox Manifold and After... the poems MOTHER ... After the Studio Morison installation MOTHER ... at Wicken Fen (2020) 00:00 / 01:23 I am coming back inside / you the hayrick oikos I’ve been looking for / I know there are some changes I should make / need stilts now to lift these hems off the hostile earth / my basal body temperature dropped as my skin puckered up / I felt my skin ripple to a sheen in its tansy beetle phase / I made for the haywalls but the light fell on my oil-spill flanks / I knew myself reflected in the eye of a bird / braced and pushed files of keratin / -like needles along my back and sides / grew down and feather fold over fold / I flew up to a rafter near your apse mother / but all I could taste in my throat was beetles beetles / in my hunger I could feel my leg muscles extending / my claws contracting into nubby pads / I didn’t know what I was any more / but my lips wrenched back so my face was all teeth / at least part of me is shadow and needs to be dragged / I will be ready when the next one comes through Bewildered Mothers 00:00 / 01:09 like a nuclear facility in a suburban zone to an Artificial Intelligence operated drone is the nutrient-dense squalene-rich liver of the Pacific Great White Sleeper tucked tenderly by its other vital organs behind the plate-glass reflection sheening a baby-plump underbelly to the taste of an orca, specifically the Flat-Toothed Ecotype or the North Pacific Offshore these same Killer Whales who can pinpoint the precise location to disjoint unctuous purple lozenges slow-releasing of potency are those bewildered mothers propelled through coastal waters say, off San Juan Island, Washington, pushing and holding aloft its dead baby regardless of the state of decay for seventeen days bearing the carcass offering the ocean a chance to witness squint 00:00 / 01:04 I entered the cell slowly and delicately cringing to fit the space this action accorded with a version of myself I admired 4ft x 6ft subfusc but for a cross shaped slit through which meaty drops of candle flame or is it god steal either way I lap it up opposite a puckered flap through which food comes and shit goes I always wanted to inhabit another body and now here I am a woman constantly on the edge when the host is held to my tongue I swoon it burns through my body licking at the tips of my numb limbs they say I tether the church to the earth on which it stands Publishing credits MOTHER ... : After... (Dec 8th 2022) Bewildered Mothers / squint: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sadie Maskery read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sadie Maskery wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea. She's had her poetry published in numerous journals – among them, Fevers of the Mind , The Selkie , Green Ink Poetry , Crow and Cross Keys , Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Burnt Breakfast Magazine . Her chapbook Push was published by Erbacce Press, while her debut collection, Shouting at Crows was published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. the poems Beginnings 00:00 / 02:42 The first time we meet the shock is there but small, a pause in the celestial clock; a tick of time suspended, potentiality acknowledged. My heart refinds its beat. Life moves on. In quiet moments I find myself replaying the curve of shadows under your eyes and I wonder at your weariness. Another day, a touch of fingers on my shoulder and the heat flows, how can you caress so intimately? I walk away yet feel you across the room. When our eyes meet I know from the way our cheeks flush, we are magnets, an exquisite tug dilating pupils, veins, souls, it is more than imaginary, this pain, this want. We meet by chance, friends of a friend, and I want to say, if you were to take my hand right now, lead me to an empty room, press your leg between my thighs as I pull your face towards me, the wall cold against my back and the warmth of you so overwhelming I almost faint from hunger quenched, ferocity and joy, terror and delight, your tongue in my mouth, my fingers entangled in your hair, your hands caressing beneath the black soft cotton, belly, breast, my sighs, your breath gasping, diffident explorer, urgent devourer and all this Oh my God my dear did you not know? if you were to take my hand it would be beyond words, beautiful, defiled in ecstacy ... and inevitable – it has happened – it – will – happen – remember – the universe played this moment to infinity before we were born but yes, hi, no I don't think we've actually been introduced, although we've met. We've met. We've met. A Nice Cup of Tea 00:00 / 01:02 I knew he had died Because every day he woke first To bring a nice cup of tea in bed. And that morning the kettle Didn't wake me and he lay Still beside me. I eased into my slippers Padded to the kitchen. Made two teas, put them on tray. The nice cups, with saucers, Fine china that needed a wash Because of the dust, for show Usually, we could see our hands Through the glaze. Nice cups. With fresh milk, not yesterday's. Watched the kettle boil. The steam curled Across the worktop And disappeared. Where does it go I wondered. The sugar shook From the spoon a little. A nice cup of tea. Ruth 00:00 / 01:47 When we were young we played at the beach on a blustery day. The waves snapped against our legs. We bellysurfed through spume, not knowing if the wet on our cheeks was foam or rain or tears of laughter. Then you were tumbled by breakers against the groyne, the length of it, up with the wave and then sucked back by its retreat, and I still laughed because you were a rag doll flailing, sand and weed in your hair, mouth wide. You crawled back to me, stood, and from every inch of you blood welled, a thousand striations of intricate symmetry, delicate etchings, red rubies, mingling on skin marbled with the salt water but shock kept you numb, at first. I don't remember how you reached hospital, maybe someone from the pier phoned. I was confused, you went away, your parents came with white-edged lips and no words. I never saw you again. You were safer away from me and the sea. I went to the beach that winter to watch waves surge and ebb. There was no newly realised aura of doom. I ran fingertips along my body at night, wondered if your scars were raised or flat, if they held in their patterns the beauty of those first beads of blood through the pale, that surprise, and the wonder in your eyes. Publishing credits Beginnings: Push (Erbacce Press) A Nice Cup of Tea: Anser Journal (Dec 2020) Ruth: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Victoria Spires read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Victoria Spires wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet It's been two and a half years since Victoria Spires began writing, and she thinks eight-year-old Vic would be proud of her for living up to her childhood dream of publishing a book – her debut pamphlet, Soi-même . Shortlisted and commended in several prizes and competitions, including the 2024 Ledbury Poetry Competition , Victoria’s poetry has appeared in Berlin Lit , Dust Poetry , Stanchion , The Winged Moon , The London Magazine and After... In 2025, she placed third in The Rialto's Nature and Place Poetry Competition , and won The Alpine Fellowship's Poetry Prize with her poem I try to model kindness to all living beings, and it's hard . Away from writing, you'll find Vic playing wrestling action figures with her son (The Undertaker is her favourite), running, or crouching down to look at something interesting. the poems Artemis of the Salt Works (Brine Shrimp) 00:00 / 01:16 The way you glide, if glide were both shutter and frame The way your bodies are a thing that moves, and stays in place The way you flute eleven simultaneous pairs of legs The way the space you make is always being rearranged within itself The way your separatenesses fit, as different imprints of the same feather The way fucking is – for you – a state of grace, which can be achieved alone, or together The way you are see-through, like the pleats of time made visible The way your face, if you have a face, is entirely abstract, beatific The way you synchronise with light The way you loop with the aimless precision of a rehearsing figure skater The way you (the skate) feathers you (the ice) Your soft lives, that begin and end with swim in one unbroken temporal chain The way you don’t need to believe in heaven, to describe it From a train 00:00 / 00:42 For a while, only field and trees – the world pleached, into a certain frame of reference by a letterbox eye. Few things change, except the particular angles and location of a pylon, the rain or not-rain in this or that envelope of sky. I expect this is how some loves arrive: the head idly resting at the window pane, the almost unnoticeable re-arrangements in the interior set design. Until gradually it is suggested, that a great journey is underway, and has been, for some time. Mother-Substitute 00:00 / 00:59 There are 294 mothers in our solar system Astronomers are discovering new mothers all the time The smallest and most distant mothers will no longer be given mythological names All mothers are mythological On Earth, claims of the existence of other mothers have not been disproved My mother is called Lilith When I can’t sleep, I root for her nipple in the pale flesh of the window I display a fearful-avoidant attachment style entirely in keeping with her orbital eccentricity The composition of a mother depends on its distance from its own mother Some mothers are almost constantly volcanic Some mothers will never be knowable To mother means to measure time Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Peri Cimen

Hear poet Abigail Lim Kah Yan read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Abigail Lim Kah Yan wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Abigail Lim is a Malaysian engineer and spoken word poet who will point out to you, every plane she sees in the sky. She has a poem published in the 2021 Malaysian Millennial Voices anthology titled 'How to Paint the Rainbow When You're Colourblind'. She is also the winner of the 2022 Kuala Lumpur Youth Literary Arts Festival Poetry Slam. the poems Domestic Arrival 00:00 / 01:50 You told me I felt like home earlier on. But the way you bring my feet up to your lips to kiss them makes me feel like a church instead, an altar. Catholics are called to repent during Lent, and it feels like we're always apologizing in advance. When I cry, and I cry a lot, you do not tell me to stop. You reach out to hug me just as soon as my eyes turn glassy like yours, watching the rims of my glasses catch the first drops of tears. You told me to write sad poems about you, but you're the happiest part in all of them. Because you bring offerings too, of fancy chocolate, and the Killer Queen champagne and so many burgers. The remnants of smoke and ash in my bathroom like the incense wafting from thuribles. And teaching me Jeff Buckley's hallelujah on the electric guitar is the closest thing we both can agree on for a hymn. You told me I'm your matriarch, because in the words of Taylor Swift, fuck the patriarchy (in more ways than one). You told me I felt like home earlier on, and I told you, you make me feel like Eve, you, my Adam, I want to split open my chest cavity, dig around for the one rib that always felt misplaced in me, break it off, hands scarlet and ivory, offer it up to you, say, "I think this belongs to you, how long have you been without it". Kintsugi Inspired by Robert Frost 00:00 / 02:28 Nothing gold can stay and nothing good can stay I want you to stay so bad, I only wear silver jewelry, keep the gold rings and necklaces for special occasions. because nothing gold can stay and an orange sunset only casts its glows for so long on my Kelana Jaya condo we watch it fade together, from the swimming pool, floating, hands reaching out like otters at sea, afraid to drift too far away because nothing good can stay I am afraid to wonder if we'll ever trade our silver rings for golden ones di tanah yang sudah mengenal rasa darah kami, yet still demands its pound of flesh why do I need to renounce my faith for something you have ceased to believe in We are mere casualties of the 1984 Islamic Family Law I wonder if there are those before us Who did not yield to this pressure, a cult, beckoning Gold is typically a malleable metal darah mereka bukan lagi milik tanah ini and I want to break your IC in half, Make you a new one, take my last name, You're already more of a Lim than I am, Christened the Lim Jetty in Penang with spills of beer and cigarette ash teaching me to speak my ancestors' tongue 'Wah ni hui Chiang hua yi ah' all the aunties say Can we make gold stay? Because I'm an engineer, and you're pretty smart, Together we'll polish the little gold we have until they shine constantly, We're both clumsy, but we seem to have a pretty solid track record of keeping our silver rings safe If we can make good stay, I will follow you beyond a sunset's horizon, To a land where personal beliefs are kept personal (I don't need a church or a government to recognize our union) And if gold rings are too precious a commodity, I'd marry you with paper rings in a heartbeat. Icarus 00:00 / 01:47 I think some planes were meant to stay grounded - like the 737Max after the Ethiopian Air crash. I think I am what happens when a plane stalls, suddenly, there is not enough lift to keep me off the ground, and my internal pilots suck at recovering. I think this is as close as I get to Icarus, he too has felt the thrill of flying high, hair tickled by the wind, waxy wings white against a golden blue sky. I think I am as stubborn as Icarus, somehow believing I can touch the sun, but gravity will have us in its grasp at the last second. He too would've felt the air sucked from his lungs as he fell all the way down. I think we both do not have time to grieve unsuccessful dreams, we just die along with them. I think some dreams are meant to be forgotten the moment you wake up, but I remember all my sleep paralysis demons. And I think I do get a little sad each time I see a plane in the sky, knowing I am so far removed from ever touching it. But I hope my love still finds it adorable when I compulsively tell him, 'see plane' or 'got propeller, looks like ATR72', neck stretching out windows to get a better view. I think, on some days, he is the dream I get to wake up to. I think I am trying to be happy staying grounded, at the very least, you can't have a good flight without a safe landing. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Catrice Greer read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Catrice Greer wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Baltimore-based writer Catrice Greer is a 2021 nominee for The Pushcart Prize who spent November 2020 serving as a Poet-In-Residence for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Catrice has been published in several local publications and online journals, as well as in an international anthology. She's currently a Guest Editor for IceFloe Press, and Guest Poetry reviewer for Fevers of the Mind. the poems Cortical Cartography 00:00 / 01:54 I give thanks for you bravely doing this again traveling synapse by synapse trails of electric pulses jumping blackhole gaps that used to remember holding the dead space a new soma body birthing from bleating darkness show us the nucleus the middles of what we were made of Axons spread like kamikaze flying squirrel bodies with arms akimbo reaching dendrites touching Grateful for even this axon potential sometimes on sometimes off Praise for brave synaptic dives and jumps Grateful for re-birthed myelin insulating protecting making sure that we traffic on our way by the quickest route charged in this dark matter discovery-space This astronomy building anew, wrinkled city of light, crevices, crannies, gyri and sulci, ridges and valleys jellied, crinkled mass sectioned by lobes all speaking trillions simultaneous synaptic voices prayerfully all at once this chatter mines the neuronal network and we build a whole new world I Am Home 00:00 / 02:20 Lost you Early November When the leaves started falling And time faded backward Sitting here crocheting Stitching memories one loop at a time Your voice in my head swirling Humming a hymn, your favorite And I sing each note yearning, solemn As if you’d appear suddenly solo into a duet and we raise our voices as high as you ascended when it was time For you to be called home I rock quietly ashen stilted lone tree Swaying In a wood still lush knowing I sit with a pain I can barely speak the name awash with memories of you and the absent space we called your chair, dresser, your place at the table the place we used to go every Friday, your touch, your smile beaming a side-eye on an inside joke between us, The memory that had your name all over it that our family can’t tell anymore without crying, laughing, wishing you here And one day I will see your face again We will see you Feel you As your spirit is so close in the air here near me Near us vibrating in the humming I believe I can feel you We will never forget you A whisper softly tells me: 'I am home' The Gathering 00:00 / 03:14 Hear ye, hear ye We are gathered here today family, friends, enemies, enemies of my enemies We are here at the black hole mouth of this isolated cave in the grief painted infected unknown space to bury our dead among us Those dead things between us that hold us back Those things we no longer speak Those things that twine and whip round our vocal chords that prevent the i’m sorries i miss yous, i love yous the pieces that bumble forward like an emotionally blind man heady on drink bumbling home too late for whatever he was meant to be there for knocking over sentimentals, and traditions, passed down collectibles shattered in pieces launched jagged landmine shards speckling the ground Our DNA, our ancestors, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers long gone our creators ask us to stand here together Ask ourselves if in this space we will abandon Our old skins Our old breath and choose to share anew Can we bury this dead thing between us all so we can stand wrapped in sinew, tendons, blood¹ coursing miracles spiraling through the breath lifting us in a swirl of meditative purpose Can we find a new space a sense of being We are here in this vortex to bury the living dead under loam, clay, rocks, into the broken soil Cover it. Mark it as resting here never to go forward We mark new paths with a sign here as we crawl out heel to heel ... 6ft apart linked in spirit life begins anew we celebrate together mourning yesterdays embracing our multicolored confettied I forgive yous, littered in the air, celebrating our tomorrows ¹ Ezekiel 37:8 — King James Version: 'And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.' Publishing credits Cortical Cartography: Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Ancestral Voices 2020) I Am Home: Afro-American Newspaper (Baltimore Edition) The Gathering: first published under the title Elegy in the Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Vol. 8, Issue 9)

Hear poet Brian Bilston read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Brian Bilston wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Brian Bilston, author of the Costa-shortlisted novel Diary of a Somebody , has been dubbed both the ‘Banksy of poetry’ and ‘Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate’. His first book, You Took the Last Bus Home featured poems he'd shared on Twitter. His poem Refugees was adapted into a picture book for children, and his new collection of poetry, Alexa, what is there to know about love? was published in early 2021. the poems How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors 00:00 / 00:50 It’s not rocket surgery. First, get all your ducks on the same page. After all, you can’t make an omelette without breaking stride. Be sure to watch what you write with a fine-tuned comb. Check and re-check until the cows turn blue. It’s as easy as falling off a piece of cake. Don’t worry about opening up a whole hill of beans: you can always burn that bridge when you come to it, if you follow where I’m coming from. Concentrate! Keep your door closed and your enemies closer. Finally, don’t take the moral high horse: if the metaphor fits, walk a mile in it. She’d Dance 00:00 / 00:55 She’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. The kitchen was her grand ballroom; her partner was a mop. She’d foxtrot among the pots and pans, she’d paso doble to the sink, and as she swept across the floor, her mind danced, too. She’d think of how he’d held her in his arms at the Locarno and the Ritz - whirling, waltzing, a world apart - in the years before the kids, and longer still before the shadow the doctor spotted on his lungs. How dazzlingly they had danced! How dizzyingly she had spun! Her neighbours saw her sometimes, shuffling bent-backed to the shops. But at home, she’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. How Much I Dislike The Daily Mail 00:00 / 01:01 I would rather eat Quavers that are six weeks’ stale, tie up the man-bun of Gareth Bale, listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail, than read one page of the Daily Mail . If I were bored in a waiting room in Perivale, on a twelve-hour trip on Network Rail, halfway through a circumnavigational sail, I would not read the Daily Mail . I would happily read the complete works of Peter Mayle, the autobiography of Dan Quayle, selected scripts from Emmerdale , if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail . Far better to stand outside in a storm of hail, be blown out to sea in a powerful gale then swallowed by a humpback whale than have to read the Daily Mail . If I were blind, and it was the only thing in Braille, I still would not read the Daily Mail . Publishing credits How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors: Diary of a Somebody (Picador) She’d Dance: Alexa, what is there to know about love? (Picador) How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail: You Took the Last Bus Home (Unbound)

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. 2020 one two three four 2021 five six seven eight 2022 nine ten eleven twelve 2023 thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen 2024 seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty 2025 twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four 2026 twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight Read and hear wave twenty-four find a poet A-Z about audition © 2020-26

Hear poet Maggie Mackay read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Maggie Mackay wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet After retiring as a support teacher for young people with additional needs, Maggie Mackay took up writing again in 2009. A Masters degree from Manchester Metropolitan University followed – as did her pamphlet The Heart of the Run , and debut collection A West Coast Psalter . Maggie's second collection, The Babel of Human Travel , appeared in 2022. Her poem How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s inaugural WordView 2020 permanent collection, and one of her poems was a runner-up in The Liverpool Prize, judged by Roger McGough. Maggie is a regular reviewer of poetry collections and pamphlets at The Friday Poem . the poems Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages 00:00 / 00:53 To witness the birth of my father one hundred and four years ago on that sunny November day To meet my grandmother humming a baloo to her new son To hear the milk cows low beyond the limewashed buildings To walk the fields towards the White Cart, Crookston Castle within sight To feel the oak barley breeze in my hair To watch the Clydesdale’s hooves sink as the plough carves into the soil To smell pure country air To play with my toddler uncle on the stone floor with his home-made wooden train which I have to this day To run it down the hallway and hear the wheels clatter as they have for three generations The Babel of Human Travel 00:00 / 01:37 The day comes when she hears the pasture murmur for the last time, and so/her trunk and her soul head for the/Broomielaw where the ship waits for her coming and the Lord/keeps faith while all manner of Scots are scattered/with all manner of dialects and accents, treasuring them/in this fine, vessel-stranger towards new lives abroad/She waits for a roll call, goes from deck to berth from/dining table thence/to fall upon/her lonely spot and weep the/salt from her pale face/dream of/the final lament her brother played, all/the longing pouring through the/Atlantic waters, that handful of earth/deep in her pocket and/the treasured Christening robe folded where they/packed it with the promise of babies to come. Those too aged waving off and miles away, left/behind. The worn spurtle, flat irons, darning mushroom, cradled too in the hold, as the ship casts off/towards the land of caribou and snowshoes through struggles to/understand othery Baltic tongues which yearn to build/homesteads along riverbanks, seek to befriend the Cree nation, preserve the/songs and stories of home, create new histories of their Manitoba city. Void 00:00 / 00:26 Father hanged himself perhaps above the washhouse mangle, or in the orchard maybe, dead weight dressed in apple blossom. You’re wondering if I miss him, if I miss his hand on my arm, if his voice is fading. It’s in the sparrow’s call, ten chisel clangs, a bicycle bell. Publishing credits Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages: exclusive first publication by iamb The Babel of Human Travel: The Babel of Human Travel (Impspired Press) Void: A West Coast Psalter (Kelsay Books)

Hear poet Vanessa Napolitano read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Vanessa Napolitano wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Vanessa Napolitano is a British-American writer with three pamphlets to her name and a fourth due from Stanchion Press in May 2026. She was among six writers selected for Word Up North's 2025 New Northern Poets , and has seen her work appear in Humana Obscura , The Interpreter’s House , And Other Poems , Porridge and Clarion . Vanessa writes about grief, place, nature and the domestic. Her first collection, I’ll know I’m home , will be published by Black Cat Press in 2027. the poems Tell me again about your theory of change 00:00 / 00:55 Tell me what it will do for us here, at the level of moss and woodlice. Tell me again how it’s like the stages of grief, strata of sand and eggshell, fossil and soil, tell me how it’s better for everyone to absorb losses and gut punches, clearing away deadwood to break new light onto the forest floor - because the stems of our minds are like the roots of trees, flourishing, eventually, after the storm-drench. Tell me how you saw your activities and outputs landing like blackbirds on perches from up the hill- in your shelter- where all the landscape unrolls miniature as monopoly. Tell me again about impacts, collateral damage, like slate in the quarry crumbling paths, like blackberries staining your fingers, like the duckweed choking the banks, tell me again how nothing lasts. Tie-dying outside 00:00 / 00:44 The tie-dye was frozen in its tub no ice forecast, a sudden plunge like leaving significantly like leaving for somewhere new or moving no warning and here is a hard bucket of brilliant purple ice i expected some whorl of it in the cloth some scar that told the story there’s none no wax batik like scorch we rinse the ice till it remembers it was water in a previous life we go about our business we leave chance drying on the radiator the heat, the heart, the hearth. Faint 00:00 / 00:41 Did she make the shape of a cloud on the ground? Concerned words like taffeta or trifle cream. Luxury. Blood disperses back each side of the scale, each chamber of the heart, a tepid hand checks her pulse at the wrist. Does she make the shape of a cloud? Dispersed on the ground. Drawing a crowd. Her skirt long, thank goodness, pooled like blood around her. Her heart weighs heavy on the scale, this long, dangerous day. Taffeta-blue sky. A sudden hand helps her up. Luxury. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb