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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

Hear poet Marie Little read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Marie Little wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Living near fields and dreaming of the sea, Marie Little has published poetry and flash fiction with Acumen , Ink Sweat & Tears , Black Bough Poetry , Retreat West and many others. She enjoys unpretentious poems, twisty flash and the challenge of a writing prompt. Marie is co-creator of The Swadlincote Festival of Words , and runs writing groups for adults and children. She's best known for her children’s poetry as Attie Lime, and her debut children’s collection is Blue Jelly and Strawberries . the poems In the Sunday Garden Club Hut with Dad 00:00 / 00:44 Underarmed up onto the bench beside you pondering your bad back, too much flesh above my knees I absorb the morning like a dry seed. You chat easy with customers most already friends hand them smiles in paper bags forget the price of things. I play shop with the black iron weighing scales, palming the cold weights, testing the brass bowls for honesty. You hand me boiled sweets, tidy jars, curl twine, lift the stink on the fish, blood and bone bin to make us squirm, laughing. I measure myself carefully in scoops. Dusk 00:00 / 00:42 Six o'clock draws its curtains, twists the dial on chemicals keeping me sunny. The mood over the field is indigo blue, heavy with sooty clouds in waiting. I have no need of litmus paper. I know my score. Bottles in rows wink at me, each emptied to a different level, each a slightly different chime in the tune of dusk. I shun them all, flick the kettle on. Slide something herby, caffeine-free from a purple box, steep it so long it might understand. Drink it in sips, watch the soot spread. Later the bottles will sing. Parents, 1982 00:00 / 00:26 She is milk of magnesia, camphorated oil (warm to the touch). She is petroleum jelly, sodium bicarbonate, cream of tartar. He is the berry-stained wooden spoon as long as my arm, the sticky muslin, dripping. He is the jam-saucer, nestled in the ice box. He is pectin, like quiet magic. Publishing credits In the Sunday Garden Club Hut with Dad: Ink, Sweat & Tears (March 2022) Dusk: Acumen (No. 103) Parents, 1982: Molecules Unlimited Anthology

Hear poet Charlotte Ansell read poems for wave 6 of literary poetry journal iamb. Charlotte Ansell wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Charlotte Ansell left Yorkshire via the North Sea to moor up on the Medway. Her third collection Deluge was a 2019 Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation, and she’s had poetry in Poetry Review, Mslexia, Now Then, Butcher’s Dog, Prole, Algebra of Owls and various anthologies – most recently These Are The Hands: Poems from the Heart of the NHS . Charlotte received a Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters Award in 2020, and is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen . the poems My child buys a They/Them badge After Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 00:00 / 01:52 Because you made an announcement, does it make it so? Forgive me, I don’t see boy not yet, just the you you’ve always been, somewhere in between, yes, halfway through a door I have no key to, a warren I cannot tumble down. I am far too old to shape-shift now, despite your insistence it can be done. Please allow me time to grieve, the you that shrunk and slipped away. The only place your given name exists is in passwords on my phone, all other traces scrunched up, crossed out, erased, sunk or burnt. Your new pronouns cram my mouth, get lodged behind my tongue. I don’t expect the binders to always hold off the surgeon’s knife but forever is a long stretch when you’re fifteen; this is not like a decision to tattoo the word regret on your arm. I watch your carpet get worn with your white rabbit circles, it feels like your absolute conviction is the hook you needed to hang your pain on, with only me wondering why this one. They are already painting the roses, a whole court clamouring for my head but they don’t know you, my love, you can be anything you want and I will always be your mum. I want you to keep one more Drink me just in case, I want you to leave yourself an if . Published with the consent and blessing of my child Mockingbird Based on the traditional song, and after Terence Hayes’ A Golden Shovel 00:00 / 01:08 Your gasp prompts a finger to her lips – Hush. Ever the mimic, kingfisher shade this time, no longer little all grown as blue dye blush seeps her shoulders, your baby gone. Hugs are tolerated but far more nopes and don’t Mum , with rolled eyes, more words less say in her life; no beak grasping yet still a claw outstretched, please a familiar word, she only says Mama’ s - oftly when she wants something, all you cradled gonna fly, no more fluffed wings piled in your lap, you can’t buy back those years, mouth tight to a thumb. You love her still as fierce as a swan but she is restless, gobby, mockingbird. Credo for the clinic at the girls’ school 00:00 / 02:16 Don’t take this home even if this heaviness is not a shoulder bag of textbooks you can shrug off, it will settle in your bones, behind your eyes when your 9am cries for the mum who was either drunk or not there, says she isn’t bothered that she has a room now with an actual bed, where no one shouts she misses hugs, the unpredictability. Keep your tone neutral, if tears threaten, hold them back your empathy must be muted. Don’t bring home here, In these corridors, this tiny room you cannot be mum. When your 10am says she doesn’t know Why she feels so sad, after a year in which her half-brother saw his dad murdered, a stubbed cigarette life caring for her disabled mum before she reached fifteen do not say you understand. Do not make suggestions that are plainly stupid, there are those who recommend pinging a rubber band instead of taking a razor to a wrist but this is akin to gritted teeth in an avalanche. Resist. Never say it will be OK, you are here to sit with them in the tremors and not flinch. Hold still, no one feels listened to by a fidget. Never check your watch. Try to focus through your 10.55’s elaborate lies It’s not your job to believe her, nor judge or call her out. Your 12.15 doesn’t come, which considering, is no surprise. Don’t for one minute think you can rescue any of them – you are not God. At lunch, escape to the park for a proper latte from the mobile van. Head back. When your 2pm says she doesn’t feel seen, one of ten kids, beneath the hijab she has no faith in and tells you life is pointless, do not contradict. When the bell goes, do not take this home. Do not try this at home. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Zoe Brooks read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Zoe Brooks wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Zoe Brooks returned to her native Gloucestershire to write and grow vegetables after 15 years in London. Her collection Owl Unbound appeared in 2020, and her long poem for voices, Fool’s Paradise , won the Electronic Publishing Industry award for Best Poetry eBook – it will be published as a physical book in 2022. Zoe is a member of the management team for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, and as well as setting up and running the Poetry Events in UK & Ireland Facebook group , enjoys performing poetry. the poems My Grandfather and Uncle 00:00 / 01:04 My grandfather and uncle both returned to the earth with untimely haste. Although they worked it, broke its back for frost to bite into, dragged sedge from ditches, clawed back lambs from snowheaps, they did not inherit it. Unless it was in the length and width of a man's form. And it claimed them early, reaching up through the chest, pain filling the arms, which had gathered harvests. And still they loved it. And still they cursed on cold wet mornings as it worked like ringworm into their hands. In death they shall inherit the earth. Until this time they have been living on borrowed land. The Call 00:00 / 01:46 You want me to stay a hearthkeeper, a filler of stoves and a bearer of logs. But the forest calls and all the small unspoken things living there listen. You want me to be a guard dog, a lier by the fire. You place dead meat in bowls to comfort me. But the forest is stirring. Can't you feel its mossy paws rising up the walls? Can't you hear it? It scuttles in the attic and leaps on nesting mice, tears their little limbs and chomps on innards. You try to keep out its cold, but the roof insulation is red with the death of vermin. As you pull the rug over your head, I feel my tail grow bushy, my snout lengthen, my teeth turn iron. In the morning you will find my bed empty. Open the door and follow my trail, if you dare. Follow it up the hill, where the track skirts the ruined farm with windows black as the mouth of a gap-toothed hag. Follow it past the heavy cows to where the snow will not melt in the shadow of the birch trees, to the edge of the forest. I am waiting for you there. The Gypsies in the Room 00:00 / 00:43 It is the unstitching of the mind, we tell ourselves, watching as she slips further from us, like an old purse, the lining opening to reveal lost coins. Morphine and dementia see the gypsies in the room, silent in a row. The ancestors come to greet her, we joke, to watch over the journey we cannot take with her, not yet anyway. The coins jingle, crossing the palm of the ferryman. Publishing credits My Grandfather and Uncle / The Gypsies in the Room: Owl Unbound (Indigo Dreams Publishing) The Call: Obsessed With Pipework (No. 85)

Hear poet Sean Burke read poems for wave 25 of literary poetry journal iamb. Sean Burke wave 25 spring 2026 back next the poet Born in Banff, Scotland, Sean Burke now lives and works in Italy as a music, drama and philosophy teacher. His poems have appeared in various magazines, and he's been shortlisted in international competitions. Sean has also had work in anthologies from The Wee Sparrow , Write Out Loud , and Poetry on the Lake . He's currently working towards his debut collection. the poems from The Cups The King 00:00 / 00:43 I woke to find myself adrift on a silent sea, as still as glass and though my shoes are wrought in scales I kicked against the currents in vain. Deaf and blind, a boat with red sails balanced on the horizon, a tightrope poised to betray all hands to the emptiness over the edge of the world. This was days ago and one thought only clings to me, and I to it: what will become of my kingdom now that I am to be swallowed, as in the dream that possessed me first when I was just a child? Five Fields 00:00 / 02:18 I A child will draw hands somewhere between spider and sun, a marriage of circle and line, each a Euclid abstracting to bare bones. To each strip of blue its quarter-sun, each strip of green its house, a chimney weaving spirals of smoke. DNA. Double-helix. There’s nothing here that won’t be fixed by a little erasure, a little smudge or smear. II The smudge of lipstick inside this facemask marks it as yours; I wear your kiss as an open secret in the supermarket queue. Social distance; prophylaxis; the crown’s radials looking to hook up with a bronchial cell, it too seeking a home, a jumping-off point from where its electron-microscope selfie can go viral III just as I strive to have my emissaries sow divisions in your queendom. While we might ascribe the last to shoddy materials, I like to conceive her bursting through as pure will. The sperm that goes the distance severs its own tail, as Apollo jettisons its fuel cells after the atmosphere has been breached and Earth shrinks to the size of a mushroom spore. IV A mushroom spore will negotiate the rigours of space with aplomb, ensconce itself in a cloud that wanders from galaxy to galaxy until it falls on fertile ground. Figs and thorns. Mustard seed. Christ the great room-reader drawing quiddity from the quotidian even as the temple-keepers dead-bolt the sanctum sanctorum against any possible incursion. V Hard to guard, though, against the inside job – just ask Samson or, better yet, Delilah; hard to guard against a bee swarm’s wiki-up in a lion’s ribcage, so recently home to its vitals. Sea-change. Full fathom five. All the walls in the world vanity against the will to live. from I Don’t Want To Die 00:00 / 00:46 I don’t want to die, so I study a score for strings and voice stencilled in a black pentacle. Water-shadows dance on a whitewashed wall; the closer you get to the speaker, the more your body knows; the closer you get to your body, the more shadow is not shadow but thing-in-itself. So you’ve escaped the cave: Plato salutes you! That doesn’t mean the music has broken free of its black disc, the pentacle from its own geometry, but who would lift the needle for all that? Who would prefer silence? Whoever they are, I’m different to them, since I don’t want to die. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Five Fields won the 2025 Molecules Unlimited Poetry Competition

Hear poet Ramona Herdman read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ramona Herdman wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Ramona Herdman lives in Norwich and is a committee member for Café Writers. Her most recent publications are her poetry collection Glut – one of The Telegraph’s 20 best poetry books of 2022 to buy for Christmas – A warm and snouting thing and Bottle . the poems Prosody nil, Athletico nil 00:00 / 01:43 There’s something about the boundary of a sport (the edge of snooker’s baize and the audience in the dims beyond, the mere line that marks the end of a netball court mid-playground) that’s so bathetically hypothetical, so sillily literal. So little. You have your umpire in his high chair, with a picketty ladder, that makes him look pyramid-topper-tiny as he ascends. Perspective makes your Grecian diver shrink into a hoppy fly as he rises effortfully to the highest board. What’s the point of your immortal stats, your gyre of rules? For your outside ones there’s always rain to rain it off or the sun in your eyes. It’s background noise: a briefly disturbing mobby roar over the rooftops, interrupting life. But then again, sometimes it’s winter midnight at 4pm and the stadium’s flooded full of its own self-importance of light and it’s the one cube of the world left, looking in on itself like a ring-road supermarket or a late-night garage in the desert or a UFO landed on a world stalled in the era of bicellular worms. And if you know you’re one of those worms, what can you do but play? Crawl/hop/vault best as you can to worship at the altar of the line. What else is there? Waitrose, Church Lane, Eaton 00:00 / 00:49 I’m always reminded, amidst the carpark’s Porsches, of the prof in Cardiff who keyed his neighbours’ Benzes, custom SUVs and Audis with Latin phrases. I skulk teenagerwise by the doughnut peaches. I hate Duchy everything. But my heart is ashes as I cruise the deli counter’s Atlantis of cheeses, the up-lit liquor shelves’ stained-glass riches. This place is on my list, for when everything crashes: you’ll find me in the dairy aisle’s furthest reaches, dream-deep in clotted cream, heavy as Christmas. A house always wants to sit down 00:00 / 00:38 The stone wants to be sand. The timber wants to be soil. It wants to slump into swamp. To subside through the cycle. To lie down in a puddle and breathe water beetles. It loves the larvae blistering under its soffits. Home-tending is a constant exhortation: Stand up straight, goddammit! A lifetime position as Generalissimo Admin. Publishing credits Prosody nil, Athletico nil: Magma (84) Waitrose, Church Lane, Eaton: Raceme (Issue 13) A house always wants to sit down: Spelt Magazine (Issue 6)

Hear poet Seanín Hughes read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Seanín Hughes wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Seanín was first published on Poethead and featured on the inaugural Poetry Jukebox, based at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, in 2017. Her work has been published widely online and in print – everywhere from Banshee and The Stinging Fly to Abridged. Seanín was shortlisted for the 2018 Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and published her debut chapbook, Little Deaths , with Smithereens Press in 2019. She's currently studying literature at University of Ulster and working on her first full collection. the poems I Want You To Know That You Are Alive 00:00 / 01:43 The natural law is that sometimes, this must hurt. You will find yourself hurled headlong into a mound of salt, skin raw, inside out. And you will know, then, what it means to be the wound— what it means to learn how to breathe through it all. Know that it is a bravery to live at full capacity; fill each lung with equal measure of dark and light. Drink every cup dry. Know that nothing is ordinary, and all things are temporary— we can never outrun this bittersweet truth. But here’s the secret: we can stop, for a moment, and taste it, unafraid of the sting. It’s easier when you know it’s coming; when you lean into the fall, go limp, and let the cushion of your knowing absorb the impact. You will heal again and again, until. You will. The Long Bones 00:00 / 01:15 Bring to us your blackest dog, your tightrope mania, your voices and visions; lay them on the table lengthways. We'll measure your madness, convert it to voltage. Be still. Bite down. Listen when we tell you, we’ve come a long way from fractured femurs, cracked vertebrae. Here. This holds the chemistry to heavyweight your limbs from within; no restraint necessary. Bite down, now. Be a good girl. Slight risk of trauma to teeth or tongue while you sleep, but we promise, this will eat the pain. Yes— on waking, you may forget your name, the year, or how you came to be here— but your bones will remain intact. They’ll hold you together safely until the world comes back. The Birds Are Silent 00:00 / 00:45 & then the lights go up to reveal it all— the beat of fist-deep purple in every chest a tremolo, each knot of bone wet with blood, bodies upon bodies sharing the same wild shake, a writhe of hot molecules. We know the truth now on this godless tilted spin around the sun, dancing ourselves into frenzied circles: the end is here, and all the birds are silent. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

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 Mark Carson read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mark Carson wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Born in Belfast and educated in Dublin and Cambridge, Mark Carson has enjoyed an engineering career that's included sea-going with oceanographers, teaching in Nairobi, and running an engineering software company in Cumbria. He's published two pamphlets with Wayleave Press – The Hoopoe's Eye and Hove-to is a State of Mind – and a wheen of poems in various places such as Ink, Sweat & Tears , Smiths Knoll , The North , The Rialto , Orbis , Obsessed with Pipework , London Grip and Stride . Mark was short-listed for the Bridport Prize for Poetry in both 2009 and 2012, as well as for The UK's National Poetry Prize in 2014. His work has also been commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and the Mirehouse Poetry Prize. the poems Möbius Strip 00:00 / 00:43 reducing her life to seventeen bullet points was simpler far than she’d somehow imagined and she had them graven in cursive script on a one-sided strip of her native silver given a twist by a cunning smith hammer-welded so the text is continuous with the tip of his finger he traces the edge of the strip with one edge and one surface, re-entrant and cursive like a nightmarish earworm, a catch in four parts, with recursive remorse and the cyclical tides of unable to finish The New Footbridge 00:00 / 03:18 It springs across the river like a slice of rainbow, arched as a vertebrate, golden in the sunlight and the mayor cuts the ribbon, the councillors are ready and they all march together, march across the Guadiaro. Is it not a great idea, a bridge so light and springy? The laminated timbers so pretty and so buoyant? The abutments are substantial, the footings thick and massive, and the bridge rests lightly, lightly on its ledges. * * * The rain fell heavy in the Guadiaro catchment, red with mud the river rose, covering the footings and the river surged and rose again, thrusting the abutments and again the turbid river rose, tearing at the handrails. Who could imagine the buoyancy of timber? Who would consider the drag loads on the structure? Who did the sums on the piddling little brackets, the tension, the shear, the bending and the torsion? The goats and the sheep retreated to the hilltops, watched as the racing spate tore the banks asunder, watched as the carcasses were tumbled down the valley, watched as the pretty footbridge wrenched itself to pieces. Where will it end, the bridge, and what the hell can stop it? Smashing through the gorges, crunching on the boulders, tossing under viaducts and swept across the weir, the stepping stones, past long-abandoned piggeries, until it crashes, snags against the Old Bridge. Snags and floats and traps the trunks of willow trees, of splintered, fractured alamos and olive brash and figs and oleander torn from sodden banks. It rises like a floating dam, the water flooding over terraces, creeping up the door frames, sluicing through the sockets and the fusebox, lifting tables, chairs, cupboards, sofas, floating in a tangle to the ceiling, twisting shutters from their pintle hinges, toilet doors and pictures, prints. Guitars from hooks. Cushions. Books from shelves, maps and guides from folders, useless telephone directories, magazines, a grim confetti, paper-porridge slopping in the slimy flow. There’s no transparency, just thick brown oxtail, rich in clay washed from the groves of olives, ploughed lands, hillsides scarified and naked. Quietly, it starts to settle, thick and smeary. Now the water’s reached the Old Bridge deck, crushing foliage up against the chainlink handrail. Abruptly the bridge gives way, the concrete pier collapses, prising its footing from the river bed. A hundred thousand tonnes of water make a charge for freedom down the valley, tearing the gable from the house below, scattering roof tiles. From the broken windows of the flooded houses, water spews. In County Clare 00:00 / 01:14 And if you should stay in the town of Lahinch after your dinner and a glass in the hotel bar walk out in the long evening on the road to the west and perch on the dry stone wall, your eye to the left for the drama of the sinking sun, and to the east where soon the figure of the girl will appear and walk past you firmly as though stopping for no one only at the last minute she’ll spin like a dancer, coming to a halt in a stylish chassé with her back to the wall beside you. Then you may learn her name, that she is walking to Le Scanoor, which you had thought was called Liscannor, and that her age is not to be revealed on a first meeting, and that she loves to dance, and that there will be a marvellous opportunity to dance with her, next week in Le Scanoor, if you were still to be around. But for all of this to happen, you must be a slender boy of nineteen with an open countenance, and time on your hands. Publishing credits Möbius Strip: Ink, Sweat & Tears (May 2022) The New Footbridge: The Hoopoe's Eye (Wayleave Press) In County Clare: Hove-to is a State of Mind (Wayleave Press) Author photo: © Jon Bean

Hear poet Melita White read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Melita White wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Melita White is an Australian poet, writer, and spoken word artist. Her blog, Feminist Confessional , features feminist poetry, essays and personal non-fiction pieces in a confessional style. Melita is also a composer and a classically trained musician, and loves making all kinds of things. Her creative work is a form of activism, and she enjoys examining and debunking gender constructs, as well as focusing on topics such as the #MeToo movement and domestic violence. Her writing has featured in anthologies from Rhythm 'n' Bones Press and Indie Blu(e) Publishing, and various places online. the poems When God Was a Woman 00:00 / 01:36 When God was a woman there was no God There was only you and me and many other humans besides and there were animals and trees and rivers both wide and skinny and spans of land and oceans deep and crystals and sand and stars and comets and heavenly bodies galaxial When God was a woman the moon presided and the sky and weather and seasons were full of infinite knowledge both intimate and beyond When God was a woman there was no God and power filled each entity and no one thing dared take from another what was rightfully theirs And all had food and tenderness and air and water and learning and life and respect and there was enough of all of these things because there was no God to rule or to punish to preach or to take or destroy or to flood or to incite us to rape or to kill or to conquer (in the name of God) and all was exactly as it should be and there was love and balance and the Earth was just so Only ever as it should be Always When God was a woman Sardines 00:00 / 00:33 Bodies silver similar bodies Firm and plump they lie in a row Synchronised swimming silver sequins Similar bodies headless whole Salty sparkly oily striptease Turn my key and open me up Slippery cold skin to swallow Exhale life and crunch my bones Zoë means life 00:00 / 01:53 To my friend Zoë whose name means life who is a poem much richer than this a love letter a witch’s dictionary sage of all that is known or felt Zoë a Dada dandy my surreal sister humourist in the face of death she touches up my pain with the tiny brush of absurdity dials up the light on my chiaroscuro until we howl and the bitter tears of joy run over round cheeks Zoë stands and faces and says fuck you to the things that should be fucked well off — she is soft rose velvet blue glimmers of giggle plush cushions of cuddle sharp spikes of valour she is my chainmail armour and it is lined with cashmere   she is my posture straightening my cradled soul weeping my voice heard and my anger multiplied she is my mother and my other and my brother she is every soul’s lover she is 12 and 15 and 20 and 46 and 87 she is timeless and ageless she is a living ancestor the ground and the feed the seed and the sun the rain when it came she is all that she knows and she knows like no other Zoë means life — happy birthday Publishing credits When God Was a Woman: Whisper and the Roar (September 4 2019 ) Sardines / Zoë means life: Feminist Confessional

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 Jane Ayres read poems for wave 20 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jane Ayres wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry while studying part-time for a Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent. Soon after, she was longlisted for the 2020 Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. The following year, Jane was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and became a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize (she also picked up an Honourable Mention in the 2022 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest ). Twice nominated for Best of the Net, once for The Pushcart Prize, Jane has had her poetry published in more than 100 publications. She's also read her work for Eat the Storms , Upload , The Blue Door , Ó Bhéal , Medway River Lit and iamb . Her first collection, edible , appeared in 2022. Her most recent work is micro-chap, my lost womb still sings to me . the poems Giving my ex-boss a hand job for £20 (mates rates) 00:00 / 00:44 His request took me by surprise since I’d only invited him round for coffee making it clear there was to be no more sex. But at the time I was working four part-time jobs to pay my rent and cover the bills. It really would be easy money (I told myself) and I was right because it took my gloved hand just two minutes to achieve the desired outcome – less time than it took to write this poem. Not a bad rate of pay and to be honest, I wondered if he might want to make it a regular thing, although he said afterwards he usually had it done professionally. final witness 00:00 / 00:38 this thing you did this thing this thing you did that splinters needles gnaws claws caws calls you out calls you in burrows deep deeper seeps leaks loops leaches feeds this thing that taunts haunts hunts preys takes fright invites the want to do a good thing the right thing because the time you had the times we had the time you have dissolving wilting tilting twisting this thing this thing we did requiem for an age-inappropriate lover 00:00 / 00:55 i see you my body becomes cotton & the trickling wound will not heal or shut the knot in my back is spreading loaded with sticky expectation wearing my coming & going dress / firefly-bright a handful of knitted moments / charred seeds just a little crush in the bluebelled forest hollow promises made easily the curve of your cheek / a buried moon / bone-white this hand / nettle-woven / pinking the sinuous hive blurring the tongue-choked lines scraping the chalky narrative i’ll walk for miles to keep our secret Publishing credits Giving my ex-boss a hand job for £20 (mates rates): The Friday Poem (May 19th 2023) final witness/requiem for an age-inappropriate lover: Cōnfingō Publishing (Spring 2021)

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

Hear poet Jenny Byrne read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jenny Byrne wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet A newcomer to writing, Dublin-based Jenny Byrne had her first poem published in 2020. Her poems have appeared in The Galway Review , Impspired , Dust Poetry Magazine , Drawn to the Light Press and The Madrigal – though Jenny still thinks her biggest achievement is being a mum to two lovely people. the poems Danseuse 00:00 / 01:25 I do not want to lament the day you died, each year, purging up the aisle of expectation to kneel and prostrate I am ready for the day to come and know there is no must, no proper, no should I may trace a fingertip across your scarf of orchid silk, allow jewels to glisten in my palm, scatter photos, hold linen to my face and breathe you in — less of you with time; but still, a tiger knows her cubs, animal instinct reciprocates This pace, once chaotic, stumbling, shape-shifting to satisfy others has slowed, is gentle; with desire to gratify fading I move, a rising relevé in satin slippers to my tentative, delicate rhythm I may look back from time to time as I lead myself forward towards my skyline I think you would raise a celestial hand, urging me onward. Love (Classified) 00:00 / 00:45 I don't write about love it's ours, it's private. Where we are queen and king passions force bloody battles some won many lost We grieve poultice womb wounds with salt purging the demented Orchid roots reach toward light and air epiphytes survive supported freely I don't write about love, it's ours, it's private. Sapere aude 00:00 / 00:59 The wise child omniscient, sensing, absorbing full up, engorged, overflowing No reprieve, corridors closed, dam bulging, deluge certain walks within the gilded mausoleum, sham, chaos mire Instinct knows what can and cannot be said perception is reality they say a ten-year-old cannot play with perception Sensitivity has no place in dysfunction systems are not made to be broken wise children, bearing all weights, eventually crumble. Publishing credits Danseuse: The Madrigal (Vol. 2) Love (Classified): Impspired (Issue 11) Sapere aude: The Galway Review

Hear poet Samuel Tongue read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Samuel Tongue wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet Winner of a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust, and former poetry editor at The Glasgow Review of Books, Samuel Tongue is a widely published poet with a debut collection, Sacrifice Zones , and two pamphlets – Stitch and Hauling-Out (Eyewear Aviator, 2016). His recent work has appeared in Finished Creatures, Butcher’s Dog, The Scores, and One Hand Clapping. A selection of Samuel's poems is to be published in Ukrainian translation by KROK in 2021. the poems Emergent Properties 00:00 / 02:01 a church is enveloped by a forest and the forest is the creator and redeemer of the church. the hermits who can disappear into the trees, are trees. every time a tree moves it is a brustling prayer. susurration as supplication. the habit of the tree is its dwelling in the world. yes, Heidegger was wrong. no, the stone is not worldless; no, the animal is not poor-in-the-world; no, man is not only world-forming. the stone can be ground and underground – a negative capability – and the animals are adept at dwelling. neahgebur – they who dwell nearby. try not to think that clearing the forest is a clearing for thought. leave it dark for all the neighbours who are essential. My life and death are in my neighbour and a church is enveloped by a city and the city is the creator and redeemer of the church. the anchorites who can disappear into their cells, are cells. every time the bus doors hiss open, it is a shushed prayer. pneumatic pneuma. the habit of a tower-block is its dwelling in the world. yes, Le Corbusier was wrong. no, the house is not a machine for living in; no, the streets do not belong to the automobile; no, ornamentation is not a religion of beautiful materials. the tower-block can be forest and bewilderment – a negative capability – and the streets can be recovered. différance – that iterative, unrepeatable stranger. try not to think that deciding on anything will stop more emergence. leave it dark for all the strangers who are essential. My life and death are in each stranger and Fish Counter Fish that have a pebble in their heads; fish that hide in winter; fish that feel the influence of stars; extraordinary prices paid for certain fish. The Natural History Pliny 00:00 / 01:08 Cod that have been skinned. Cod that have a pebble of dill butter in their heads. Cod breaded. Cod battered: tempura or traditional. Smoked haddock. Dyed haddock. Wise lumps of raw tuna. Scaled, pin-boned pollock, de-scented: There are olfactory limits. Bake in the bag; no mess. 'This piece of halibut is good enough for Jehovah'. Fishsticks pink as lads’ mags. Skirts and wet fillets of sole. Fish fingers mashed from fragments of once-fish. Hake three-ways. Extraordinary prices paid for certain fish. Monkfish defrocked , gurnards gurning, fish so ugly you must eat them blindfold. Choose before the ice melts. Farm Boy 00:00 / 01:01 We rattle through the lanes in his ancient Austin Metro, footwells filled with welly boots and dried mud, clutches of sparrows bouncing around the high hedges. We pull off-road into gateways, warm dens of hawthorn; with a wink, he tightens his dog collar, disappears into a field, then returns with cauliflowers cradled baptismal under his arm, or broccoli blooms green as heaven. The Lord giveth and I taketh away , he laughs. One farmer gives us a brace of rabbits, still warm, leg-lashed with pink bailer-twine, and I hold them like newborns in my lap, soft as gloves. His theology is rich stews and a full belly before the Lord, Bible verses broadcast like seedcake on dry ground. I love him without understanding. In the evening, he holds me close and his prayers buzz sweetly in my ear. My pillow is a honeyed God. Publishing credits Emergent Properties: Finished Creatures (Issue 4) Fish Counter: Gutter (No. 17) Farm Boy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Helen Calcutt read poems for wave 2 of literary poetry journal iamb. Helen Calcutt wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Helen Calcutt is the author of two volumes of poetry. Her first, Sudden rainfall (2014), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. Helen's second work, Unable Mother , described by Robert Peake as ‘a violent and tender grapple with our cosy notions of motherhood’, appeared in 2018. Helen's poetry, journalism and critical writing have been published widely, and she is the creator and editor of acclaimed poetry anthology Eighty-Four – published in aid of leading suicide prevention charity CALM. Her newest pamphlet will be published in 2020. the poems Pale deer, soft-footed 00:00 / 01:33 The water is silk. She sings to me. The cold wind, the streets, the people flicker and shut off when the water falls, and I am naked within – singing of my dirt, how to know it. My eyes close ... in these few sacred moments when my daughters sleep and my loved one reads about Vikings and flayed skin. The water is like a pattering of milk. I want to stoop, and lick, and taste life again. I ask, did I give too easily today? was I good? baring my throat to the sky, the lit tiles reflect a deer, pale, and soft-footed. I run my fingers down my hair in St Water – I pray to her, choose me flow over, and over, and over me, touch me, heal heal until I am no longer meek or mild and I can run with my sins again. Grief is like a miracle 00:00 / 01:02 like opening your mouth for water, and finding rain. You stand for days outside the body of a silent church. Snow touches the stillness of the windows and you long for their acceptance, a few tears. You tell yourself the door isn’t closed: it’s open and weeping. Like the orange rose that never bloomed all spring then one day in autumn opened atriums of colour. Now all the roses gather and the door is open-armed. People think I am strange touching my lips to the wood, but ice is thawing to love inside my body: I don’t know how else to show my gratitude. Mytilini 00:00 / 01:12 Oldest of Seas, old friend, no one hears you slink back no one hears his own music anymore. Morning, soft heart, warm and unstartable expands from her threads at the earth's edge, unfaithful at last, brushing the ferns the anemone flowers. Light is longing to come home. In other worlds women tie knots in their bodice strings, sing songs, hang flycatchers from the moon. But here, where the sun hums in her socket where searoot and bloodroot insist on their comforting where the fire in the mountain wall torches our hands – like a bead of clear light the sea revolves through morning wind, and recognises us. Publishing credits Pale deer, soft-footed: The London Magazine Grief is like a miracle: Wild Court (April 8th 2020) Mytilini: Sudden rainfall (Perdika Editions)

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 Dominic Leonard read poems for wave 6 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dominic Leonard wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Dominic Leonard’s writing can be found in PN Review , Poetry London , the TLS , Pain and elsewhere, with two of his poems featuring in the spring edition of The Poetry Review . In 2019, he received an Eric Gregory Award. His pamphlet, Antimasque , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. He lives and teaches in London. the poems Seven Birds Passed Through a Great Building 00:00 / 01:00 Seven birds passed through A great building—I cannot Remember you always but I have been finding ways to Remember you enough. I have Loved only from a safe distance, Staring into sinks long enough To know the sense of spillage That comes with every act of Honesty. Seven birds passed Through a house of spectacle Through the light that lounged Around each of the great stupid Bells and I thought about how Profound it felt, hands thick And heavy on my stupid knees. When I say that once I dreamt You were a taxi on fire plunging Down every country road in England I am not being facetious I am testing my immensity. I am trying to manage my fear, Which is to say I cannot risk Heaven, or any attempt at heaven I Have made so far, not when each Line I find is a room gone dark just As I leave it and always the birds are Flown and I’ve missed it just, just. What is the wind, what is it After Gertrude Stein 00:00 / 00:53 An egg – lithe beast that could crack with any pressure, That gets yellower towards its centre, that hangs between The fingers. A ghost-vision, serenely bovine. Incubated, Stratified. A correct language of where it was, where it Went, how are we anchored by it. But, to wander with it – How the wind knocks my ham-fisted breath from me, Makes a pelt of it. And wedged is the wind, trickling Into and out of all my little compartments and rooms, A fawn in a field seen blurred through the rain at nearly Seven in the evening after stumbling from the house. Something to consider when deciding on materials to Rebuild the world from after testing its capacity for grief, Which is all this was. On forgetting the anniversary of a death 00:00 / 00:13 If that’s you hearing – out on the roof, astride your miscreant echo – you made this of me, didn’t you. Publishing credits Seven Birds Passed Through a Great Building / On forgetting the anniversary of a death: exclusive first publication by iamb What is the wind, what is it: Stand (Issue 223, Volume 17 No. 3)

Hear the poets of wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb read their poems for spring 2025 . wave twenty-one spring 2025 Andrea Small Bob Perkins Fred Schmalz Gillian Craig Jane Robinson Joe Williams Kelly Davis Maggie Mackay Marie Little Mark Carson Moira Walsh Perry Gasteiger Robin Helweg-Larsen S Reeson Theresa Donnelly

Hear poet Jean Atkin read poems for wave 4 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jean Atkin wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Jean Atkin's latest collection is How Time is in Fields , in which there’s a lot of walking and witnessing of place and the natural world. Her work has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Ramblings with Claire Balding, and appeared recently in The Rialto, The Moth, Agenda, Lighthouse and Magma. In 2019, Jean was Troubadour of the Hills for Ledbury Poetry Festival, as well as BBC National Poetry Day Poet for Shropshire . She works as a poet in education and the community. the poems The not seen sea 00:00 / 01:54 Under cliff, under white chalk, Under Hooken we walk down the throat of the harts tongue and talk. Our boots are glossed with clever ivy. Overgrown, overhead and soft under old man’s beard, bosomy June leans down on us, up close to cyclical drift, centimetre shift of earth. While, sunk in its cage of feathers, a blackbird rots, deflates into the flint step down to the beach. Shingle rumbles in our ears. It hisses, passes, as we wind the path between the cliffs, and only now and then we catch the hill-high lurch of chalk in mist. Keen in the nose, the salt and fret of sea. All the while we twist a flint descent by rungs of ivy root, and all the while a thrush repeats repeats its song to coil to coil inside our ears. And another blackbird sings, so blackbird answers it in audible waves. By our feet a chasm of ash and fog. Low in our bones, not visible, churrs the sea. The tattoo’d man 00:00 / 01:26 has had a skinful, to go only by what shows. His bull neck’s chained, a padlock swings above its own hatched shadow. In scrolling calligraphic script, his knife arm pledges faith in love, and brags his unsurrendered soul. His other arm is tidal. On the backswell of a bicep lolls a mermaid, tits like limpets, eyes like stones. An anchor lodges in the flesh above his wrist: its taut rope twists across his sturdy, sandy bones. But much of him’s of land, for deep in the humus of his cheek a splitting acorn roots. An oak leaf grows towards his mouth on sappy, pliant shoots. With men, it’s never easy to be sure, but here’s one who’s tried to take the outside in. He’s shifty as gulls and bitter as bark. Every night he reads that skin: his library of pain and virtue, bright and thin. The snow moon 00:00 / 01:18 On the night the snowfields above the cottage became bright maps of somewhere else, we climbed up in the crump of each others’ boots. Capstones of walls charcoaled the white. The hawthorns prickled it. And a leaping trace below a dyke was slots of ghost deer gone into the fells. There were rags of sheep’s wool freezing on the barbs and lean clouds dragged the roundness of the moon. Jupiter shone steady to the south. It was so cold. And the children threw snowballs, all the time. My old coat took the muffled thump of them. Night snow shirred our mittens with silk. We turned for home, left our shouts hung out in the glittery dark. Publishing credits All poems: How Time is in Fields (Indigo Dreams Press)