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audition for iamb AUDITIONS REOPEN 20th-26th Sep 2027 Auditions for places in iamb during 2026/27 are now closed. Thank you to all 160+ poets who auditioned this year. The standard of writing and reading was impeccably high. It's truly regrettable that some of you won't secure a place simply because of the fixed number of slots available. When will you know if you're in? If you don't get an acceptance email ( or an offer to join the reserves list) by Nov 30th 2025 , better luck next time. See you in 2027! Come back to this page on Sep 1st 2027 to see how you can submit your audition next time around. There'll be more than 115 places available across eight waves spanning 2028/29.

Poet directory and quarterly journal iamb is inspired by The Poetry Archive. Hear contemporary poets read three of their own poems. about poets 45 new poems for autumn 2025 © 2025

Find out more about iamb – the poet directory and quarterly journal for contemporary poetry inspired by The Poetry Archive. about iamb Part library of poets, part quarterly journal, iamb is where established and emerging talents are showcased side by side. Not just their words, but their readings of them. Expect new poems, every three months, free to your device of choice. ~ Mark Antony Owen, Creator & Curator, February 2020 ~ Auditons closed till Sep 2027 how you can support iamb The simplest way is to share your favourite poets' pages on social media. You can also donate whatever you can afford to help keep this journal online, ad free and free to all. Thank you for coming, for reading, perhaps donating. Above all, thank you for listening.

Audition to be part of quarterly poetry journal iamb between the 20th and 27th of September 2025. audition for iamb record send wait Record yourself reading an original poem (published or unpublished) by you in English. Save it as MP3, M4A or WAV. Your poem doesn't have to be one you'd like to appear in iamb – you'll get to choose which three poems you'd like published if your audition is successful. Please don't choose an 'edgy' poem that has offensive or hateful language or imagery. This will be rejected. Submit your details in Step 1 (below). Then upload and submit your recording AND your poem's text file in Step 2 – using Word, TXT or PDF only please. Both your recording AND your text's filenames MUST include your full name plus your poem's title. Check for an on-screen confirmation message after Steps 1 and 2. If you see an error message, try again. If you don't get an invite to iamb by Nov 30th 2025 , please audition again in September 2027. If you accept a place in iamb, your invite email will explain everything. If you accept one of 12 places on the reserves list, please note that you could be asked to submit work at short notice at any time in 2026/27. who can audition for iamb? iamb is a journal – but it's also a directory of poets, their work and their voices. To give as many poets as possible a chance to be part of iamb, each poet can appear only once. how to audition Step 1 Send your details Send details Your details have been sent Step 2 Send your poem Your recording Filename MUST include your full name and poem's title Your poem's text Filename MUST include your full name and poem's title Send poem Your poem has been sent ** Please submit both audio and text **

Hear poet Andy Breckenridge read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Andy Breckenridge back next the poet Andy Breckenridge is originally from Oban, Scotland, but now lives and works in Brighton, England, as a secondary school English teacher. He writes about self-imposed exile, place, relationships, cultural identity and memory, and his poems have been published widely in print and online journals. He's been a featured poet with Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word, and with the Northern Poet’s Society. His first poetry pamphlet The Liquid Air appeared in 2021, followed by an illustrated version in 2022. Andy's debut full collection, published in 2023, is titled The Fish Inside . the poems Tartanalia 00:00 / 01:55 I stand outside your window at night waiting for you to open the blinds and see my tartan face the whites of my eyes shot with blood lines – green irises popping see how the plain silver kilt pins jawbone my skin together in the wind see how symmetrical and intricately blocked I am – each sawtooth of green dovetails with dark blue in a precise matrix see how the straps and buckles fit so neatly through the slits in my waist – hold fast I was that night bus that snagged on departure from Glasgow Buchanan Street and unravelled en route to London Victoria to help you find your way back – now I frown at your lack of fealty and the accents of your kids and yours – while you sleep, I’ll slip sliver after sliver of tablet onto your tongue until your teeth pop like lightbulbs see my gridlines keep everything in check stretch to infinity like a spreadsheet weighing up the debits and credits (you are in the red) that’s me peering in right now, an arrow slit of borrowed moonlight that’s my breath – that’s me hanging lifeless in your wardrobe – following you in the car lurking on shortbread tins and tea towels as you scurry past gift shops at airports avoiding eye contact – weigh me Is my cloth too rich and heavy? Morning light slides past the blinds again and the first trains shake me out of the air. You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature … 00:00 / 00:45 Dizzy astride the rope clump on the swing in the Hazel Woods, you pendulum above the roots exposed on the earthy floor. Cool air wrings your eyes, adrenaline runs its fingers through your gut; the branch creaks out a rhythm like rust. You are still unable to identify a hazel or the bare bushes at the head of the loch whose silver fingers tug at your jersey where ticks hitch rides on your blood. You pluck away their bodies and legs, leave the buried mouthparts to grow out or dissolve in the flesh. Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter 00:00 / 01:21 You both always knew exactly what to do and set about your play in earnest knowing your time there was finite. Fine sand and cold February air pinched your small fingers, as you crouched, burrowed and shaped a friable cityscape of roads, tunnels, bridges, stairs and squat buildings. You never saw the low winter sun pool shadows in every dip. Or the tyre tracks beside you twist like prehistoric spines that stretched down towards the footprints and pawprints, the hieroglyphs left by birds, the careless signatures of lugworms or the blackened lines of dry seaweed marking tide lines like shed skin. Or the snow retreating to the peaks on Mull. Later, by your feet in the back of the car there are peeled off parking permits empty hula hoop packets discarded and dated. Rain flecks the shop front windows of the real town empty and holding its breath for the season. Publishing credits Tartanalia: Flights (Flight of the Dragonfly Press) You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature ...: exclusive first publication by iamb Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter: The Fish Inside (Flight of the Dragonfly Press)

Hear poet Charlotte Gann read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charlotte Gann back next the poet Charlotte Gann is a writer and editor from Sussex who enjoys walking the South Downs in her spare time. Her first pamphlet was The Long Woman , which saw her shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2012. Two full collections followed: Noir and The Girl Who Cried , as well as another pamphlet, Cargo . Charlotte also founded and runs online hub The Understory Conversation : a space for fellow writers to meet, talk and share in small groups and one to one. the poems The house with no door 00:00 / 00:38 The house with no door looks welcoming, with its wisteria and robins. I can see, through the kitchen window, a bowl of cherries. They’re the brightest, darkest, shiniest cherries. But that window’s shut and bolted. I move on round. I know I shouldn’t walk on flowerbeds. I keep thinking the door must be around the next corner. I’ve lost count now how many times I’ve circumnavigated. In the Classroom of Touch 00:00 / 01:36 This is how you hold a person , Mr Farnham says demonstrating. Your touch needs to be light but firm. Felt in the skin like a weight, a squeeze. No sudden movements, please. Still is best. The pupil he’s performing on closes her eyes, head slightly folded like a bird’s. She’s collapsed into his woollen front. See how my arms arc? the teacher asks his class. Hold each other like precious cargo. Never be rough. Don’t shove into the person you love. Don’t steal touch. Be clear about this: we give a hug. Thanks Lydia, back to your seat now. Giles–? The boy stares down at his feet, face pink. His worst subject. Mr Farnham waits quietly, bends his head, smiles. C’mon Giles , he says gently. The boy staggers down the ragged aisle between assorted classmates. Waits while this man opens his arms. Falls forward, hiding his face, his sobs. The teacher enfolds him carefully, whispers, You’re doing well, Giles . Calling Time 00:00 / 02:09 So I’d sit at my desk waiting and hoping and trembling before someone would say it – maybe me – A quick drink after work – and we’d go night after night, pint after pint after pint. We’d smoke sixty cigarettes, drink drink after drink starting at six when seven thirty seemed another, safe country but suddenly was upon us, then long gone and it’s more like half nine and our table a landscape of pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays after trip upon trip to the cigarette machine in the hallway and turn after turn to the bar for another round, another tray of toppling filled glasses and laughter and it still only Tuesday, say, and then the bar staff flashing the lights on and off and it must be after eleven and they’re calling a warning and stacking chairs at the other end of the narrow room and we’re the only table left and still we stay drinking and shouting until they call ‘Time’ and yank the noisy chain grille down over the bar and padlock it and turn the lights off and we grope our way blindly foghorning back up the stairs and even then not out into the night, contrite, rushing for last Tubes but into the hotel bar for residents only where the drinks are even more expensive and it’s just us two now usually and we order ‘A night cap’ then ‘One for the road’ lighting cold fags and slumping on that black-leather slidey sofa in this pot-planted environment with piano muzac playing softly and it’s hard now to keep my spirits up with you falling silent beside me so near and far away. Publishing credits The house with no door: The Lyrical Aye: Richie McCaffery Calling Time: London Grip (Summer 2022) In The Classroom of Touch: The Rialto (No. 81)

Hear poet Harula Ladd read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Harula Ladd back next the poet Poet, performer and facilitator Harula Ladd is based in the South West and is the current Exeter Slam Champion. She's also the founder of the Postal Poetry Library , and loves writing on-the-spot poems for the public. Fascinated by the power of the imagination, Harula is passionate about the way creativity connects us. She gathers ideas for her writing while out walking. the poems Skin 00:00 / 01:40 is hard to put back on at a moment’s notice, when someone knocks on your door to offer a piece of their mother’s Christmas cake. You wipe wetness from your cheeks, demand your skin quickly swallow you in again and keep the hand where the skin is cracked behind your back. Reach out with the other to receive perfect Christmas cake, complete with miniature marzipan holly. You make eye contact with this new mother, pushed to the edge of her own skin until she’s shining. She’s beautiful. *** The skin you live in is tight, thin, bulging with broken that just wants to breathe. At night you pin your skin to the edges of your room, to the curtains, hook it over the door handle, trap a corner under the weight of a table leg so at least you can be free while you sleep. When you wake, skin won’t shrink to fit. You wonder if you should give up your free feeling dreams where skin is so big you can swim in it, inside it, exploring it from underneath like swimming underwater looking up at the surface not wanting to break it yet. It’s quiet and fascinating down here. People can’t knock on the surface of the sea. They’d have to wade in and get wet to reach you, so swim swim swim The girl who brought the world home 00:00 / 01:38 She brought the world home like an injured bird found by the road, shrunk to one metre across to hang safely from her ceiling like a breathing glitter ball behind closed curtains. She lay on the field of her carpet to watch the living world above twirl cobwebs in miniaturised hurricanes. That first night, she couldn’t sleep. Got up to warm some milk and heard the oceans burst. 'What’s wrong?' she asked. The world replied, 'To shrink is no protection. I cannot give life like this. 'You deny my power, hanging me here behind closed curtains. I need to be!' 'But I only … ' 'You don’t even know you haven’t met freedom yet.' Forests inhaled. Exhaled. 'To live is to be willing to die. 'Look. You are taller than me now. Is that what you wanted? To make me small and you big? 'In order to control something beyond your understanding you have to shrink it for it to make sense. 'For it to be safe. You shrink what is vast only to grow more of what has no importance.' What's inside 00:00 / 01:15 I roll myself out flat, squeeze all you don’t need to know from me and fold over seven times, until I’m the size of an envelope. I slide in to send myself to you. Once sealed it’s too late to take back bits added to me since we last met. It’s fine. I can deny them or cross them out before you open me. At the weigh in the lady working the Post Office counter raises an eyebrow. 'May I ask what’s inside?' 'Skin. No guts.' I ask for second class. Gives me more time. I land on your doormat stiff and sore. You soak me in a bath like those teas that bloom in a mug, and the little I’d been prepared to say dissolves, and goes the way of the bathwater. Once dry, I dress, all fresh and empty. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jane Robinson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jane Robinson back next the poet Jane Robinson is an award-winning Irish poet with a doctoral degree in biological science from the California Institute of Technology. Her books Journey to the Sleeping Whale and Island and Atoll are both published by Salmon Poetry. Jane has taught poetry workshops in libraries and outdoor settings. In recent months, she was the invited reader at Green Sod Ireland’s Biodiversity Summer School in Kylemore Abbey, as well as at the IMMA Earth Rising Festival. the poems Fairy Castle Two Rock Mountain, Dublin 00:00 / 00:57 After a long, slow climb from the road, calling out the names of bramble, foxglove, ling and furze, we left the flies behind when we turned from the wood’s edge, bending our bodies to the sandy granite track, to the bog-water pools and slender rushes. But a drone hummed over. All of a sudden it owned the hill, flexing mechanical insect-legs. Whose gadget filmed us tilt our moon-faces down to the mica path? A thin, pixilated sliver of mind let loose on the raised bog made skylarks crouch from their songs to cover nests hidden by heather stems. We threaded our way on up to the cairn. Coastal Forest Fragment ‘Go with the process, go with what you’ve got!’ ~ Breda Wall Ryan ~ 00:00 / 00:52 Your feet are unshod, grassy-toed, horn-hard on wandering paths to a paradise where humans did not ever learn to wield a flint or turn a thread. Imagine the mossy temperate forest grazed by giant deer, phosphorescence haloing their upheld heads and antlers. Hear chuckles from a family of rooks who gossip on the topmost branches of dark oaks along a path from strand to dreaming bed. A pocketful of sand from Magheramore. Sprigs of water-mint. Heathland Observation After a photograph by Tina Claffey 00:00 / 01:06 The landscape’s sharp details are sprung up close by macro lens. On one of the seven heathers stands a grasshopper who resembles a horse in medieval armour. The insect’s breastplate, green. Brighter, the nests of her compound eyes as she watches from her temporary rest on St. Daboec’s heath. Hummocked beside the peaty water, this heather’s named after a saint who raised both his hands to the sky as he walked the mountains and scattered huge clouds of insects with each step taken. Few grasshoppers still sing in the fragments. In wilderness we’ve shopped out, car shaken, light slain. Earth’s future saints will be the ones who help all forms of life and hold them sacred. Publishing credits Fairy Castle: Island and Atoll (Salmon Poetry) Coastal Forest Fragment: Poetry Ireland Review (No. 144) Heathland Observation: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Róisín Ní Neachtain read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Róisín Ní Neachtain back next the poet Róisín Ní Neachtain is an autistic Irish-Scottish poet and artist now based in County Kildare, Ireland. Though mainly self-taught, she was briefly educated at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin, before studying for two years under Irish artist Gill Berry. Róisín is creator and editor of online literary and art journal Crow of Minerva , and has had her poetry featured in a number of digital publications. She's currently at work on her first collection. the poems Memory 00:00 / 01:12 I held my dreams in my palms Though they were bleeding A soft tremor against my skin Some were shallow Some like a cave Some pricked my conscience Their threads tethered to my flesh And I chewed their weights to set them free My teeth wore down I fell in a haze through our memories When a hollow sound echoed in my mouth And fell past my lips You bit my tongue and hummed The ebb of nameless laughter A cadence of sorrows Spinning a steep melody Now I am unfearful of pain A slow praise of closeness Breathing blue In midnight songs Tightening my pulse Fingers twisting in a frenzied dance To unworded lyrics My last need stilled Remembering Without Believing 00:00 / 01:21 Remembering without believing The stars appeasing Against their obsidian abyss Heat and light unseamed from dust Remembering without believing Questions pressed in psychosis And promises which feel no shame Illegible hypergraphic promises Of love and empty rooms and symbiotic existence And undivided sounds and realities And reproached pain and laughter And dissonant dreams Which lead to my repossession A petty heresy of Silence Look at this earth embedded beneath our nails Our language measured by prayers And lumen a measure of their glare Look at this skin scored by hate Their unfamiliar eye Rooted in fear All truths unchanged in time The Edge of Reason 00:00 / 01:22 A room Like a trite cage Between these four walls Where prodigal sons and daughters return And are rejoiced and bound once more A spiel read like a dead poet A bastard pain The object of such a conclusion Perhaps an accidental gale? Swept and tendering our bones Archaic songs of sorrow That lull us in their readiness Black on white Black on black White on white Letters made barely visible And nonsensical A few steps closer to the edge of reason A past and future arrested in a photograph What will happen if we awake again To see these passings going beyond that edge? To the beginnings of someplace? Someplace more of a sedentary mind A hollowed space in each Man’s chest Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ruth Taaffe read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ruth Taaffe back next the poet Hailing from Manchester and having lived variously in Sheffield, Thailand, Australia and Singapore, Ruth Taaffe is now settled in the south of England. She writes about her experiences of living overseas, the idea of home, and how the natural environment finds its way into our identity. Ruth has taught English internationally for more than 20 years, and has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her poems have appeared in such literary journals as The Poetry Village , Acumen and One Hand Clapping , and her debut collection is Unearthed . the poems Driving Over the Snake Pass Under a Shed with a Goldfish on my Lap 00:00 / 01:04 These were the final items to repatriate taken over the hills to my first home – the cats had gone ahead two weeks before. Young enough to still depend on parents, we knew the baggage that we did not take could be left at their door and kept for us. Tied to the roof rack like a tortoise shell, the shed, unconstructed, was just boards of wood. I peered skyward as you drove, for any shift in light foreshadowing some avalanche of splinters. We kept the radio off, tuned in to creaking and the steady slosh of fish water that I was powerless to stop. We had no idea how our life would be rebuilt a thousand miles away, or why fish, when moved into some larger water, grow. Acrobat 00:00 / 01:23 He toes the wire which sways like a hammock, outstretches his knotted arms of rope. Ears ringed gold as a sailor of air. His back and chest inked by compass, star. Fixing his eye low on the horizon where he’ll land in time with our ovation, he climbs the unicycle, inches backwards, slowly unwalking the plank. We buoy him up with our applause, become his crew, his wave and tide, life vest of his triumph. And he ours. Four clubs fly like seagulls mobbing a fish, or words trying to land on a line. Each catch sharpens our awe. Then, he’s passed a fifth on fire! We stow the clapping, trade in calm. For this moment we anchor him with our belief, as the solo drumbeats start. He catches in time, leaps to land, and signs a charter of hope on our hearts. Nightjar 00:00 / 00:58 Squat like a knot of dark upon dark at the edge of dusk. Folded blades of downed chopper, landed mound of bark and leaves. Your snake eye opens up like a moon glassing the night. Bug-eater lacking fangs to pierce the nocturne skin, only your baleen beak sifting plankton from the sky, flat as an unsent valentine. You shoot soft tuts of fireworks cluck up Morse code. Heart monitor for the forest, it was told that you stole milk from goats, but you preserve such sweetness, Chupacabra. Open wide, let the world pour its song back into your throat. Publishing credits Driving Over the Snake Pass Under a Shed with a Goldfish on my Lap: 192 Magazine Acrobat: exclusive first publication by iamb Nightjar: Finished Creatures (The Poetry Village)

Hear poet Kevin Grauke read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kevin Grauke back next the poet With work in The Threepenny Review , The Southern Review , StoryQuarterly , Fiction , and Quarterly West , Kevin Grauke is the author of short story collection Shadows of Men . He's also the winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Kevin teaches at La Salle University, and lives in Philadelphia. His next collection, Bullies & Cowards , arrives in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. the poems The Secret of Tornadoes 00:00 / 01:07 Tornadoes, I knew at age four, were dragons spun to furious life from sickly spring skies. Watch meant be careful. Warning meant hide. Born in the Alley’s south, I learned this quick. Let’s make a fort in the tub! Mommy once shouted much too loudly, wrestling a mattress past the toilet. Houses could become like weeds pulled up and flung. Cradles landed in trees, sometimes still with babies. But then an older girl, already in school, told me the secret: Touch the sidewalk, honey. If it’s warm, one’s coming. A whisper—wisdom meant only for me. Honored, I stayed quiet. Pretending to tie a shoe I couldn’t yet knot, I pressed my palms to the sun-shot sidewalk, dirtying them in the unicorn dust of her hopscotch chalk. Frightened but grateful, I flew home fast to warn Mommy, my pink hands aflame with a May day’s false prophecy. Ant 00:00 / 01:00 I hope to capture this moment exactly, how the late afternoon sun on this sixth day of May is shining now on this journal page so perfectly, casting a shadow of my pen that looks like nothing if not a hummingbird darting its bill into and out of the flower of yet another attempt at something good. Soon, the sun’s gold will sink below the trees, but for now it holds steady, content to give me a little more time to try to capture its likeness. Onto the glare of this still empty page an ant wanders. Nothing more than a dark speck, it meanders about, a mobile period in search of a true sentence to end. I watch it move from here to there and there to there until it finally disappears over the edge, headed elsewhere, but not before leaving me a path to follow with the words of this very poem, now finished and named in its honor. First Lesson 00:00 / 02:06 Two houses down, a young man, a little girl, and a bicycle. Behind them, in the grass, training wheels tossed aside. Way down and far back, I feel both dad’s stooped patience and the mettle of his daughter’s courage. But what I feel most: the unspoken swirl of their fears—of spills and scrapes, of tears and pain. And it’s almost a more aching beauty, even as clumsy and raw as it is, than I, remembering my own once-tiny girl now grown, can bear on my own. I watch him, the father, so proud, how he claps and shouts while jogging alongside as close as he can manage without jostling an arm or handlebar. He sends out so much encouragement: Go! You’re doing it! Keep pedalling! When the inevitable comes, it’s no surprise. It is, after all, inevitable. The front wheel wobbles, turns too much to the left, to the right, to the left again. The end then happens so slowly—the flailing, the toppling, the falling over— almost if it were taking place in a series of stages (Duchamp’s bicycle descending the stairs) as she moves from upright to tilted to tilted still more to crashed to now splayed on the sidewalk like the insides of a dropped egg. Not unlike a hand-cranked siren from days even before my own, the two wheels spin two cries into the neighborhood silence: one the girl’s, one the father’s. Together, they braid a thin rope that each hopes the other will snatch to save the day’s grace. It swings between them, back and forth, then stops. Each is so certain they’ve let the other down. Except for the crickets, it’s silent now. She’ll learn, of course, and he will have taught her. Of this I’m sure. For now, though, failure. But in memory this will glow like treasure. Publishing credits The Secret of Tornadoes: The Minnesota Review (Issue 101) Ant: Alabama Literary Review (Vol. 32) First Lesson: Poet Lore (Vol. 118)

Hear poet James Giddings read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. James Giddings back next the poet Born in Johannesburg and now living in Sheffield in the north of England, James Giddings is the author of Everything is Scripted , published in 2016 by Templar Poetry. the poems Look inside 00:00 / 01:00 At the base of the back of my neck is the button you press to get a look inside. One firm push with your thumb and FWIP! my head pops back like the top of a kettle and a noise strikes the same tone as a microwave casserole when it’s cooked, a mushroom cloud of steam ballooning from the neck hole of my thin cigarette body. Once you’ve released all that hot air, take a peek, you’ll see there’s not much there: no gold elements, no dial tone of great intellect, just a feeling, as if staring down a deep ravine. There seems as if there’s no end to it, until you throw something down and a sound calls back from the bottom. There are versions of us in alternate universes 00:00 / 01:37 One where we’re partners on a buddy cop show who stand back-to-back with our guns raised as our theme tune swells to a crescendo and the screen detonates, our names exploding out of picture. Another where we bloom on trees like bright fruit and our lives are spent waiting for the great fall. Then there’s the one where I am your father and you are my son, and you are crying because you’re hungry and I am crying because I can’t get the car seat to bloody fit, but we stop, for a few seconds, each of us near silent when we catch the eyes of the other. One where we are giant glass shards reflecting. Another where we are bank robbers, our ears pressed against a safe door like expectant fathers listening for a heartbeat. Another where we wait in a long line for the entrance to Hell and both complain about how long it’s taking. And even though I know there are worse universes than ours, I can’t shake the one in which each night you tell me all the unextraordinary words you know like spam , hardcopy and telemarketer, then right before you leave, say a couple of extraordinary ones, which are only so because of how rarely I’ve heard you utter them in this world. No requests 00:00 / 01:55 I’m working on my vanishing act, an homage to my father. To learn more I attend a show where the magician starts by sawing a ladle in half. To further subvert the genre he pulls a hat out of a rabbit, places the rabbit on his head like a toupee and shaves it into oblivion with a set of clippers, leaving the cue ball of his bald head shining. Do the one where the father disappears and you bring him back on stage! I heckle, but he doesn’t do requests. Next he does a card trick entirely with birthday cards, which, in a feat of anti-gravity, levitates the heart in my chest. With love , one reads, then his signature, a single kiss. Impressed, I shout, do the one where you bring back the father! But he still doesn’t do requests. Next he stretches a ten pence piece leaving the Queen’s face visibly frustrated. Then he solves a Rubik’s cube by throwing it behind his back; it is so convincing and easy, I hope a policeman might hand him a murder case. I rise from my seat, plead, please do the one where you bring back the father! He gestures off-stage theatrically, magics up security and I’m escorted out through a plain grey door. No traps. No secret panels. I never got to see the big finish, whether he did the trick, but I waited anyway, checking every face that left the auditorium, hopeful he had pulled it off. Publishing credits Look Inside: exclusive first publication by iamb There Are versions of Us in Alternate Universes: Poetry Wales (Vol. 56, No. 2) No Requests: Poetry London (Issue 97)

Hear poet Samantha Terrell read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Samantha Terrell back next the poet Nominated for The Forward Prizes and The Pushcart Prize, Samantha Terrell is the curator of international poetry series SHINE . She lives with her family in Upstate New York, and has had her poetry anthologised in Door=Jar , Eunoia Review , Green Ink Poetry , In Parentheses , The Orchards Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Samantha's many collections – most recently, Delta Function – have consistently garnered five-star reviews. the poems AI and the Animal Kingdom 00:00 / 00:59 Fabricatus intellĭgos , a man-made being with the capacity for intelligent processing and output It’s been said what separates Homo sapiens from the rest of the Animal Kingdom is intelligence – Reasoning Skills, Speech, Forethought. Turns out we’re not very good at Forethought, since we’ve created a being that renders the use of Reason and Speech as obsolete. All those crunching numbers, tabulating potential outcomes, answering queries, researching options – who needs ‘em? But what about relationships made around the water cooler? The client who becomes a family friend? Apparently creating Fabricatus intellĭgos has proven something else, too: Homo sapiens aren’t unique because of a boundless capacity for intelligence, but our boundless capacity for love. Fluidity 00:00 / 00:32 It’s not always easy to know what’s been taken from us, or what we have taken from others. Dignity is a fluid thing – one in the moment, and another in hindsight. We put words in each others’ mouths, then take them out again to suit us. We are wet clothes hanging on the line, in the rain, beginning to sag with the weight of double-saturation – not knowing how long we must hold on. Social Psychology 00:00 / 00:34 Another ink-blot test, this time for society, is sure to reveal our perception of reality. Forget the shapes for a moment. We can’t even agree on the parameters. The blur of lines one would only characterize as grey, another sees as black and white. Should the paper be held up, or laid down? Never mind, time to look. What do we see? To one, a ballot box; to another, a crown. Publishing credits AI and the Animal Kingdom / Social Psychology: exclusive first publication by iamb Fluidity: Fulcrum Review (Issue 2)

Hear poet Rebecca Goss read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rebecca Goss © Natalie J Watts back next the poet A poet, tutor and mentor who lives in Suffolk, Rebecca Goss is the author of four full-length poetry collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth , was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2013 – while in 2015, she was shortlisted for both the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Portico Prize for Literature. Rebecca is the 2022 winner of the Sylvia Plath Prize, and her newest collection, Latch , was published by Carcanet in 2023. the poems The Hounds 00:00 / 00:48 It’s as if something calamitous is coming. Their lament rising across fields, its claim on the dawn keeping all the birds silent. I want to know what stirs them, the force of this pack. What causes them to stand, muscled frames trembling, throats full of baleful song. I am wakeful, rapt and disrupted, their bays sonorous against glass. Should I slide the thin pane, push my upper body into emerging light let them scent out my sex, and tell them we are all afraid. O this night, this bidding, claws at the latch, pure thunder of them running, my mouth opening to the cool and agitated air. At the Party I Shadowed Susie 00:00 / 01:02 who was happy to slip away walk with me into the back field where I drank her 17-year-old wisdom could look at her hair the opposite colour of mine her blue jeans convincing myself my twelve years were not an issue both of us plucking at grasses when we got almost to the oak we ventured back to the adults neither of us missed I lost Susie in the drunken stir of my parents’ garden until night got ready to flood the party I thought I might go in search of her or the cats so went to the furthest barn and in the black that had rolled inside I saw Susie being held by Richard the boy I’d ignored because his punky clothes confused me now his left hand inside Susie’s back pocket as they sought each other’s mouths air urgent unfamiliar standing there considering myself betrayed waiting until breakfast to utter it the sudden turn of my parents’ heads curious to know what I saw my mother sensing something flicker staring at her daughter so full of heat and blood and questions Gate 00:00 / 00:27 Here she comes, hair a stream, path home, dog’s ears pricked to the latch, and I’m in the garden, pear tree spilling, day of poems behind me, hiding my stored dark, thinking I must look old and not extraordinary, her skin the truest surface wanting to kiss her as she drops her bag, turns, every atom of her near me, and I make my slight gesture, feel the quickening. Publishing credits All poems: Latch (reproduced with gratitude to Carcanet Press for its kind permission)

Poet Mari Ellis Dunning reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mari Ellis Dunning back next the poet Mari Ellis Dunning is an award-winning poet living and writing on the coast of West Wales. Mari’s debut poetry collection, Salacia , was published by Parthian Books in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award in 2019. Mari is a Hay Festival Writer at Work and PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University, where she's studying the relationship between witch-hunts and reproduction/fertility. Her work has featured on The Crunch Poetry Podcast and the BBC. the poems Lingering for Catherine 00:00 / 00:57 I couldn’t stand the cedarwood stench that grew in your absence, so I migrated to the smaller back bedroom. Each night, I hear your shallow breath seeping through the thin wall, picture you, one leg cocked, reaching for me through darkness. I found your keyring under the sofa, gathering dust, forgotten, and on it – that photo of us, of you, a bearded stranger, and me, girlish and unsure, cloaked in a vintage dress awaiting assurance of my beauty. With oversized marigolds and an old tea towel, I bleached your skin cells from the skirting, swabbed your residue from the foundations. You clung like smoke to the wallpaper. The Bees Part i. The Queen 00:00 / 00:46 When I couldn’t recover the self that flaked like dust from paper-thin wings, my children turned against me, they pummelled my body like ash, suffocated by song. Face first, my daughter waxed from her peanut-hollow cell, crawling through its open hinges, a ghost, a crook, I saw her coming, that tiresome usurper; the virgin Queen, swift as an intruder at my mantel, honey-sweet and baby-eyed, her allure so strong, they let me wilt, let me starve – matricide on the edge of a comb. relapse 00:00 / 00:55 i wake to your emaciated form, your smile smug and self-sure even as you pale and weep, your serpent’s hair maps the pillow, body quivering, rocked by sticky tentacles. i could have sworn i’d shaken you off years before, dislodged you with a hard gulp and a strapped wrist, nevertheless – here you are again, the same dead form, the same shirking shoulders, damp with river-water, lemur eyed, splintering bone, your features a mirror of mine even as your ragged breath sucks air into rotting lungs. You roll smoke around your tongue, lean back – the mattress hollows for you, an old lover welcomes you home. Publishing credits All poems: Salacia (Parthian Books) which won the Terry Hetherington Young Writers' Award and was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2019 Share