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Hear poet Matt Merritt read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Matt Merritt wave 4 autumn 2020 back next the poet Matt Merritt was born in Leicester and now lives in Warwickshire, where he works as a wildlife journalist and writer. He's published four poetry collections: Making The Most Of The Light , Troy Town , hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica , and The Elephant Tests – his two most recent with Nine Arches Press. Matt has also published nature memoir, A Sky Full Of Birds . the poems 00:00 / 01:19 00:00 / 00:25 00:00 / 00:53 Publishing credits

Hear poet Mariah Whelan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mariah Whelan wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Mariah is a poet from Oxford, UK. She is the author of the love i do to you (Eyewear, 2019), while the rafters are still burning is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is currently based in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester where she is completing a PhD and teaches creative writing. Mariah has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the PBS Student Poetry Prize and won the AM Heath Prize. She also co-edits online poetry journal, bath magg . the poems 00:00 / 01:24 00:00 / 02:05 00:00 / 01:05 Publishing credits

Hear poet Reshma Ruia read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Reshma Ruia wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Reshma's poems and short stories have appeared in various British and international anthologies and magazines, and have been commissioned for BBC Radio 4. Her debut poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties , won Word Masala's First Collection Publication Award 2019. Co-founder of The Whole Kahani-a – a British South-Asian writers collective – Reshma was born in India and raised in Italy. As a result of such a heritage, her writing portrays the preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging. the poems 00:00 / 01:10 00:00 / 01:42 00:00 / 00:40 Publishing credits

Hear poet Michael McGill read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Michael McGill wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Michael McGill is a writer from Edinburgh whose work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House , Lunate , The Haiku Quarterly and elsewhere. Michael also has work in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Poems by and for Social Workers anthology. As well as performing for Big Word Performance Poetry in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, Michael has appeared in several episodes of BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. His work has also been featured on the Micro podcast . the poems Puppy Dog Man 00:00 / 02:01 I thought I saw a puppy dog. I did! I did! I saw the Puppy Dog Man! Baroompta-doo-da. Walk tall, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, walk tall – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man never understand; never understand, little Puppy Dog Man, never understand – Let's talk man to man, acrobat to magician, Devil to Christian, honest man to politician on the street, drowning in a sea of integrity, of humanity; 'Such things as these don't please His Majesty!' Baroompta – do do do. Hello? Oliver Speaking speaking. I was talking to the dog, Maury. Please, you're annoying me. Baroompta-doo-da. Lie low, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, lie low – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man take me underground; take me underground, little Puppy Dog Man, take me underground – New street! New street! I wanna live in a new street. I wanna live in your face. I wanna live in the warm puppy dog folds of your skin. Yeah, I wanna live there, man. Woof! Woof! Baroompta-doo-da – walkin' hand in hand with Puppy Dog Man … Pyjamas in the Snow 00:00 / 02:07 Free postcards were scattered all over New York then, filed in metal displays on the walls of clubs and coffee shops, and I’d collect them and tuck them away in my journal, stumbling around like a 1996 Hansel and Gretel reject, and it was January and everywhere was lit like a still from a Blondie video, and sometimes I’d order a Hazelnut Latte and a Sour Cream Mini Bundt Cake, and I’d write home using one of these postcards, back when home-whilst-travelling was a strange place, an exotic village elsewhere, a solipsist’s mirage, a narcissist’s daydream, and then I’d go to the Post Office on East 34th Street and watch these postcards take flight, because I was living life in Technicolor then, but, oh, that boy back at the hostel was a strange one, and he slept in the bed opposite mine in the dorm, and he’d talk about how much he missed ‘The Bay’ and I’d look puzzled, and he asked me why I’d never been to Ireland, and he laughed when I replied, 'Because it’s so far away,' and he seemed homesick and lost, and very sad, so I showed him my postcards, and one was RuPaul’s face in close-up, and he said, 'She’s gorgeous!' – but he’d turn shifty most evenings when a note was stuck to the door because he was late paying for his bed, and the word REMINDER would sit at the top of the page in cold black font, and then he’d disappear for a time and come back later looking dishevelled and used, and then the note on the door would disappear, and one day it was time to pack and head to JFK, and he wasn’t there so I left the RuPaul postcard on his pillow, and I never said goodbye – and back then Jackie 60 nightclub had a hotline you’d call, yeah, it was listed in Time Out , and one night I stood in a phone booth in the lobby of the hostel, and a recorded voice said the theme that week was Scotland and the dress code was ‘tartan tartan tartan’ and, oh, how I wish I’d gone to Jackie 60 in my tartan pyjamas, walking through Manhattan in the snow, but I never did. Celluloid Clown 00:00 / 01:11 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. I recall him emerging; black biro, yellow Post-it. I recall the usual questions: 'To and or to ampersand ?' etc., etc. What is to become of him, I wonder? He doesn’t fit anywhere, it seems. Still, he remains my three-line darling; long-lost relative of that scrawled first draft. 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. Yes, I know he ended up like a circus clown from some campy old film. You know the type of character: always a criminal in hiding (for what are celluloid clowns really, but painted criminals?). 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. In his final scene, he is led to the jailhouse. He hands over his dog (a Boston Terrier) to a young girl and says, 'Take care of him, Cheryl, he’s a good ‘un.' Then he walks away – fade to black. Publishing credits Puppy Dog Man / Celluloid Clown: exclusive first publication by iamb Pyjamas in the Snow: Anser Journal

Hear poet Warrick Wynne read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Warrick Wynne wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet With three published books to his name, Australian poet Warrick Wynne has had his poetry featured in various Australian and international magazines and journals, including Walleah Press and Varuna, The Writers House Blog . Warrick lives and writes on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. His most recent collection is The State of the Rivers and Streams . the poems Hands 00:00 / 00:39 Level 3 is 'Hands': the swathed palm, the unhinged fist, the fingers fractured black or twisted, suspended in slings wrapped in gauze. We all face each other mute as moons. This is what happens when pressure is applied against the grain, this is the flaw in the great architecture what a piece of work ... how easy it is to break this hold we have on things, we can hardly grasp it. Spider Crab 00:00 / 01:08 Above the Victorian Fish poster, (vivid illustrations of the edible denizens of the deep) a white spider crab mounted on a wooden board pinned to the wall as it was in my childhood. I mean, this exact crab, legs now blackening with age was in a (different) fish and chip shop of my youth, brought here, no doubt, with the goods and chattels from some former enterprise, and I recognise it: one giant claw open wide to snap, the other retracted shy, evasive punch and counter-punch. At Hector's Seafood now, the staff wear light blue tops emblazoned with a yellow marlin rising from a vividly tropical sea. I wait for my flake below fading ivory claws, one outrageously enlarged, one curled inward gently like an invitation, or an imploring gesture to the past. At the edge For Harriet 00:00 / 00:27 We walk to the edge of the bay drawn, it seems, to this great dish where you played and swam and now, stand here, with your own baby strapped to you. Could anything be stranger? the three of us beside the sea, the submerged beach where you played a stone wall, the city in the distance whatever next? Publishing credits Hands: The Best Australian Poems 2013 (Black Inc.) Spider Crab: exclusive first publication by iamb At the edge: Love the Words Anthology 2022 (Infinity Books)

Hear poet Pascale Petit read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Pascale Petit wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales, and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl , was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and won an RSL Literature Matters award while in progress. A poem from this book won the Keats-Shelley Prize. Pascale's seventh collection, Mama Amazonica , won the inaugural Laurel Prize and the RSL’s Ondaatje Prize. Four of her previous collections were also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Petit is widely translated and travelled, particularly in the Amazon rainforest and in India. the poems Walking Fire 00:00 / 04:10 It’s high summer and the grass hisses where the tigress treads, her pads soundless on the tinder track. Her flanks sway, the cubs cool in their amniotic sacs. She is a walking fire her glance a flare that singes my lashes. I seem to be watching her through a veil of snow or ash – the sky as I know it falling falling and when her face comes into focus it’s like the membrane between us tears. She brushes against the jeep as she saunters past on the long patrol of her realm, her fur dripping after a soak in the stream. Can you see me, Gran ? I ask, I’m as close to a tiger as you once were, but I won’t touch. A baby wouldn’t alarm her, but I would. You’re sitting opposite, saying, It was like staring at a frozen sun . Your eyes grow coal-black as you think of the day you were left alone in a tent. I’m staring at the fire in your living room, anthracite glowing with forests of our Coal Age, flickers of fern horsetail clubmoss embers spitting onto the mat like sabre tooths springing from a cave – that split second when we startle and everyone is still alive even my first cat not yet given stripes by the combine harvester as he lay curled in corn. I’d walk over hot coals to get back to you, just to ask one more question about your tiger. But you were only a baby and probably you only remembered remembering not the thing itself. Just as now, I’m only half- remembering the ghost of your fire where we sit like two Ice Age queens worshipping the heat while underneath us the compressed beds of trees buckle under mountain-building. The tigress has passed by now, and is ahead on the path, rolling over the sand, belly-up, revelling in her power. Already she’s spawned three sets of cubs and they’ve forged their own empires. When she leaps onto a stag the whole world slows to hear the grass speak from inside the deer. Slows enough to listen to what trees have to say with the mouths of storms through their leaves. When I’ve firewalked through the dawn of your death my feet scorched on the cinder path to your house, when I’ve opened the gate of your garden – like opening the gate to Tala Zone where wildlife is almost safe – I will land in your armchair in the deepest cave. And then Gran we will talk again about the forests that once reigned on earth the mysteries of beasts who passed through them, the flames of their spirits surging under fur, not one spark escaping. How even their roars are relics of when the great woods blazed. How it was we who discovered fire and with our knowledge lit the fuse. Jungle Owlet 00:00 / 01:54 What you didn’t tell me is how poachers cut off their claws and break bones in one wing so they can’t perch or fly, that their eyes are sold as pujas, boiled in broth, so herdsmen can see in the dark. You didn’t say how sorcerers keep their skulls, their barred feathers, their livers and hearts, or how they drink their blood and tears. You didn’t mention how a tortured owl will speak like a young girl to reveal where treasure is buried. My kind granny who took me in when I was homeless, who sat down this very evening after I had gone to bed and wrote Mother a stern letter, telling her that she must take me back, it doesn’t matter where – Paris, Wales, Timbuktu. No more excuses, you are tired. And here, your slanted writing is almost illegible, but what I think it says is that you cannot look after a teenage owlet. You use your favourite pet name. I’ve never spoken of this before. I call it up my gullet from the pit at the bottom of my thirteenth year, along with my crushed bones, my stolen blood, and I spit it out through my torn-off beak, in language that passes for human. Green Bee-eater 00:00 / 01:03 More precious than all the gems of Jaipur – the green bee-eater. If you see one singing tree-tree-tree with his space-black bill and rufous cap, his robes all shades of emerald like treetops glimpsed from a plane, his blue cheeks, black eye-mask and the delicate tail streamer like a plume of smoke – you might dream of the forests that once clothed our flying planet. And perhaps his singing is a spell to call our forests back – tree by tree by tree . Publishing credits All poems: Tiger Girl (reproduced with gratitude to Bloodaxe Books for its kind permission) Author photo: © Brian Fraser

Hear poet Charlotte Gann read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charlotte Gann wave 22 summer 2025 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 Ben Ray read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ben Ray wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Poet, reviewer and workshopper Ben Ray is a patron of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, and a winner of the 2019 New Poets Prize. His most recent collection is The Kindness of the Eel , and his writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including Poetry Wales and The Oxford Review of Books . the poems Epska pjesma for a new millennium 00:00 / 01:19 You wanted to be an epic poem in the drafting to sit with Marko, Branković, Crnojević but our palimpsest homeland had forgotten poetry gifting us only hoarse voices, bloody footprints. We stayed at your house, frustrated we could not make history: but you had inherited from a vanished world distant stories, new borders that tightened round the neck and a rusted can of tear gas from some atrocity. Like good citizens we shut the doors, pierced the cap and inflicted our country upon ourselves pushing / staring / turning / running / choking / children vaulting over chintz sofas in desperation then outside, gasping laughing – you tore your chest open found three hearts: around the third, the snake was still sleeping In October 2000 huge protests broke out in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, against the perceived authoritarianism of the Serbian government, resulting in the overthrow of President Slobodan Milošević. The protests saw a high level of youth engagement. Sinning with Captain Birdseye 00:00 / 01:04 It really wasn’t necessary. They were just two fish fingers left sulking in soggy packaging. But that was the point. An act of Antoinette extravagance, a hubristic vote of confidence in modern society. Was there ever a better expression of disaster capitalism than turning on a whole fridge freezer just for them? No shame: only God can judge their private fishy palace for two, heated with North Sea oil to help them feel at home (Even Anthropocene bad boys have a heart). Then, of course, the breathless question on the crowd’s lips: to eat one and leave the other alone in that icy void? The act of a maniac the act of a daredevil. But look at them now. So settled. So happy. Do you not believe in redemption? Joke’s on you I have a tiramisu in my chest freezer I am a market square after everyone has left 00:00 / 01:16 I am a market square after everyone has left all made of loose veg and plastic wrapping, that pervasive pioneer of untouched spaces. My breath invigorates paper bags across slabs rustles drain-locked receipts into chorus: I am the one who pulls up the cobbles to trip the cyclists. The heart of a lettuce has never looked so lonely nor the leaves of an artichoke so fragile than when I wear them, dressing down in casual wear that would melt your heart. If carrots had eyes, they would be Disney-round and doleful as they roll down the orphanages of roadsides fulfilling tragic character arcs as they’re pulped underfoot. I am a market square after everyone has left grand words like desolation and loss are too big for my ordinary leftover onion-skin self, this paper-bag floor-level life – where dashed organic-grown hopes are swept up by street cleaners and next Sunday always seems so far away Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jen Feroze read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jen Feroze wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Former Foyle Young Poet Jen Feroze has had her poetry featured in a wide range of publications – from Magma , Poetry Wales , Spelt , Ink, Sweat & Tears and Stanchion to One Hand Clapping , Dust Poetry Magazine , Atrium and OneArt . She's also edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press. Jen was a winner of the 2022-23 Magma Editors’ Prize, and her debut pamphlet is forthcoming from Nine Pens. Jen likes chunky knitwear, turquoise things, and cheese you can eat with a spoon. the poems Gorge 00:00 / 02:46 Whenever there’s an icebreaker about where we come from, my answer always elicits the same smile: ‘Oh yeah, that’s where the cheese is made! I’m pretty sure I went there with my school once.’ So many kids bussed in to stare through cloudy glass at curds, nonplussed, craning their necks upwards at the cliffs. It’s funny the way hormones can flatten even the highest cliffs, can make centuries of river-worn limestone a stage, from which we played out our teenage dramas. Raise a glass to the breathtaking arrogance of middle school. Smile at the fact that we never stopped to take stock, not once, we assumed these caves, these dripping stalactites, came ready made. There was the time our history teacher made the front pages, connected by strands of DNA to the cliffs, to the ancient bones found there, to the man that once inhabited their skin. 10,000 years, and he’d not moved a mile from the dig site, was drilling us on The Iron Curtain, smiling at the sudden smallness of his concept of history, polishing his glasses. Some summer nights we’d smuggle blankets and cider and glasses over the stile and onto Black Rock. Fires were lit, pacts were made breath was snatched. Some things were lost, others found. The sky split in a smile, loosing meteors like teeth. We lay on our backs, knees mimicking the cliffs, until the shadows of our friends became indistinguishable from one another. I felt drunk and happy and sad and too old and too young, all at once. Then limestone stained siren blue brought us up short, for once. We hugged our own ribs close, carried our bones like glass. He was the brother of a friend’s friend. There were painful verbs to choose from: To fall? To jump? Was it worse if a decision had been made? For a short while, we looked with reverential gaze and sweaty palms at the cliffs, then the flowers died, Christmas came, and he was buried again under forgetful smiles. After school we scattered to the winds, city-bound, throwing smiles over our shoulders. So sure of our futures, and never once pausing to give thanks or even glance back to those cliffs. So desperate were we to be grown, to be skyscrapered behind glass, to be able to say we got out, we did it, we made something of ourselves, away from that shadowed small town we came from. And as they have always done, the cliffs stand silent, a knowing smile carved from water and rock into the landscape of so many childhoods. Only once we left, did I see how we’d been shaped, hot as freshly blown glass; forged, gorge-made. Self-portrait at 35 Weeks 00:00 / 00:36 Not the moon, but her reflection caught in a pond. My tenderly planted bed, latticed by slugs – a seemingly overnight silvering of this pungent earth. Something you’d find glazed on the bottom shelf of a bakery. A bag thrashing with fairground fish. An upturned bowl of porridge. Oh, you slow-punctured water bed. Oh! You magnetic globe for strangers’ hands, the unwelcome and the minuscule, pushing as if against a curved pane of glass. Moving Day 00:00 / 01:44 For weeks now, the house has been haunted by the suits and shoes of zealous estate agents. The dark hush of the trees – excellent allies, excellent secret-keepers – was felled a long time ago in the name of the city’s loud expansion. Now there is nowhere to hide. Hard candy smiles pass through each room, looking out through sugar-glass panes they convince themselves are dusky and bubbled with age alone; running their hands over mantels and recoiling at the layer of dust on their fingertips. The house holds its breath, waiting for someone to touch their lips, to taste its sweetness. Then this afternoon, a truck yellow as sherbet lemons arrived and spilled four bright, warm lives out and inside. So much noise and so many running feet after so much gnawing emptiness, so much guilt. The boxes smell like hope. They make the house ache. There are two children – a boy and a girl, curls soft as candyfloss. They delight in choosing their new bedroom; they fall asleep without a story, without a nightlight. Downstairs, their parents clink glasses of cheap wine as night arrives at the windows. They discuss where to hang the family photographs, who they should call to look at the old oven that didn’t want to light this evening. If the house could talk, it would tell them to buy a new one, shamed by the wicked pile of ash that still covers the grill. If the house could talk, it would press upon them the wisdom of keeping breadcrumbs close at hand, even in the absence of trees. It would feel a slow tide of sugar rising unstoppably in its walls at the sound of young laughter, at the thought of those little, darting tongues. Publishing credits Gorge: Spelt Magazine Poetry Competition 2021 (Highly commended) Self-portrait at 35 weeks: Poetry Wales (58.2, Winter 2022) Moving Day: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Ami Robertson

Hear poet Richard Jeffrey Newman read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Richard Jeffrey Newman wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Richard Jeffrey Newman is the author of Words for What Those Men Have Done and The Silence of Men , as well as the translation, The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi's Shahameh . Richard curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, New York, and is on the Board of Newtown Literary . He's also Professor of English at Nassau Community College, where he recently stepped down to focus on his writing after a decade of service to his faculty union. the poems Just Beyond Your Reach 00:00 / 00:54 The prayer you say is neither seed nor plow, nor is it rain to quench your soul’s old thirst. The parched and blistered field your tongue is now bespeaks the long neglect about to burst, like rotten fruit thrown to chase from the stage a comic leaving dead words at your feet; and she, or maybe he, responds with rage, shrinking the room until the single seat that’s left is where you’re planted. Confront your god, shimmering and luscious, there, his skin— or is it hers?—a proffered gift, a prod to every hunger you have called a sin. Welcome each new taste; spread wide; bow low. Lose yourself till loss is all you know. This Sentence Is A Metaphor For Bridge #20 00:00 / 00:55 Imagine hell unfenced, yourself the unburned center of all that burning, every prayer you’ve ever said undone line by line, until the empty page is all you have. Enter there the path in you that is only a path, gather its shadows into a dance, a movement that ends with love, that keeps on moving till love becomes the rhythm, and you the fire, and the dance, the life you’ve chosen to make your loving possible. You thought you had to be the clench you’ve held where none but you could feel it. Give yourself instead to all that rises. Fill that cloudless sky with laughter. After Drought 00:00 / 00:58 Knees rooted in the bed on either side of your belly, my body’s a stalk of wheat bent in summer wind, a bamboo shoot rising, an orchid, and then all at once a cloud swelling, a swallow sculpting air, a freed white dove. You pull me down, but you are hot beneath me, and the gust that is my own heat lifts me away: I’m not ready. Outside, footsteps, voices. Two men. Giggling, we pull the sheet around us till they pass, but if someone does see, what will they have seen? A couple making love. No. More than that: they will have seen the coming of the rain; they will have seen us bathe in it, and they will say Amen. Publishing credits Just Beyond Your Reach / This Sentence Is A Metaphor for Bridge #20: exclusive first publication by iamb After Drought: The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press)

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

Hear poet Gerry Stewart read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Gerry Stewart wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her collection Totems is to be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. the poems Barnhill, Jura 00:00 / 01:10 My backpack saws against my jacket highlighting each stride, 198 4 miles signposted to Orwell’s haunt, the distance doubled to my sore knees. My friend offers scout-leader patience at my toddler concerns of ‘Are we even halfway there yet?’ For her, this is a mere warm-up for tomorrow’s trek of all three Paps. I’m not here just for the mountains, the smack of island blue or long-lost friends, but to reconnect with my first self who stepped blindly on her own path and discovered those things had meaning. Lunch among the thistles, ferns and cow pies below the house, blue seas and sailboats, I relish each aching moment. Back down The Long Road, words on snapped tiles, embedded in mud, read like the poetry of sore feet and bumbling boots. Turned Page 00:00 / 00:44 if I start with soil and the random pull of the sun the hours lost would have a root a truth the glisten of rain solemnity potential in my weight behind the spade’s edge promise in the lilt of a cabbage white from the dark corners of the compost heap if I could start with soil till the hours clean open there would be poetry The Kick Sledge 00:00 / 01:23 I want to take the potkukelkka across a frozen lake on a sinivalkoinen* day. With its mitten-worn grips, wooden seat smoothed by generations, it voices a squeaking, scraping language I can lean into. Trees bow to me under the weight of a fine dry snow. My boots pound, setting up that perfect glide over the singing dark ice. Wind-bitten cheeks, lungs burning, I kick a last fleeting contact with the earth and then fly into silence, uncapturable. When I tire, a fire pit waits with a hand-carved kuksa of tea and a fresh korvapuusti. I pretend to be Finnish. Then I remember: I hate winter, its piercing, truthful glare. Finland and I are barely on speaking terms. I crawl under my duvet until spring. *Blue and white: another name for the flag inspired by Finnish lakes, sky and snow. Publishing credits Barnhill, Jura: StAnza's Poetry Map of Scotland (Poem No. 351) Turned Page: Ten Writers Writing (Lochwinnoch Writers) The Kick Sledge: Spelt Magazine (Issue 1)

Hear poet Phoebe Gilmore read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Phoebe Gilmore wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Originally from Devon but based now in London, Phoebe Gilmore has work in And Other Poems , Propel Magazine , Seaford Review , The Shore and eggplusfrog . She was shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2024, and is currently working towards her debut collection. the poems Gynaecology Ranch 00:00 / 01:00 Giddy up leather filly there’s no use in lying down like a dead book our appointment opens me to the hills the secret once found is grainy and black buried under gut and a disposable mini- skirt of blue paper doctor in the field give me an answer clear and thick as cold lubrication so I may slip prescription into my filly’s mouth a brilliant metal knocking against teeth when I squeeze left and right dig my spurs into her bloated belly knickerless animal on animal when home I’ll sleep off the long ride like shrugging out of a winter coat Turning King 00:00 / 00:47 When I attempt to atomise, when I’m a ball of spine and flinging small dogs from my throat across bathroom tile, figure womb before as a light membrane of a forgotten sock, transformed to a pale fist of mud night beginning and with it a fire engine in my underwear, in my blood pills spinning their wheels, I open to the toilet bowl, turn king, it’s my castle. Here comes the big one After Hase 00:00 / 00:55 Godspeed big pink bunny you appeared brief and accidental but five years of hands made you and assembled your gangles like you fell from the sky cartoonish slide whistle a dropped clown apple covered in hiker ants on Colletto Fava the weather ate you in the end and in the end the weather ate you into a greying gym sock I’m trying to find your ghost on Google Maps I too will deteriorate before my predicted time of deterioration lying on the floor of my hallway assembled like I’ve fallen from the ceiling Publishing credits Gynecology Ranch: And Other Poems Turning King: Goldfish Anthology (Goldsmiths University) Here comes the big one: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Tara Skurtu read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Tara Skurtu wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Tara Skurtu is an American poet, writing coach, and speaker. A two-time U.S. Fulbright grantee and recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes, a Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, she is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania and the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game . Tara is based in Bucharest and leads creativity seminars and writing workshops internationally. the poems 00:00 / 01:13 00:00 / 01:47 00:00 / 01:58 Publishing credits