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Hear poet Emily Blewitt read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Emily Blewitt © Michael Willett back next the poet Author of This Is Not A Rescue and poetry submissions editor for New Welsh Reader , Emily Blewitt has poems in The Rialto, Poetry Wales, Ambit and The North , among others. She was Highly Commended in the 2016 Forward Prizes, and has appeared at the Hay Festival and on Radio 4. Emily has collaborated with other writers and artists on the Weird and Wonderful Wales project, and is a recipient of a Literature Wales bursary. She's currently writing her second collection. the poems 13 weeks, 2 days 00:00 / 01:18 I don’t know how to say it, but there you were—little ghost in my ceiling, floating on your side. The outline of your slim hips, strung spine stretched lazily in the same position I sleep some nights, facing away from your father. We watched you refuse to show us your nose. You offered your crown instead, crossed and uncrossed your arms and legs, dipped upside-down. You were turning the way a seal rolls underwater for joy. You were radiant and reluctant to share. The midwife said this was your place, that we were just visiting. When finally you lay on your back, a small otter cradling clam and rock, she was quick as a heron slipping a fish to the gullet to capture your image. She had to be. You were elusive. A natural phenomenon observed perhaps twice. Luminous like algae on the water, like Northern Lights. Archaeology 00:00 / 01:25 It’s getting your eye in: scraping the surface layer by layer with the edge of a trowel, moving the earth towards you and exposing the soil, a clutter of generations before you. Brushing dirt off dirt. Holding dirt to the light and tossing. Sifting dirt like prospectors. We dampen the ground, show the plough-lines’ scar, the clay cap that looks like stone, the outline of the ring pit. Stains show organic matter. Marrow sticks to the tongue. We mark what we find in situ because we must. Context is everything. Love, this is how we find ourselves once more in a field, with swifts and hares and the farmer. Where tributaries fuse, where a person might stand from a rath with her children and look out to sea. For every two people on their hands and knees, four more wait at the edge of the trench. This slow unearthing makes us. We dig, not knowing what it is that we are digging for. Parch Marks 00:00 / 01:26 That was the year it snowed in March. Drifts inside the front door, a small snowman in a corner of the attic, and I crunched up and down the hill to our house in walking boots, keeping to the verge. We scattered bird seed in the garden. I conceived and lost it just before the heatwave struck, in May. The grass singed, my sweet peas failed to flower, our house was airless and we couldn’t sleep or touch each other. The cat shifted from tile to tile. I blistered walking up and down the hill in sandals. By August, thunderstorms broke the tension between us and my headaches eased. You told me that when lightning strikes the junction box three times, it shorts. I became lighter, stronger, like wire. When the clouds cleared, parch marks everywhere: seen from the air, scars on the body of the land that prove there were settlements; that someone once lived here and here . Publishing credits 13 weeks, 2 days: Islands Are But Mountains: New poetry from the United Kingdom (Platypus Press, 2019) Archaeology: exclusive first publication by iamb Parch marks: Creative Countryside (Spring 2019)

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

Hear poet Ilisha Thiru Purcell read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ilisha Thiru Purcell back next the poet A poet from Newcastle upon Tyne, and one of three to be chosen for the inaugural Poets of Colour Incubator 2023-2024 , Ilisha Thiru Purcell was previously a Young Creative Associate with New Writing North . She performed at the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Festival, and is part of the group Brown Girls Write . Ilisha's work has appeared in Butcher’s Dog and the Bi+ Lines Anthology , and she was shortlisted for Nine Arches Press' Primers: Volume Seven . the poems Coast | 00:00 / 00:51 I stand before the north sea and think that a coast | is a lie. I look for the definitive | separating the sea from the shore, water from land, wet from dry. Where is the cartoon | you see in children’s books dividing the yellow from the blue? I search for a | or a _ or even a ---- telling us what is ours and theirs, but all there is is negotiation between the land and the sea. Haven’t you seen a chunk of cliff plunge into the sea toes pointed? Or how the water takes larger chunks out of the sand, ignoring the white |s on a map saying stay ? Germination 00:00 / 01:05 My shadow strikes out from my body/ as if I'm announcing that now is the time the time is now/ I have been kept in time and now I am the keeper of it/ Meeting my own gaze/ I expand like the lungs of the city I rest my feet upon/ I smile a wry smile/ a 'you can’t even imagine' smile/ A man on a child’s bike asked me where I got it from/ this crescent of grapefruit flesh/ and I replied my mother/ My mum/ who shines brightest in a sea of saris/ who circles my thumb with her forefinger/ like a planet in orbit/ My mum/ dressed in black, absorbing everything, is everything/ a river running to and from everything/ If these images could talk they would tell you/ that there is more than one way to pray/ more than one way to bless a journey/ Dust to Dawn 00:00 / 00:37 The last night I spent alone I couldn’t remember ever seeing daylight and all that came from my mouth was dust. This time I beat back the thoughts like dust off a rug, sank into this new shade of alone. I found within myself a light. Soon I will not need lamplight to protect me from the parts of my mind that have collected dust, I will be content and unafraid alone. Only alone can I watch the dust of my past dance in dawn’s light. Publishing credits Coast |: Bi+ Lines – An Anthology of Contemporary Bi+ Poets (Fourteen Poems) Germination: Sanctuary – Brown Girls Write Anthology (New Writing North) Dust to Dawn: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet J-T Kelly read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. J-T Kelly back next the poet J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis who lives in a brick house with his wife, their six children and his two parents. His poetry has appeared in Bad Lilies , Vita Brevis , Amethyst Review , Agape Review , Neologism Poetry Journal and elsewhere. J-T's debut chapbook is titled, Like Now . the poems Sousveillance 00:00 / 00:56 God has bugged the human heart. There are things in there God wants to hear. I imagine most of it is noise. Maybe God has something set up like a bobber on a fishing line. Talk to a friend about how you need a new toaster, and … Wait. That might be Facebook. God is the one who tells you that Santa can’t give you what you asked for. Behind a series of decorated wooden screens, God is moving, moving always. And muttering. But what is God saying? The language around God is all baffles: mystery this and can-you-catch-Leviathan-with-a-fishhook that. Well here’s the big secret: The listening device works both ways. You can hear God speaking whenever you want. Like now. Like now. Art History 00:00 / 01:42 I don’t know what you know about painting— house painting, I mean—but there’s an art to it. House painters are known to be drunks. So, of course, are painters of art. Caravaggio used models who were drunks and murderers. It takes one to know one. It may be that the mystery is not in the art but in the drunkenness. To be a drunk you don’t even have to paint anything. To paint a house you have to show up every day. You have to outlast the guy who caught the dropcloth on fire with his cigarette, the guy who fell off the roof because he found the safety harness restricting, the guy who cursed and threatened the homeowner in the homeowner’s own home. You have to show up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and on your birthday. You have to show up on the Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Bologna, patron saint of painters. You have to show up on the Feast Day of Saint Matthias the Apostle, patron saint of drunks. Matthias is the one who, when Judas Iscariot didn’t last, was chosen by lots. It seems to be up to chance who turns out to be a drunk, although, if you’re a painter, the chances do seem to be higher. Who makes it out of drunkenness alive sometimes feels like chance, sometimes like something more personal. There is a mystery. There is an art. My Wife Says Loving the Fall is Short-sighted 00:00 / 00:23 The racing clouds of autumn make my heart race, as if life had no bottom, no top, just space and time to love what is, one thing by one, without this wintry business of being done forever. Publishing credits Sousveillance / Art History: Like Now (CCCP Chapbooks) My Wife Says Loving the Fall is Short-sighted: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Holly Peters read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Holly Peters back next the poet Holly Peters is a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Plymouth. She held the position of Plymouth’s Young City Laureate from 2019-2022, and had her poem Artificial Moons featured in the Moths to a Flame: Art and Energy Collective installation at the Glasgow Botanical Gardens during COP26. You’ll typically find Holly hiding somewhere between the covers of a book, or out walking her crazy spaniels, Dotty and Booby. the poems Building the River a Bed 00:00 / 01:12 a river skitters in the dark wriggling like a lullaby’s shh I take the first rock; it weighs the same as the peach pit in my stomach. Clay rolls in the canyon of my palm, squishing between fingers, then shuddering back to shape. An audience of stones, I deliberate, the choice all mine. nothing falls fast in the waves, settling down for its final rest The second breathes dust, hot to touch, singed syllables filling my throat. You don’t have to ignore the craters: use your nails and crack them open. The river shapes beds from burdens: kneel down, whisper them gently. water ages slow, sighs as it swallows my offering Crumbling. I’d avoided the river for years – it no longer able to relieve me – yet I still gather the third rock that slices through the sand timer’s neck. The bank cuts into the hard white behind my shins and I cry as I litter what’s left like ashes. soft drops melt like they were never there at all The Bread Affair 00:00 / 00:53 Her teeth grind in time with the knife that slathers butter over his slice of bread. His dinner steams, fragrant with turmeric and all the time she has spent stewing over it. Not that he takes any notice. Whatever plate she presents him with – matsutake mushrooms, moose cheese, wagyu beef – his mouth waters only for the ample half-wheat bread. Her arrangement of lip-pink tulips has already been extracted from the table’s heart, so his bulging loaf can fill its centre. He takes his time massaging butter into the bread’s porcelain cheek. He cups his hand, its back arching, then spoons his dinner inside, letting the slice envelope it like skin. He chews it, mouth opening wide, tongue slopping. The crumbs cascade, shredded like the last slivers of her patience. I Want to be a Forest 00:00 / 00:49 You won’t know which part of me you hold in your hands: my lower lip, a worn-down heel or knobbly elbow – because it’ll look no different to dirt. You’ll be given a watch-sized box filled with two palmfuls of what’s left of me, and even though I’m only saying it, those flakes, like tree bark, are my heart. All the rest, enough to fill a wheelbarrow, will be mingled with the remains of others. What was once kneecaps, earlobes, eyeballs will become part of the damp woodland floor. But in that forest, it will always be a part of me you hold in your hands. It will be earth, and worm food, a home for tentative tree roots, a world unravelling in the planet of your palm. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet T S S Fulk read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. T S S Fulk back next the poet T S S Fulk, a neurodivergent author and poet who lives with his neurodiverse family in Sweden, holds an MA in English literature from the University of Toronto, and has had his work published by numerous presses and journals. He edits Sublimation: a Magazine of Speculative Poetry and Art , and is an active musician who plays bass trombone, the mountain dulcimer, and the Swedish bumblebee dulcimer. His first collection, Metamodern Morning Angst and Other Horrors , appeared in 2024. the poems The Unquiet Grave 00:00 / 01:14 I awaken midst caresses of the westerly wind my sweet spectral lover their touch light forgotten kisses I arch my neck, face beaming up toward gently falling rain darkening cleansing blotch by blotch the polished marble stone A lone silhouette approaches Soon Greenwood shall I leave His name is buried deep below under piles of rubble the detritus and floss of time yet by the moon he comes bearing blossoms to wilt for me brushing stray leaves aside With trembling lips he stand o’r me a lamb to the slaughter Spiked tendrils of my mind extend Soon Greenwood shall I leave He is still in the peak of life so dearly that I miss I swell grateful for each visit another hook attached I know not why he comes to me a blessing from the gods For he shall be my salvation his sacrifice my boon As the vessel fully opens now Greenwood shall I leave Morse Code 00:00 / 00:35 Soundwaves came up through the walls the dull barely perceivable rhythm patterns from our son’s feet tapping to K-pop videos These were not seismographic waves and yet they drilled into my brain whose neurons sought to organize into the semblance of a song And that is all it takes to ruin my routine to keep sleep well at bay Yes, that is all it takes to enshroud the next day in a fog of tiredness What message was crypted therein? Simple fragility A Sonnet in a Time of War 00:00 / 00:42 When the new gods arrived with their train of monsters we stood still mouths agape with disquiet and awe as they toppled buildings slaughtering us like sheep The dead outnumber the living our homes turned to tombs of rubble Rising above the smoke and dust the wailing of the survivors fails to reach the old gods’ ears Our pleads unheard thus unanswered The new gods dance upon the dead We fall down and kneel in despair For we have called them here to make our world a great boneyard Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Poet Heather Quinn reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Heather Quinn back next the poet Heather Quinn is an artist and poet living in California. She was a finalist in House Mountain Review's Annual Broadside Contest (2019), a semi-finalist in both Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry prize (2020) and Prometheus Dreaming's Unbound Competition (2019), and has featured in Palette Poetry's 'Poetry We Admire' column for Shroud with Lead Wing, published originally in Raw Art Review. Heather's work has appeared most recently in the New York Times, 42 Miles Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, Ghost City Review, High Shelf Press, Inkwell Press, Kissing Dynamite Poetry and Burning House Press. the poems Kaddish for Grandma Irene 00:00 / 02:08 Her bony body is naked underneath a dress of translucent leaves. The knobs of her knees are burls of a willow tree. I place the paper cut-out of a blackbird on her left shoulder. In an open green field, we drink warm milk from cracked teacups painted with tiny yellow birds. She unknots the twine from a Rosenbloom’s cake box. I remember sugar cubes perfectly stacked in her silver caddy. Its delicate silver tongs. One lump or two, angelah? The way she would sing to me in Yiddish, Shlof, shlof, kindela. She was shaky, made of glass. I was a sparrow, terrified that even so small I might break her. Her heart pieced together with string saved from 1930s Pittsburgh, from that Hill District row house where seven children shared two bedrooms. All those socks and sweaters darned for her six younger siblings. All those beatings by her mother with a washboard or wooden spoon. Her father, the cantor, practicing for Shabbat service, Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu. At the Monroeville Mall she bought my first purse, flowered and pink with a gold clasp. Oy! It’s exquisite, kindela, she said. Tearing up, she pinched my blushed cheeks. In her leafy dress she is the green field, her white hair catching flecks of dusklight. From a phonograph, Billie Holiday’s voice scratches, I’ll be seeing you. Grandma closes her eyes and sings. sparrow 00:00 / 01:40 i watched a fledgling sparrow fly from its nest to its mother no, let me begin again it did not fly but landed at my feet after it was propelled from the tree in front of my childhood home by a rock thrown by a gangly boy bigger older the tree was painted with dry pigment & rabbit skin glue no, it grew of bark & leaf but i reconstruct the sparrow’s slippery skin damp slickened feathers its seedling heart visible through translucent membranes beak snapping open & closed squawk with no sound Munch’s Scream i picked up the baby bird held it like a damp lung in my hand nursed it with water & seed no, what really happened was dad said we had to leave it or momma sparrow would never return we knew momma was off building a new nest the O of the baby’s beak an alarm, until feathers wings flattened in shallow grass like a fried egg yet the sparrow lives pecking at my sternum, sipping oxygen from my windpipe clawing for its perch the history of light: a burning haibun after torrin a greathouse 00:00 / 02:15 i examine the bones of an incandescent bulb, crystalline glass, base & socket, thin wiry v relic of winged light i remember being chased by a ghost from my bed to the landing crying out to dad his face cast in television lowlights he scooped me up, tucked me back in, kissed my forehead & clicked on the bedside lamp ghosts always disappear in the light, he said dad died months before my wedding day his wedding band bound to my wrist with satin ribbon i imagined him as we wrapped his & her bulbs in black velvet smashed the glass beneath our feet later we picked up the broken shards, crushed metal burned the remains in a fire pit sealed them in a mason jar tonight i shake the jar like a snow globe watch the ashes bloom into embers, into dad’s image as it flickers, a reel of celluloid lit by one struck match // i examine the bones of an incandescent bulb, crystalline glass, base & socket, thin wiry v relic of winged light i remember being chased by a ghost from my bed to the landing crying out to dad his face cast in television lowlights he scooped me up, tucked me back in, kissed my forehead & clicked on the bedside lamp ghosts always disappear in the light, he said dad died months before my wedding day his wedding band bound to my wrist wi tesatin ribbon i imagined him as we wrapp hed his & her bulbs in black velvet smashed the glass beneath our feet later we picked up wroken asha s, crushed metal burned the remains in a fire pit sealed them in a mason jar tonight i sha r like a snowobe watch ashes bloom into embers, into dad’s image as it flickers, a reel celluloid lit by one struck match // bones of an iof winged light dad s face ca ghost always before bound to my e d like a snow he loom ins a s a reel ofcelllits c atch Publishing credits Kaddish for Grandma Irene (earlier version): Minnesota Review sparrow: Prometheus Dreaming the history of light: Cathexis Northwest Press Share

Hear poet Grace Uitterdijk read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Grace Uitterdijk back next the poet Counsellor and occasional musician Grace Uitterdijk from Northern Ireland enjoys writing poetry and short stories as a creative outlet. Her inspiration stems from a love of trees, the sea and all things wild. She's also interested in the lives of those she meets through her counselling work. Published in A New Ulster and Bent Ear Review , Grace loves to swing in her hammock, drink tea and read when she's not exploring Ireland's natural beauty. the poems In the middle of her ‘Dieu est au milieu d’elle: elle n’est pas étranlée…’ God is in the middle of her, she will not be moved Psaume 46:5 00:00 / 01:37 If I cut myself in half what would I find? What’s in the middle of me? Would it be a treacle sadness puddling round my feet? Or maybe I have a ball of glass in there. Hard, smooth, breakable. Would it be cosy in there? Could I cuddle up beside my heart or would it turn its back? What would it feel like to sit inside myself? Would it be like crawling into a hollow tree? Dark and wet and alive. Ancient. A womb of sorts. Would it be comfortable? If I could pull back my skin and let my heart fall into my hands, would it just be a throbbing organ or would I really see God there? Funny how that verse uses the pronoun ‘her’. God is in her. Not you, not me. Her. I would like to find her. If I did, I would run up to her and take her hands in mine And look in her eyes and shout, ‘Do you know what is in the middle of you? Do you know? Look, it’s God! Right there in the middle of you.’ Maybe she wouldn’t believe me. Maybe she’d turn her head, avert her eyes embarrassed by my spectacle. Maybe she would miss God because she didn’t even look. I would still tell her. Who knows when curiosity might catch her looking. Empty Space 00:00 / 02:06 Are you the man you dreamed you’d be? That’s a line from a song my friend wrote and that night it was floating round my head like it had nowhere else to go. I was driving home with loneliness in the passenger seat, and I remember thinking this feels like déjà vu, am I just stuck on repeat? The country roads were quiet, it was just a random night. Who knew space could ever feel this tight. Tears are a sort of currency but that night I didn’t know what I was buying. Maybe the desire to live even if just to do more dying. I had to stop in a car park, the tears were clouding my vision. Alone in a car in an empty space I was that space So empty I could just be replaced. For some reason I shouted ‘fuck off’ to a God I wasn’t even sure was real. I felt like my layers of skin were peeled to reveal the shreds of my humanity. Blood and water, water and blood. Is that all I am? Water and blood? I thought you promised there wouldn’t be another flood but what if every day is a flood and I am not the one being saved. Maybe I am just enslaved to this loneliness that follows me. Maybe my whole life is just one long damn fight to be free. If I’m not alone then why do I feel so fucking alone? When the noise is gone I sit there in the car park in the dark no longer even sure if I have a watermark to distinguish me from all the other lonely people in other car parks. I sat there crying until all the water in my body had seeped out of my eyes. Now I was left with blood. Life is in the blood, not the water. My tears had bought me one more day to live. Maybe tomorrow I would cry blood. I started my engine, reversed back out, drove home and got into bed. I’m not even close to who I dreamed I’d be, but I’m alive. Sometimes you feel alone in your own body 00:00 / 01:28 You are there and I am here. One letter difference and yet Can you see the insurmountable distance between us because I can? People say, ‘oh we are united, humans are all one’. Yeah, I've had moments like that, but can you not hear the story of humanity? You are there and I am here, and here is not there. There are two different words for it. I'm trying to be there, with you and yet you don't feel my nearness because the distance between those words remain. I'll try again. Talk to me and I won't understand but touch me and I'll know because touch is more visceral than words And wrapped in my arms here and there seem a little closer together. I know you feel alone. I feel it when our bodies collide, Slide to the left, away from your body, away from your pain. You can't bear to remain because you despise being here. It's ok; I'm alone too. I'm learning how to be here. I'll hold you tight until you feel safe again. Until your body is your own, until my body is my home, draining the distance between here and there. Press your body against mine, hold your head in my hands. Maybe we are less alone when we are alone together. Publishing credits In the middle of her: exclusive first publication by iamb Empty Space / Sometimes you feel alone in your own body: A New Ulster (Issue 99)

Hear poet Alan Kissane read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Alan Kissane back next the poet Alan Kissane is an English teacher in the Midlands, UK, whose poems have appeared in Allegro , Dissonance Magazine , Dust Poetry , Emerge Literary Journal, Epoch, Fahmidan, Kindling and Neologism. He contributed to Acid Bath Publishing’s printed volume, Wage Slaves , and is currently finishing an as-yet-unnamed collection of poems on politics and the self. the poems Bonfire of Inanities 00:00 / 01:17 I want to build the walls of a house I don’t intend to live in, just to use my hands. I want to breathe free and easy, all of the time. It’s not much of a dream but it’s mine. I want time to guide me forward, again. I’ve had enough of circles, curves. I don’t understand geometry. I want to see what’s in front of me. To have a ‘no surprises here’ sign tattooed on my eyelid door, in my clear light vision, like a worthwhile political slogan. I don’t want to be alone. I’m afraid of being given time to think, to feel. I want to read and consume words grown in fields of azure light. But I’m jealous of words; the way they connect and spark like I can’t, with people, resonating within. I don’t want to be crooked anymore, hunched over the weight of my own life. I just want to burn the unnecessary in me, like Savaronola. In a Glass Case 00:00 / 00:37 Footsteps, like fingertips, trace lines across this worn face, back and forth, sometimes lost, sometimes not, always crisscrossing, back and forth, like moments or thoughts, sometimes lost, sometimes not, like butterflies pinned to a board in a glass case in a museum, beautiful yet lonely, untouched, unfree, and gazed upon in awe before being forgotten. Up Here With the Rooks and Ravens 00:00 / 00:48 She sits in fury, her eyes torn from blindness, her robe rotten, a reminder of the so-called glorious resolution. Here the scales have truly fallen from her hands, the sword heavy, bowed, rusted and bitten by the querulous blood of backs slain in the name of something below, a war over numbers and paper: nothing and everything. This is this land now, a stain on a vast leaf of aged parchment floating on a lake of unbelief, with no way off. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

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 Rowan Lyster read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rowan Lyster back next the poet Bristol-based poet and physiotherapist-in-training Rowan Lyster is currently living with Long COVID. Her poems have been published widely: most notably, in Bath Magg , Magma , Poetry Wales and The Rialto . Rowan is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective 2022-23. Her pamphlet, We Will Be Fine , is forthcoming from Little Betty. the poems It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar 00:00 / 01:08 I am having a flare-up of brain fog. In the heat, the nurse said many patients report feeling a weighted blanket on their limbs. There is no timeline for recovery. Everything is always the hardest thing. I am having a bit of trouble with my breathing. A flare up of weighted blankets and elephants standing on my head. The nurse said sometimes your brain is cornflour mixed with water. It is important to live inside the fatigue diary. Actions causing fatigue, like completing a diary or self-blame, should be listed in the fatigue diary. The air is exhausted, a weighted blanket. Sometimes it is cornflour mixed with elephants. There is nothing new to offer here. The sofa and I resent each other. I have been referred to an app for patients and sucked all the sugar off the ibuprofen. Once again he has been pulled from a sea 00:00 / 01:03 the barnacles on the harbour wall have taken his hair and part of his scalp he is vomiting on my coat we both apologise then laugh the ocean recedes uncovers pieces of him I hadn’t noticed he is carrying my shoes for me lemon cake is arriving for his birthday the middle is full of poppy seeds people singing we are riding the dodgems when he drives straight into a metal spike it protrudes between his shoulder blades while he keeps asking me why they’ve let the signs get rusty a sound like fingers through lentils beneath us the ground is becoming thinner I stack shingles to resemble a beach it would be easier without his hand pebble-dry and cold in mine Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy 00:00 / 01:18 I suggest a fun night out, in which we will visit and destroy a series of homes. It seems proper to begin with the mansion, which, of course, we burn down. From below the ha-ha, we watch inhabitants flee in dressing gowns. Despite the flames reflected in your eyes, you lack a certain zeal. We move on to more conceptual methods: ant eggs in the curtain linings, floodlights installed outside bedroom windows, disheartening messages daubed on walls. We deal with colleagues, and then friends. You sleep with someone else’s husband; I steal a newborn and exchange it for a cabbage. Our family homes are less of a challenge than might have been expected. Through the letterbox, a manila envelope containing a warning note and new passports. At dawn, when nobody else is left, you bundle yourself into a cupboard, duct-tape your own mouth and ankles while I take a clawhammer to the fuse box, block the sink and leave the tap running, finding a little peace in the knowledge that I did everything I could to help. Publishing credits It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar: And Other Poems (November 8th 2023) Once again he has been pulled from a sea / Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Daragh Fleming read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Daragh Fleming back next the poet Daragh Fleming, a writer from Cork, Ireland, has work appearing in several literary magazines – from The Ogham Stone to Gutter Magazine . He's also read his poems for the Eat The Storms poetry podcast. His pamphlet, The Hole , was highly commended in both the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Daragh was shortlisted for the prestigious Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. the poems The Hole For Max Porter 00:00 / 01:37 This is fine, there’s a hole here, did you make it? Did you? Better fill it up, fill it up quick, anything will do, what do you like? Do you like anything? Just fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Oh you like girls? You like them enough, go-on-dates-go-on-dates-go-on-dates, this is fine, everybody does this, three different women, four nights a week, five weeks a month, more months than you can count, just go-on-dates, this is how it’s done, never settle in, fill that hole with sex, sex with everyone, everything’s okay, you’re just having fun. The hole is getting bigger. Time to put the shovel down. Thick nights, empty texts, wet sheets, wits end, this isn’t enough, this is getting worse, oh you like to drink, better drink it up, fill that hole with beer, maybe that’ll help, now you’re doing both, whiskey with a fuck, you can’t get it up, no you can’t get it up. The hole is getting bigger, the hole is getting bigger, time to put the shovel down, enough is enough, flirt online with strangers, kiss her like you mean it, hope to catch a feeling, everything’s gone numb, the hole is now inside you, maybe always was, the hole is everything now, eating it all up, edges are collapsing, emptiness engulfs, this isn’t a good thing, why can’t you fucking stop? There’s an empty person here – did you make him up? Better fill it up, better fill it up, anything will do, enough is enough. Prescience 00:00 / 00:48 My mind is the radio you forgot to turn off – broadcasting noise throughout the dark silent house we no longer occupy. I dream in sentences I’m afraid to whisper. I write them down and tell the world I came up with them on my own. But they were delivered in the night – hungover takeaway bags glazed with grease. They cure me for a while but I always text you back. I always rise from another nap taken in a half-baked, half-attempted afternoon. I turn myself off so the cosmos can send me phrases that sound like temporary comfort. Stockpiling words, selecting the shiniest ones to build my nest. birthday poem 00:00 / 01:34 At some point, maybe around the age of fourteen, they stop putting the exact number of candles in your cake and replace them with a couple that just signify the number. I suppose it makes sense because the idea of placing fifteen or more individual candles into a cake and lighting them feels tedious. And as the years pass you’ll reflect on all the ground you covered yourself, how you spread your life out, each year a single candle on the surface of your time spent here. You’ll remember all the times you ate cake, all the times you allowed your heart to break. You’ll struggle to remember each and every one of the faces that have made you smile, but you’ll try. You’ll grow older and more grey and more grateful. Your circle will get smaller but it will feel more full. You’ll wonder where the time went, and you’ll cautiously consider how much of it you've left. You’ll think about all the things you’ve done, and all the things still left to do. It could be any day, it’s just a day after all. But on this day you’ll feel it all, reflect upon what you’ve become, what you’re inevitably becoming. Adding a candle each year, your light growing a little bit more each time, because although you may mourn the loss of your youth with every birthday that comes, growing older isn’t a privilege everyone gets to experience. Publishing credits The Hole: ROPES Literary Journal 2024 (Issue 32) Prescience / birthday poem: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Katrina Naomi read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Katrina Naomi back next the poet Katrina Naomi’s poetry has featured on Poems on the Underground, as well as on Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Country. She tutors with Arvon and the Poetry School , and has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. Katrina’s fourth collection, Battery Rocks , won her the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors, and was Daljit Nagra ’s Collection of the Month on Radio 4 Extra’s Poetry Extra. She's also received the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry, and with fellow poet Helen Mort, a Saboteur Award. the poems Fickle Lover 00:00 / 01:33 Ours is not a relationship of equals. You’re passionate, rough, violent. So much is an act – you’re always on display – I want you all to myself. Of course, you’re unfaithful, you swim with anyone, moshing their thighs, their breasts, knocking them out with your rush. At one time, I could choose whether to be in love with you. I do my best to ignore your conquests. Instead, I think of when you’re away, how you leave me gifts – razor shells, man o war, jags of glass – fragile reminders of your own tough love. I need your chill; can’t help myself. You swoosh round my brain, frolicking with neurones, make my skin fit me, tighter, tighter, after I’ve plunged right in. I’m going deeper. I can’t consider what you want – pinning me, scraping my limbs along rocks. I’ve learnt to say no. Despite your allure, I won’t go to you at night. But sunrise, I’ll be waiting for you, having shifted my day around your tides; my primitivism seduced – loving how you run, spuming, towards me. And if there were no sea? 00:00 / 00:55 no shushing of the pull / no shimmer of summer / no knowledge of splash / no repetition of clouds / no clouds / no splendour of kelp / no fish / no study of scales / no silhouette of oystercatcher / the moon on repeat / no islands / no need for ships / storms would laze in their beds / no Speedos / no coastal erosion / all of us living inland / no salt / no shells / no need to row / no Jaws / no glamour of rock pools / nowhere for the sun to swim / no rivers / rain unknown / no place to drown in the kelp forest 00:00 / 01:40 the first time she finds herself among brown strands between fear and wonder floating in this other world of upside down a place a person could wed herself to so much dank silence beyond her breath the gentle murmur of limbs in suspension their arc and splay there’s no peace like this in the dry country she’s like a body in a jar at the lab but keeps her Dutch colours sliding her mind through slender lengths of weed fabric-like plastic-like part translucent part shine like nothing else but kelp her restless hair goes on its own pulsing journey she forgets for blissed moments she can’t breathe here this isn’t air waves nudge overhead it’s like any place almost visited say a city say Seville and she talks half-seriously half what-if of how she might live here the kelp wafts in welcome displays its tentacles as she refuses neoprene longs for kelp’s beckon and touch longs to pass as a local a strange fish for sure but one who could belong Publishing credits Fickle Lover: Same But Different (Hazel Press) And if there were no sea?: berlin lit in the kelp forest: winner of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry 2021 All poems: Battery Rocks (Seren Books, 2024)

Poet Mariah Whelan reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mariah Whelan 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 Hefted 00:00 / 01:24 One by one the black-faced ewes file through the gate. Up and out of the field over the burned heather to lamb where their mothers lambed them. I try to pull a map around the stories: I know here is where my father was happiest— if I sit on this rock and let the same cold enter my body can I say I’m part of it? Plates of ice across the mud crack under weight, catch light like the light is something good enough to frame and hang in a hall where guests first enter. His maps were always like that— half an advertisement of character, half a mirror to hold the face that looked square in its white mount. On and on, the hundred or so ewes file through hefted to the particular slope that bore them. Muscle memory, DNA, where do their bodies hold the bone-hunger that leads them back, precise as a compass point finding its way through layers of tracing paper and folded map to hold its beam-arm straight, making the distance between them measurable. In the Archive The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford 00:00 / 02:05 When the door closes we let the quiet of the archive settle around us. The chilled air from bales of frozen film comes to a stop and the room begins to fill with the hum of the corner unit rinsing air clean of contaminant on our clothes, proteins in our breath. The curator lays the album on the foam cradle. We stand shy of each other like friends at a christening unsure of where to stand or what to do with our arms, not letting our voices drop to break the silence. The curator begins with the facts: Mr Phillips reported how the Juju City reeked of human blood. Sir Harry mustered a force of 1200 marines, Mr Bacon had reason to believe enough ivory would be found to pay all expenses removing the King from his stool. I have come to understand there are various kinds of violence. A boot in the mouth, a ring of bruises around an upper arm, the way that inside this archive each fact slips so prettily beside the next like a horse’s bit lies across its tongue. History is the things that have happened, the facts of a body and its breath that come to us through the records and lists, the photographs and their captions curling in neat, even script. In the silence of the archive, all I can hear is the hum of the corner unit rinsing air clean of the dust and acid I bring on my skin, my hair, and the white space, page after page of it— the absences still bearing the administrator’s mark. The Coach Station, St James Boulevard, Newcastle upon Tyne 00:00 / 01:05 Bright station and all around soft dark. Toothpaste and sleep, coffee and the white crunch of salt on the concourse. The headlamps snorting – boarding as the first gull caws began to ricochet. That’s how it was the morning I left, too cold for snow, hills thick with February sloped black-backed and low to where the Tyne bloomed in the wake of a boat. I was less going somewhere than getting out, away from the terraces and rain, tower blocks – the yellow Metro stops that took me in loops, out into the waking-up day. But mostly I was getting away from you, the river below breathing as all rivers do. Publishing credits Hefted: the love i do to you (Eyewear Publishing) In the Archive: exclusive first publication by iamb The Coach Station, St James Boulevard, Newcastle upon Tyne: Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear Publishing) Share

Hear poet Rachael Clyne read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rachael Clyne © Jinny Fisher back next the poet Rachael Clyne (she/her) has been published in journals including Tears in the Fence , Shearsman , The Rialto , Lighthouse and Ink Sweat & Tears . She's also had work anthologised in #MeToo: A Women's Poetry Anthology , Queer Writing for a Brave New World and Rebel Talk: Poems from the Climate Emergency . Her prize-winning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree , addresses our broken connection with nature – while her pamphlet, Girl Golem , explores her Jewish migrant heritage and sense of otherness. the poems Girl Golem 00:00 / 01:27 The night they blew life into her, she clung bat-like to the womb-wall. A girl golem, a late bonus, before the final egg dropped. She divided, multiplied, her hand-buds bloomed; her tail vanished into its coccyx and the lub-dub of her existence was bigger than her nascent head. She was made as a keep-watch, in case new nasties tried to take them away. The family called her chotchkele , their little cnadle , said she helped to make up for lost numbers – as if she could compensate for millions. With X-ray eyes, she saw she was trapped in a home for the deaf and blind, watched them blunder into each other’s neuroses. Her task, to hold up their world, be their assimilation ticket, find a nice boy and mazel tov – grandchildren! But she was a hotchpotch golem, a schmutter garment that would never fit, trying to find answers without a handbook. When she turned eighteen, she walked away, went in search of her own kind, tore their god from her mouth. The golem legend is of a man made from clay and Kabbalistic spells to protect Jews from persecution. Rewilding the Body Based on Isobella Tree’s account of rewilding Knepp House Farm 00:00 / 01:06 The ribs of my country jut, its dreams gutted, hopes tilled to exhaustion. Fault lines exposed by monoculture expectation, by intensively farmed ambition. Let thistle stitch my wounds, as painted-lady caterpillars feast on the prickles. Let pigs unzip my paths with cracks for bastard toadflax and meadow-clary. Let ragwort flourish as one hundred and seventy-seven insect species thrive on its bad reputation. Let longhorn cattle tramp hoof-print pools for fairy shrimp, water crowfoot, stonewort. And one moonlit night – nightingales will return to fill my country with their song. Plague Times 00:00 / 03:35 At Passover, we dipped a finger into our wine. We splashed a drop, for each plague named. We did not rejoice. I BLOOD On hands, in every breath, in gullet and gizzard, in belly of whale, from every littered shore, we the seas incarnadine. II FROGS After ice-melt, I pulled three frogs, bloated and stinking, from the pond. Can we afford to lose them? Slugs will flourish in this unlikely spring. III FLIES Feast on our flesh, they wriggle their fatted way, before winging to offshore havens, leaving us a humanless world. IV WILD BEASTS In Chernobyl, wolf-law rules empty dachas, factories. Bears refill forests. Here, Adonis Blue butterflies will thrive on Salisbury Plain. Rats and dogs will shelter in car shells. V CATTLE PLAGUE Play-barns with swings and muzak, and no place for chickens. Carousel feed-troughs rotate past cattle. Pigs gaze through gratings at a crack of sky. VI BOILS This winter virus has no end. The people cough their way into summer. Vaccinations, rumoured to be toxic, do not help. An unreliable source blames chemtrails. VII HAIL First, snow, so deep. That night, rain. By morning the window – solid ice. On the ground, black ice, invisible. We could not step outside. Next day, hail thuds onto the roof. Hail, snow, a sound like falling corpses– these are surely plague times. VIII LOCUSTS Gobbling hoards turn Friday black, as they swarm through shopping malls, stampede for their white gods, trample one another for plasma screens. IX DARKNESS A firmament of LED glare and twinkle of red and white lights thread highways through the undarkened night. The only visible stars are on the ground. X DEATH OF FIRSTBORN Floods destroy the power station. Fish without scales, tumour-ridden, cover the ocean to its farthest coast. There will be no offspring. XI PARTING OF WAVES Red the ocean, gone the ice, gone coastline. No more trips to the seaside. No sandcastles. No fish to fry. No bargains to buy. No creatures to catch. No trees. No insects to bite. No birds to shoot. No property to buy. No planes to fly. No God to part the waves. Just burning bushes. Publishing credits Plague Times: Shearsman (Issue 121/122) Girl Golem: Tears in the Fence (No. 67) Rewilding the Body: Riggwelter (Issue 18)