looking for something?

Hear poet Sam J Grudgings read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sam J Grudgings back next the poet Paranormal investigator and erotic Doomsday prophet Sam J Grudgings is a queer poet from Bristol whose work was shortlisted for the Outspoken Poetry Prize in 2020. His writing explores rehabilitation, addiction and loss through the lenses of body horror, the 1920s burlesque scene and the New Weird movement. Sam can typically be found yelling poems at punk shows. His debut collection is The Bible II . the poems Phatic CW: Grieving, mild body horror 00:00 / 04:15 People with tiny blown-out hearts, private jokes, dates, or other things tattooed on otherwise virgin skin. Reminders hidden under collars & other disguises. We weren’t to know. The distant roar of motorways that will never judge you for how you were when you were young. Borrowing from tomorrow to pay today the money you said you were setting aside to stop this feeling of constantly travelling unwanted in time. Not waking up till the month is done. I get it. Hold on, the pain is almost receding. Minute keeper of the meetings where nothing gets changed or accepted but for the agreement that Carol, from accounting, who is retiring this year, who is generous with her praise, never makes a fuss & will be forgotten in weeks of leaving, would really love another cat calendar. The anniversaries we neglect for our well-being. The smog of escaping. Staycations & expired memberships to the museum of left-behinds – all the artefacts of our past lives that never really worked out as we remember. It almost feels bearable. The parasitic burden of your diary eating your deposit & promising by the time the page turns on a new month you'll be out of the noose of your savings. I get it. It shouldn't have to be this way, but it is. You used to stand for something. Now you're browsing near-death experiences – saving up vacation days to really focus on your new-found passion for playing doctor the hard way – self-medication & the intricacies of your own autopsy. I think we had it pretty good, considering. Remember how you used to not mind being overlooked till everyone started to doubt your existence & now you can't convince people that you are alive. Passing familiarity with sleeplessness. Nodding acquaintance with loss. Fewer contacts in your phonebook & less inclination to trouble them. The dress shirts our families bought us at Christmases long past that we save for missed laundry days & refusing to let go of the touch of those who can't keep promises. You don't blame them. You can't. There's this aneurysm going around means they keep repeating the same skin song. This year they're gonna get it together. You haven't got it in you to argue. You have hobbies now that require the kind patience you pay off in instalments. The minutiae of catching a break, of catching up with school friends better left forgot, of fumbling the last moments of a relationship turned sour from disuse because you just have so much on right now & maybe it's better off this way. You haven't even been yourself for very long & now everything is ending anyways. The most you can do with what you were given. Decades of anchor wire blooming from your glassblower stomach trying to disprove your wounds. You let them. The specificity of activities that consume us. Regressing to childhood from having to call dentists about the cavities in your teratomas. Niche interests. Rewilding your past from the fleshy mechanics of distance. Pretending it was better or worse than it was, so you don’t flinch at finishing the bottle off after a long day. Gas station housewarming gifts & a future of debt. Misspelt well wishes on office whip-rounds. You forgo the right to being named complainant if only they'll just let you keep the sweet fucking sense of relief you deserve from switching off your brain after a decade of weeks. Favourite bookshops & the chain restaurants that inherit them. The groan of sidewalks between your jaw. A taste you have no desire to relish. Only ever making missed calls & the acrobatics of expressions we practise in the mirror to avoid moments like this & nothing much keeping on going, same as always & how are you? I saw you got married & had kids & that was what you always wanted wasn't it? & I’m sorry we didn't know each other as well as we deserved & no, I'm sorry I can't stop now, I have nowhere that I need to be but it's an appointment I cannot possibly, possibly be late for ... Zuiyo-Maru Carcass Remembering 00:00 / 01:50 CW: Grieving Two mothers let their girls play in roads. I get it. The cars are family to traffic & the edging of human sacrifice is a coping mechanism so this makes sense in a brother kind of way. Grieving is the opposite of touching & we are simple engines of brute force & moving on. Hooked on this kind of Cotard delusion where instead of being dead everyone you love is a Rube-Goldberg machine. Madame, your children are throwing roses yet yesterday they unveiled a great whale carcass colossal with pig grief. I’m not angry but I want to ask how they got it here when it was exactly what I needed. And you stormed the party as an unexpected contender at the dead-body Oscars. The red carpet loves you sticky with blood as it is. The children who studied at the church of the scientific method have asked you not abandon them in their time of need – to be a guarantor for their impartiality. I am here in theory only, drowning litre after litre of medical-grade kerosene. The thin edge of a wedge looking at the world like I know there's a crux but don't know what. Madame! These roses, do you need them returned? I need a bouquet for stopping journeys bloated with complex ecosystems as I am. Glass shard brittle worms, sleeper sharks & the empty of a life sunk. My friend was alive once, you have helped me understand how now he is not. Mothmen, Jackalopes, Rooksong, Yesterday And Other Cryptids 00:00 / 02:14 You are telling me the story of your parents forgiving you for the mistake of setting your nerve endings on fire. Removing all obscene in the telling. Tides of skin ripple your body. Sesamoid bones fall into your orbit as you weigh up this narrative. Your justifications have heavy. Your mouth is a purple bridge of history, a monument to spit off of into the river. I am weighing up my options in an escape kind of way, all I have ever been taught is narrative & not living up to the possibilities of absence demonstrated by those who disappeared from me. Both of us have a history of planting bridges in the chests of those who left us. Rewilding the bodies prone to burials, making something of our leaving. You are inheriting that which you least covet; architecture-sour mouths; promises of change & coral reefs. You are not sure if you are the ship sinking on them or if your ribcage is bleached from grounding too many sailors. You are reassuring me I am still here even after everything is gone. You are a giant sign that says TURN OFF NEXT LEFT. I dream of not leaving. I am sitting on my grandfather's lap. He has stopped playing to pull coins lost in my ear & instead finds a prophecy. I am loath to become heir to it. I never learned the rules of the game. My mouth, an argument of inherited language. You cover my body in road sign. Note that flight or freedom is a matter of perspective. Whisper to me to yield priority to oncoming gambits. My hands abandon their scaphoid & lunate, becoming shadows with purple mouths. At the river, two armies stop. They are telling the story of war. They take it in turns. They say they don't think it is a bad thing that they have to die. You go first , they say. This is half yours after all. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Ian McMillan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ian McMillan © Adrian Mealing back next the poet Presenter of BBC Radio 3's The Verb, compère of the annual T S Eliot Prize Readings, writer, broadcaster and recent recipient of The Freedom of Barnsley, Ian McMillan is a renowned British poet who's been everywhere and done more. He's already written a verse autobiography ( Talking Myself Home: My Life in Verses ), and now a memoir of childhood and the sea – My Sand Life, My Pebble Life . Ian’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs , resident poet for English National Opera, and a contestant on BBC 1's Pointless Celebrities. His most recent collection is To Fold The Evening Star: New and Selected Poems . the poems Half a Minute Before the Start of the World 00:00 / 01:00 There was an idea. Well, more of the ghost Of an idea. And the idea/ghost idea was The idea of a tree. Somewhere (remember, There was no somewhere yet) The ghost of an idea of a tree waited To become an idea of a tree and then A tree. On the day before your first day At school you are full of possibilities In your little socks. Maybe you hold A crayon close to a blank sheet That almost collapses under metaphor’s Incalculable weight. It is, look, look, Half a minute before the start of the world And that (insert blankness here) of a tree Has no idea what the world has in store for it But it dreams its leaves are burning. Try Knocking on Your Own Door and Opening it 00:00 / 00:40 Your shadow Either side. Lit by possibility. This is like Walking and sitting down At the same time. This is like Being the past and the future At the same time. Knock now. Knock. Both sides of the door at once. Hearing the knock And being the one who knocks. Gaze through The letterbox At yourself, Knocking and listening. Listen. This is like Writing and reading At the same time. The Last Speaker of the Language 00:00 / 00:59 The last speaker of the language said this: ‘My words fall unnoticed; snow in a wood. No one to talk to’s like no one to kiss.’ Nobody answered. No one understood. The last speaker of the language lay down On the grass only he had the words for And felt his dry mind beginning to drown In the sound of old sounds closed like a door. The last speaker of the language looked up At what he called something I call the sun I passed him a drink. I call it a cup: His word for that thing is over and done. The untitled moon set fire to the night. When languages die, who says the last rites? Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jan Harris read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jan Harris back next the poet Jan Harris lives in Nottinghamshire, and was awarded a place on Writing East Midlands’ mentoring scheme in 2018. Her first collection, Mute Swans on the Cam , was published in 2020. Jan has had poems in various print and online journals, including Acumen , Atrium and Poetry Wales , as well as in many poetry anthologies. In 2019, Jan scooped third place in the Wales Poetry Award. the poems Summerlands 00:00 / 00:55 Willow man farms the summerlands, tends black maul in its bed of clay. At leaf fall he harvests young stems by machine. His father’s billhook rusts away. At home his wife dusts the crib great-grandmother wove from withies, stripped white as tight sinews, proud on her hand when she twined the pliant wands to shape. Their willow lines Old Yeo’s banks where whimbrel-song springs and water voles burrow deep in osier-cradled earth. And there they sleep, close to the river’s lap and lull. The glove her mother left unfinished 00:00 / 01:04 It would mean so much to me , my friend says, if you could finish it . She hands me the needles: two neat rows of knitting in soft black yarn, a single strand of silver shimmering through. The finished one hugs her wrist, fits each finger with comfort. The pattern is fragile with age, held together with yellowed tape, adjusted many times to fit her growing hand, the workings written in pencil on the back. I follow it with care, fall into the rhythm of her mother’s making. To finish the glove takes little from the skein, enough left over for a hat and scarf to keep a daughter warm on the coldest winter day. Urban sheepdog 00:00 / 01:28 He’s your uber-cool streetwise sidekick, hyper- connected through the wavelength of his lead, but unleash him and he flows like a brook through the park, gathers you in the oxbows of his meanders. No city nine-to-five for him – he keeps a farmer’s time. Wet nose in your face at dawn and instant-coffee eyes that perk you up for work – no time to play. The sticks you throw are sheep to stalk in stealth mode, belly low to dew-damp grass, his gaze unflinching before the fetch! He’s partial to the urban life. A taste of pilau rice from late-night takeaways goes down a doggy treat. He works out weekly at the canine gym, and though he’ll sleep on a rug, he always prefers to snore amid the snowdrift of your crisp and clean Egyptian cotton sheets. But see, his muzzle’s flecked with moorland brown. He dreams, and his paws shake like a new-born lamb. Publishing credits Summerlands: Ink Sweat & Tears The glove her mother left unfinished: Acumen (Issue 101) Urban sheepdog: winner of The Writer Highway Dog Poetry Competition 2020

Hear poet Peter A read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Peter A back next the poet Published widely in such places as Laldy , Spindrift, Poems for Grenfell Tower, A Kist of Thistles, A Kind of Stupidity and Bridges or Walls? , Peter A won first prize at the 2016 Paisley Spree Fringe Poetry Competition . During 2020, his work was anthologised in Words from Battlefield, Poets Against Trump , Surfing , The Angry Manifesto and Black Lives Matter – Poems for a New World . Peter's debut chapbook, Art of Insomnia , was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2021. the poems Found in France 00:00 / 02:30 Though you would have to concede its picture perfect rural beauty here for the record are the things you wouldn’t like about the place. The middle of the countryside such a distance from anywhere. The crowded transport transferring from the airport. The open windows to keep the place cool inviting houseflies. The doorway dogs, the ever-darting omnipresent lizards. The lack of television. The steps, useful for others, which would be impossible for you. Around those steps the lavender which at home would aid your sleeping but here for you a nightmare, attracting wasps and bees. The spider’s improbably small body, impossibly spindly long legs, waiting in the shower room, patiently. Also the tiny white spider – I bet you never saw an entirely white spider! The mosquitoes, the hornets. The blood-sucking horseflies almost certainly lining up to feast upon you in particular. The bats awaiting the chance to be entangled in your lush long hair. The swimming pool that would be out of bounds for you. The conversation in which you would not wish to speak. The revelation before bedtime concerning the cleaner’s cat, its trophy mice and the minor flea infestation – successfully eradicated we think but let us know if you get bitten . As for me, the only aspect of the French place I do not appreciate is you not being here. After 00:00 / 00:54 After words their last have spoken and from here gone Afterwards it is said cockroaches will make the earth their own Do you see already some may be working to inherit behind the scenes planning preparing strategies awaiting the endgame from which all cockroach-types are due to benefit after the black rainfall/after the slaughter of words and laughter After Late night teardrop 00:00 / 00:40 I should certainly stop viewing old home movies, not because of their patchiness or participants’ awkwardness – that’s all part of their charm. Not because of their faded definition – I always liked the Impressionists. Not because they are silent cinema, recorded with the cheapest camera, but because they leave my heart haunted. Publishing credits Found in France: Art of Insomnia (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) After: Sci-Fi (Dreich Themes) Late night teardrop: The Wee Book of Wee Poems (Dreich Wee Books)

Hear poet Joanna Nissel read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Joanna Nissel back next the poet Director of Malika's Poetry Kitchen, a collective encouraging craft, community and development, Jill Abram grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton. She's performed her poems everywhere from London to the Ledbury Poetry Festival, as well as in Paris, the USA and online. Jill's poetry has appeared in The Rialto , Magma , Finished Creatures , Ink Sweat &Tears , And Other Poems and Harana . When not writing poetry, Jill produces and presents a variety of events, including the Stablemates series of poetry and conversation. the poems Thoughts on Mothers’ Day 2020 00:00 / 01:23 His tight hold and strong lead send the calendar backwards. I shed half my lifetime, my weight as we quick quick slow across the grass. This stranger saw my winces at every kick of the drum, tish of the hi-hat, chose to rescue me for a foxtrot around the garden. Evening sun stretches shadows – our heads bob among apple trees. I move at his command – can hear the melody playing in his head. We flow over the lawn: chasse, turn, promenade. A burst of laughter could be at our expense. His step never falters, he does not loosen his grip. Delicious 00:00 / 00:43 Tanks checked, mask on, I topple in backwards, descend. I approach your feet, count ten little toes, as there should be. I want to check fingers too but only have enough air for one full scan. They’ll have to wait until I’m halfway. Your legs are plump, a dimple on each side of chubby knees, as yet no sign of patella bones. There are folds at the top of each thigh to be checked carefully at every nappy change. And now I can see you are a boy. You should be my boy. A fat little belly, umbilicus trailing, wafting in the swell. Two functionless nipples but you’d look wrong without them. Now I can fin along an arm from your shoulder to the relief of thumb, four fingers, and across to the same on the other side. I swim away to see your whole face then back for the detail; teeny round chin, lips surprisingly full and a perfect bow. The cliché button nose, your eyelids fringed by blond lashes, closed. I want to see the colour of your eyes, for you to see me. It’s the Only Time I See Them On coming out – Hove Lawns 00:00 / 01:08 Mum says Dad was brought as a date for her sister by his friend who said, This is my friend Leo. Mum says Dad would have asked out whoever answered the phone, but he only rang at dinnertime when she was nearest. Mum says Dad took her to dinner and concerts, If I wanted to have fun, I’d go out with one of the others. Mum says Dad said, I’d like to marry you, but I only earn £4 a week. Mum says Dad went away, so when he came back she said, I suppose we’d better get married. Other people said she could give up work once she was a wife, but Dad said, Not bloody likely! After more than fifty years and two more generations, Dad says, Turn the radiator up, I can’t hear a word! Dad says, Have I had my dinner? when he’s just had his lunch. Mum says We’ve had the better, now’s the worse. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

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

Hear poet Olivia Dawson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Olivia Dawson back next the poet Discovering poetry as a mature Open University student, Olivia Dawson went on to publish her debut pamphlet, Unfolded , in September 2020. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Magma , Under the Radar , Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal , 14 Magazine and Eye Flash Poetry. Her work is also in the anthology, Time & Tide . Originally from London, Olivia now lives between there and Lisbon, where she's the area's Poetry Society Stanza representative. the poems Kylerhea Ferry Slip – Isle of Skye 00:00 / 00:36 Two moon jellyfish tremble close to shore where chill water licks slippery rocks. The sea pleats like accordion silk until an otter stirs the surface, twitches drops from whiskers, peers about, chases his tail then deep dives to re-emerge alongside the white flash of a fin zinc against teal, tacking a seam through spindrift like running stitch. Uncertain Coast Found poem with words from the Met Office online 00:00 / 00:46 Sunnier drizzle will probably spread through variable conditions with a risk of wet and dry. Somewhat changeable, but more settled, however perhaps cloudier thunder in odd spots should be expected, at times from the West, even the South. Elsewhere a chance of mist, the spread of an average, the possibility of breezy seas, scatterings of outlook, bright fog interspersed with isolated dying. Cold spells bounce back slowly, wintry snow patchy in occasional places, uncertain coast likely to last until May. Cosmetologist Creates Shampoo Infused with Sound 00:00 / 00:51 It’s hard to trap snuffles of a baby’s breath, the sssh of foam at low tide or the exhausted sigh of a heart when it breaks. I need silence, a sleight of hand, butterfly nets, Blu Tack to catch elusive threads, a freezer set to hoar frost until echoes split ready to be grated and mixed with white peach. Of course I make mistakes: the last batch picked up the zing of a trampoline spring from over the garden wall. But uncork this flask and what do you get? Why – use your imagination! Publishing credits Kylerhea Ferry Slip – Isle of Skye: Coast to Coast to Coast (Special Aldeburgh Issue) Uncertain Coast: 14 Magazine (Series 2, Issue 2) Cosmetologist Creates Shampoo Infused with Sound: exclusive first publication by iamb

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

Hear poet Douglas Tawn read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Douglas Tawn back next the poet Douglas Tawn is a poet, actor and screenwriter whose poems have appeared in the in-trays, at least, of numerous literary journals. His first collection, The Collected Poems of T S Eliot, was disqualified from the T S Eliot Poetry Prize following accusations of plagiarism. Douglas holds a 100m swimming badge, and is now working on updating his CV. the poems 13 Birds in the Way of Looking (or The Parliament of Fowls) 00:00 / 05:52 I Following on from the Keats House they taxi over garden feeders the green chute’s permanent flash-spangled guitar licks ascend with a flourish of birds gone wild Para! Para! Para! Para! So we’re left to ask what to make of this ornithological hypotaxis? to wit: where do they belong? to whom do we owe the pleasure? are they not, these birds, out of sight? II ‘We know we are supposed not to leave, but suppose we had some friends to stay? They’d brighten up the place … ’ ( Letter to a Beefeater, the Ravens) III The kite where I come from is not I’d say something to write home about. There again, why write home when you’re there already? They’d say it should be taken as read. Everything has its place, just so the parakeets of London and just so there are no hard feelings, feel free to point them out when you see them. IV magpie silent eyes his pound of carrion starling spangles sky dark with murmuring crows nineteen amass numbering full murder they see the carcass and look no further V ‘Brighten up the place— What do you think we’ve been trying to do? I don’t wear the uniform for fun you know.’ ( Letter to the Ravens , a Beefeater) VI Flush with all heaven’s range blackbird beetles about the town ready to sing and define the age. Even the worms all dig her sound they love her style and critics agree she’s a bird of high renown. They offered her a record deal, all the fat cats in the yard, lining her up for their next meal. But blackbird caught them off their guard “Sure I’ll sign on one condition, so you just listen up hard: “In this deal you give permission for me to sing whatever I please with total freedom of expression.” Those foolish cats at once agreed: they signed up blackbird there and then and prepared for her first release. It was a jazz-fusion album. Didn’t do that well. VII I am not one for sorrow nor was meant to join the dance, signifying union of man, woman and song Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! passing under the stage the god, Hercules, whom Antony loved leaves only our senses dimmed and silver with age memories of beaten gold sickening and slow awake the sinning bird squatting greedy overhead like a secret. VIII Behold the fowls of the air: some of them do sow actually; nor did my first draft take into account the barn owl. Behold, they mount the sky; cross-winged embassies to heathen shores; yet why should foreign masters not call these birds native? Behold, the peregrine falcon, a native species; how did we figure that one out? Such divisibility buckles belief. Yet see how this open secret rewards the kingdom; her white cliffs shrink and her statues swell. IX ‘We didn’t mean to offend you. Maybe we could wear the uniform too?’ ( Second Letter to a Beefeater, the Ravens) X Well, that was the day he went completely cuckoo—riding high on Mellow Fruitfulness (I’m guessing the guest ale down the Wheat Sheaf). Real state, yet kinglier in his madness, somehow, he comes in raving about some bird. Now I like the guy, although it’s a pain this nonsense, bursting squawk-eyed mouth oozing in here, proper disturbed, crying “So you like sad stories? I’ll frame you one now: a real traga-doozy!” “Now I’m out on the heath having a blast: the birdies were pinging from tree to tree, the smell of sweet flowers swelled through the grass (my eyes were blurry, but they looked great to me). Then I hear a warbling cry overhead. I look up to find a bird wringing her wings, frantic: “Detested kite! My daughters! No feather stirs, no breath heard—I had hoped to see them grow full singers— here cracked—some parasite has thwarted us!” “At my feet lay two fractured crowns, her chicks. She cursed, forced to feed the alien brood perched over us. Some opportunistic fowl, some sterile conveyer of misuse, some stalking spirit of infestation had laid them there and waste to her daughters. Vile cuckoo! To sin against her singing sisters—” but he couldn’t go on. He crumpled, still muttering tortured slurs, tugging at buttons where his shirt choked him. XI Þhre crowes gaþered aboute a pyloonne “A straunge bowre!” proclaimeþ oone, “Grene leves yt wants,” spake anooþer “Eke he bereþ not swete fruyts nouþer.” “Yt carrieþ mens powre accross the dale,” Resouned þe þrid, “eke illumineþ wele Hire lyȝtsomme wodes, iwrouȝte on hye. Ek þes strenges ylonge do kepe armonye, Makynge a plesaunt noys of musique softe Yherd alounge þes þreds alofte.” Ech herkened, wel lykinge the melodye So þey set þem doon on thys steley treë. XII ‘This probably sounds like an odd request … ’ ( Letter to his Tailor, a Beefeater) XIII The parakeet’s cry retreats over the heath le beau oiseau sans birdseed is all I can think without calling on more authentic superficies (e.g. an MA in Creative Writing, fancy that!) Honk! Honk! That was a goose shrewdly complaining of the lack of water-fowl under discussion today, which is fair, and I think they will agree with me that truly these high-flyers are out of their minds. Les Poissons Puissants 00:00 / 01:04 I, a fish, I want to—hang on sometimes there’s the net (some say a soft cage) one doesn’t know one’s in it until we all are—too late. This is not ideal but we’re used to going unminded—now I’m under the dense cloud of a gunboat here to assert someone’s rights (not mine, I’m sure) under these waters. Dominion over the fish means you gotta let them have it. Where was I? Constant motion makes that a difficult question. Where going? Ditto. That dreadnought means life or wreck to someone. Been a while since one came down here, all noise until it isn’t then we get a chance to nip in and browse: you sink, we swim. Eventually you’re pulled up the sky dense with voices charged with all their differences left ashore—they sound the same to me. From Whitman to Dylan, Their Multitudes ‘(I am large, I contain multitudes)’ ~ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself ~ ‘I play Beethoven’s sonatas and Chopin’s preludes. I contain multitudes’. ~ Bob Dylan, I Contain Multitudes ~ 00:00 / 02:16 ‘Contain,’ we know, has its double sense (both to possess and suppress) parenthesis creates and contains multitudes, in equal parts, suggests copia is more or less the sum of its parts. Repetition multiplies and refines to the singularity from which it starts restarting similitudes; resonating decline. The Song of Myself is no more a song than repeated multitudes mean no more. Was copia their dominant mode all along? An epic rhapsody with an unsettled score? Apparent formlessness finds ease with tradition tracing a song to the Trojan diaspora while The Great British Novel might be on television a saccharine story in aspic vernacular. ‘Past and present wilt’ Whitman tells us wilting his own name into timeless self ‘wilt,’ too, suggests archaic future (ambiguous, but better, I think, than saying ‘melt’) leaving with us wilful tradition refusing the will to be traditional the voice withers in the songs of Dylan as the multitude he’s given have given all. History is the addition of what is lost (Today and tomorrow and yesterday too) to the sum of what is coming to pass (The flowers are dying like all things do) and the past is not what is meant by tradition. Dylan’s flowers wilt in and out of time in time to the off-beating Whitman’s feet: by and by, Lord, they walk the line. Oh my, America! your new-found songs revive the dead democratically each season’s bloom of virtuous carrion stirs equal hosts of union and confederacy: Oh pick out a tune, boys, of Raleigh or Drake They’ll be landing here soon, boys, and make no mistake It’s the song of our doom, boys, sing Lowell and Tate To the Land of the Free, boys— PAY THE TOLL AT THE GATE Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Mims Sully read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mims Sully back next the poet Nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Mims Sully is a poet from Sussex, England. She was a winner of the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize 2022 , and has had her work published in Prole , Ink, Sweat & Tears , The Ekphrastic Review , And Other Poems , Obsessed with Pipework and other journals, as well as in anthologies by Sidhe Press and Black Bough Poetry. Mims started writing poetry after studying Creative Writing at the Open University, and many of her poems are inspired by her experience of caring for her mother, who had dementia. the poems Simple Hex For A Slanderer 00:00 / 00:51 Write their name on a piece of paper. Put it through the shredder. Place the ribbons in a bowl. Ignite. Watch them grow tongues, curl back and blacken, flaking to ash. File your nails (the sharper the better) then clip the tips, sprinkle over. Add some callus freshly grated by pumice, a crust of wax picked from your ear and one salty tear. Lubricate the mix with your own spit and lashings of mucus then stir and speak: Unkind words will not go unpunished but form ulcers yellow and bulbous tight with pus on the tongue. My Father’s Belt 00:00 / 01:00 looped around my waist, moves when I breathe like a phantom limb. The leather cracks, moves when I breathe. With bronze lustre the leather cracks as if with laughter. With bronze lustre, his face creased as if with laughter as disease spread. His face creased, a shifting of skin, as disease spread its tightening belt. A shifting of skin drawn across bone like a tightening belt; his body buckled. Drawn across bone this broad strap buckles my body with a strong clasp. This broad strap holds me together with a strong clasp like my father's arm. Holding me together; like a phantom limb my father's arm loops around my waist. Afternoon Entertainment, Chamberlain Court 00:00 / 00:58 I wasn’t sure at first if she was even listening, though we sat in rows in front of the baby grand, as the piano man played all the old classics. It was when she closed her eyes that it happened – her hands started patting her jeans in time to Over the Rainbow. Then her fingers stood to attention, as if remembering: the coolness of ivory, warmth of wood, weight of black and white keys. She leant into the music as her right hand rippled across her lap onto my leggings, while her left hammered chords on the neighbouring gentleman’s knees. And just when I thought I should intervene, she opened her mouth and sang at the top of her voice about a blue-skied cloudless world where someday, I might find her. Publishing credits Simple Hex for a Slanderer: Prole (Issue No. 27) My Father's Belt: Pulp Poets Press (March 1st 2021) Afternoon Entertainment, Chamberlain Court: 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 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 David Butler read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. David Butler back next the poet David Butler's third poetry collection, Liffey Sequence , was published in 2021 – the same year as his second short story collection, Fugitive . His novel, City of Dis , was shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year 2015. the poems Distancing 00:00 / 00:53 Now we are wintering – the whole hive stupefied to silence, each in their cell who isn’t soldiering, an inmate of a new Shalott – the cities, simulacra: drone-shot piazzas; enchanted palaces; empty trainset trains; vistas dreamed by de Chirico; traffic lights sequencing the memory of traffic – confined while, ineluctably, somewhere else, the toll, the toll, until we’re numbed by the scale of it; each week, the heat and bustle more distant, more unlikely; nothing to feed but waxing apprehension: what will eclose this long cocooning, and on what tentative wings? And then the sun broke through 00:00 / 00:46 A sea of jade and muscatel; the sky, gun-metal. Landward, the storm-portending birds, white-lit, Riding wild contours of wind, uplift To tilt at the raucous crows. This Is how it is to live, the ticker tells, Looping the floor of the newsfeed. Somewhere, an outrage; an airstrike; Somewhere, a politic withdrawal. This Is how it is to live: the wind blowing The charcoal of crows’ feathers; The rent in the clouds; oblique tines beating Sudden ochre out of a sullen ocean. These Are Not Days 00:00 / 00:46 These are not days, they are shadows flitting over the too-familiar ground, dry and rubble strewn, where our choices are buried. These are not days, these shades, tremulous, mere changes of light. Quiet as thieves, as witnesses, they slip past in silent legion. Count them up, and they come to years, but years empty of substance. They are the dry husks of our lives, the whisper inside the hourglass. Days are not the coinage of will, as once we imagined. One day they rise like locusts, to devour us. Publishing credits Distancing / These Are Not Days: Liffey Sequence (Doire Press) And then the sun broke through: All the Barbaric Glass (Doire Press)

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

Hear poet Sarah Connor read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sarah Connor back next the poet Poet Sarah Connor lives in Devon, England, and is a past nominee for both The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and she's published two full collections of poetry: The Crow Gods and The Poet Spells Her Name . the poems Stumbling on Beauty 00:00 / 00:50 That summer, I became adept at finding beauty. I reached out for it – the clean-scrubbed nails on the nurse's fingers. They were beautiful. The green flesh of an avocado; a spider's web, caught in a hedge – all beauty. I held it like a trophy. I was so greedy for the loveliness of a child swinging in a playground, of a light caught in water of a bird turning on emptiness – I collected it, collated it, I held it tightly, threw it high, up into the air, like cherry blossom or confetti, like the light that shatters through the branches of a tree. The Red-haired Girl 00:00 / 02:20 Bobby Sands died. That's how old I am. Bobby Sands died, and the red-haired girl died too, two days apart – so now, when I discuss the hunger strikers, I still feel that gush of anger, that someone could just die. We'd been in a school play together, her and I, the Redhead. As if her hair defined her. Perhaps it did. I think now, that hair might have been her mother's first loss, the first thing she mourned. Somebody dropped out, so we both moved up a notch, theatrically. I became the mother, and she became the governess. A comic part. I wanted to play tragedy back then. The father was a guy called Tim. He wore white jeans. Went off and joined the Met. The Metropolitan Police – so that maybe when I was down in London, doing all that student stuff, making my way in party clothes at daybreak through the empty city streets, and knowing this was how my life would always be, if I'd been picked up for some minor crime, or been the victim of an unprovoked attack, so guileless in my tawdry party clothes – it could have been him that I dealt with. And maybe he was at Orgreave. So while I was layering on my eyeliner and putting change into the miner's tin, he was up there, sticking in his boot. So far apart we drift, just spiders, really, riding threads. When my hairdresser shaved my head, she cried, and an old lady sitting next to me reached over – ‘You look just like that Irish girl’, she said, and we all laughed, smiling and sobbing. That was my first loss, but nothing like her mother's – that great cloud of Titian red, those curls, she must have sighed and cursed that hair so many times, and then wept at the losing of it. The Generosity of Birds 00:00 / 00:42 By which I mean The way the robin throws his song out to the world The way the herring gull carves the sky The way the starlings create dreams The way the wren calls from the hedge The way the pigeons swagger across the city square The way the goldfinch embroiders a line between tree and sky The way the blackbird melts the world into music The way the cormorant opens its wings its arms its heart to the wind The way the lark sings only of summer The way the buzzard reminds us to trust the sky Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet J L M Morton read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. J L M Morton back next the poet Winner of the inaugural Laurie Lee Prize for Writing in 2022, J L M Morton is a writer and poet whose work has been published internationally in journals including The Poetry Review , The Rialto and most recently in the multidisciplinary ethnography Living With Water: Everyday encounters and liquid connections . Her latest book is Glos Mythos – a collaboration with satirist Emma Kernahan and illustrator Bill Jones. Her first full collection, Red Handed , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024. the poems An Inheritance of Water 00:00 / 01:15 When I die the chemical signature in my bones will tell of Thames and Severn, Churn and Frome, marrow of upland pastures, mill race and outflow. An ancestral line of dockers loading and unloading cargo. A spring-fed apple tree that transpires deep in a valley sheds fruits that only wasps will feed on. And I want to close my ears to the endless sound of buckets emptying and refilling on the wheel. Is this what we call beauty? Is this a place my hand can hold, still reaching for the world? None of this is clean but it connects. Big enough and continuous to contain all of our lives, our deaths are carried in my blood and breath is carried by water. Rain is another name for love. Life Cycle of the Cochineal Beetle (c.1788) ‘ … it is worthwhile recalling that from the medieval era, one of the colours most prized by the crown, church and nobility in Europe for their finest fabrics was that of carmine or deep crimson.’ ~ Carlos Marichal Salinas ~ 00:00 / 01:51 An egg breaks on the pad of a prickly pear somewhere in Oaxaca where the scale insects’ livid bodies mass and crackle in the sun. Emerging, a crawler nymph clusters with the softness of her siblings to feed in the downy blanket – explorers edging to the brink of the known world. Nymph throws out a long wisp of wax, a thread to catch a ride on the wind, lifting and landing on the terra incognita of a new cactus pad. Her claim is staked with a stab of her beak. Cochineal sups the juices, sees off predators – lacewings, ladybirds, ants – with the bright surprise of her body. Fat, fierce and full of poison. She has detached her wings. Has no need of legs. Holding her colour quietly in trust – she waits for the male to eat his fill, to mate and die. Scraped away at ninety days, her body is laid out and dried, then pulverised. Destined for dominion. On Doubt / A Pair of Blue Eyes After Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford 00:00 / 01:16 Meeting changed our strata, the way only a storm at the edge of an ocean can do. The way a slump of salt water in a black cliff hole is a wet metronome for desire and regret. Blue milk sea and yellow gorse – it is possible to be ambivalent and beautiful at the same time. Everything becomes an image of our disharmonic foldings. You hanging from the clifftop in search of my jewels. I should have guessed the houses were crappy behind the waterfront where the old lanes run deep, away from the wind, under the pines. Stacked tyres, fly-tipped white goods. We are here for this moment and we fuck it up. Instead of making like gregarious worms in a world of Sabelleria reefs, honeycombed in our detritus. Publishing credits An Inheritance of Water: Raceme (Issue 13) Life Cycle of the Cochineal Beetle (c.1788): Poetry Review (Vol. 112, Issue 4) On Doubt / A Pair of Blue Eyes: Dust Poetry Magazine (Issue 9)