looking for something?

Poet Aaron Kent reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Aaron Kent back next the poet Aaron Kent is a working-class poet and publisher born and raised in Cornwall. He runs Broken Sleep Books and has had several pamphlets published. J H Prynne called his poetry 'unicorn flavoured'. How do you top that? the poems Ice Skating, Garden of Eden, 1998 00:00 / 01:31 When the floods erred over the pyre, the ice caps were still ideas – a convergence of crystal starlings invoking themselves to a hemisphere. My father still spoke in Rather, comparing potential to outcome and living through the theoretical choices of a coin flip. (Nothing would prepare him for a side, a continuum never considered ad infinitum). In evening’s grubby light we married mushroom while he sung broken harmonica for an orchestra of junction – the tip forms; mistakes we promised to make, a space to take. You, I was told when we returned from the registry office, sledded down Wollaton hill in the first stretch of snow; your first instinct to battle and claim each sheet like condensation racing to the bottom, engorging itself on itself. I piled snow against the door of a man you never met, a cleansed soul burdened with a front he couldn’t forecast. The cat determined to hide in his arms, the whistle of his harmonica drowned out by a meow stretched thin across the enveloping mist. I broke my arms in a race to the finish, I snapped my tendons to calm the light. Portmanteau 00:00 / 01:41 All of us; you, Aaron Kent, and I spread ourselves across the mattress where we read ergodic fiction to each other – where she lay the golden chariot, alchemy by alchemist, unenviable task of poisoning the dinner party. We bought a simile, like we had bought a mouse – petted, fed, hygienic born to serve a different purpose. We, all Aaron, carried him in our arms, our wasted arms in nuclear unrest, and dug lead into turf as we pressed its aching body into a shoebox and begged each other for entropy. The tone of conversation had changed and the split had guaranteed doubt. I’ve seen myself against a foreign backdrop like the breast of a white swan paralysed by the lines and ripples elegantly stamped on water’s canopy, where the drinks are quaffed before the bruschetta stuffed. Three of us, the inheritance of each other, like buds snatching for the sun, sent to follow a slope so weak so long so dark against the paleness that eats the very best of every silver lining etched in the folds of heavy cloth / case. I still hear them, us, myself in every quaint out-dated piano solo of a rehearsed broken moonlight sonata, like a sober actor playing drunk – the chimes jangling somewhere in absentia, the simile sleeping on the crook of midnight, a desperation becoming faint. I overcame and landed with tender spring between the three of us there, between the Godlessness of uncertainty. Reasons to Take Part In a Treasure Hunt 00:00 / 01:03 Time consumption is mindlessness, you are the waste of water, there are stars in the back rooms of your neighbour’s houses how will you ever know about them if you don’t search? The cats tell us how to move, the world is shaped like an egg, every part of your face tells a lie you tried to keep, I have eaten both of your novels; neither tasted like paper. Your sanity has fallen into the wrong hands, your mouth is open too wide for your feet, there are more ostriches than mistakes, you don’t know to use a full stop. Properly. If at all there is a no better time than the present tense, Kanye West is waiting, the whole town is waiting, why do you keep us waiting? Just find it already. The clues are there. Publishing credits Ice Skating, Garden of Eden, 1998: originally appeared in an altered form in The Rink (Dostoyevsky Wannabe X) Portmanteau / Reasons to Take Part In a Treasure Hunt: exclusive first publication by iamb Share

Poet Jo Burns reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jo Burns back next the poet Translator and medical writer Jo Burns has scooped awards in the Magma Poetry Competition, Poetry Society's Members' Poems Competition and Irish Writers Festival Shirley McClure Prize. Placed and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and Aesthetica Creative Writing Award (among others), Jo's also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry is published in numerous journals – including The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review and Oxford Poetry. Her pamphlet Circling for Gods , was followed by her debut collection, White Horses . the poems Summitting Kalapattar Deeply, seeing the lotus's blossom, Bowed that man, and smiling Kamala thanked. More lovely, thought the young man, than offerings for gods ... ~ from Siddharta by Hermann Hesse ~ 00:00 / 01:12 I tried to feel the words Siddharta wrote to win a kiss from the lips of Kamala, the taste of figs to a parched samana tongue amorous to taste hot riverblood. Which words caused a courtesan to part her lips for whom kisses were bread, night held up by wine? Origin to night suitors, co-ordinates, which words could boil a frozen pond to desire? Trekking past Khumbutse, Changtse and Lhotse– all eminent yet paled by Everest’s black summit, this huge echo of range begs for the same words as the coloured mantras hung from peak to peak. They call O White Lotus and so, tired in this womb of the world, I crawl then kneel. I’m sick of the old stories of horsemen and clouds. I crave revelations like this where words defeat me. The meaning of oceans 00:00 / 01:21 The Pacific with its screaming sixties, erotic nightmares for every sailor, shouts Adventure! for adrenaline seekers, and discoverers taking on the Humboldt. Whereas the Indian is all about arrival, not departure (that’s the grey Atlantic) De Gama’s rigged stasis and suspension, lashing foreign flotsam into metre where parrots gossip, dance in their throats, the crows are vernacular, without decorum, sparrows serenade aubades to the sun, anklets jingle at sea, you can hear Tagore. The Atlantic, the one I know by heart, cliffs and mists, it’s filled with longing. A cliché of old myths. I’d have to start at the beginning, so I’ll move on to this–– It’s just one water of failed trajectories, unsailed vendée globes. We’re saline stars, buoyant, blind—same old compass and desire: to sail smoothly through love. It’s an art. Maya's soliloquy 00:00 / 00:47 When you leave, it is only fair and right to clear the table once set with laughter and tip the wine glasses into the sea then mix a drop of blood in salt water. When you leave, please feed your paint to the fish. Leave the front door ajar for the wind to bring me the breeze. It’s simple etiquette, when you’re going and determined. When you leave, please throw your anchor away, lose my portraits, and burn all those written lines. Remember from your swaying, wind-blown deck to point your spinnaker squarely to horizon. Publishing credits All poems: White Horses (Turas Press) Share

Poet Lisa Kelly reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lisa Kelly back next the poet Lisa Kelly has single-sided deafness. She is also half Danish. Her first collection, A Map Towards Fluency , was published by Carcanet in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press) and Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. Her pamphlets are Philip Levine’s Good Ear (Stonewood Press) and Bloodhound (Hearing Eye). She sometimes hosts poetry evenings at the Torriano Meeting House in London, and is the Chair of Magma Poetry. the poems from The IKEA Back Catalogue Delivery to ASPELUND 00:00 / 00:58 Don’t lose your way in the snow to ASPELUND like being trapped in a white wardrobe, ARVINN. Arrive intact at this Norwegian Arctic city, reveal yourself, like a folding chair, to the city. Hey presto! Like magic, you appear in ASPELUND no longer up against the wall. Out of the wardrobe, ARVINN, you can shrug off the ward robe of white, which gapes like the wide roads of this city, and take up space. ARVINN, this city is not ASPELUND, ASPELUND is a stub, as a toe strikes against a wardrobe in a city. Aphid Reproduction as Unpunctuated White Noise 00:00 / 01:22 . a full stop is an aphid not a comma nor an embryo an aphid is a full stop is a nymph not a womb holding a comma nor a question mark asks nothing of a slash or a backslash bulges with parentheses bears afterthought after afterthought as a full stop parthenogenetic filled with full stops without stopping without comma without pausing full stop after full stop never comma not a comma until all the space is taken with full stop upon full stop not a comma and a full stop develops wings flies off ! an exclamation mark is an aphid on the wing not a full stop not a comma nor an embryo an aphid is an exclamation mark not a womb holding a comma nor a question mark asks nothing of a slash or a backslash bulges with parentheses bears afterthought after afterthought as a full stop parthenogenetic not an exclamation mark not a comma but a full stop filled with exclamation marks filled with full stops bears exclamation marks filled with full stops until summer heat has happened and love is in the air . an aphid is a male on the wing not a full stop is an exclamation mark and an aphid is a female on the wing not a full stop is an exclamation mark gives birth to a full stop without wings mates with an exclamation mark and lays a full stop a full stop is an egg not an aphid but an egg and the egg it is dormant is a full stop not a pause not a comma nor an embryo but a full stop in the winter without wings an egg is a full stop until spring and it hatches a full stop is an aphid not a full stop Sea Wall 00:00 / 01:20 The sea is maddening, cannot be calmed. I have tried throwing life buoys, rafts, all manner of rope. Once I crushed sleeping pills and slipped them overboard, but it cried for more salt. I have to build a wall to save the sea from itself – constantly crashing, destroying castles, leaking into the land, festering in pools of its own brine. Loss of sediment and sense. I have to hold the line. Others argue about options. Option one, do nothing. Option two, rock groynes and beach recharge. Option three, fishtail rock groynes, rock revetment and beach recharge. Once a wall is in mind, it must be built. Norwegian rock is best, cut from mountains with diamond saws, never blasted. It is cut strong in strong blocks. The wall is on its way from the Larvik Quarry. The sea knows what to expect. Publishing credits Delivery to ASPELUND: Anthropocene Sea Wall: The New European Aphid Reproduction as Unpunctuated White Noise: A Map Toward Fluency (Carcanet) Share

Poet Steve Denehan reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Steve Denehan back next the poet Steve Denehan lives in Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. A widely published, award-winning poet, he's the author of two chapbooks and two collections (one of which is forthcoming from Salmon Press). He's been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best New Poet. the poems Fists 00:00 / 02:01 It took me forty thousand punches to realise forty thousand too many sure, I landed a few, enough to take me to this ring but he is quick as light and made of iron and his punches his punches come again, and again, and again the fists of my father, my mother, my schoolmates, of God himself the glancing blows, the blows of the children I saw for half an hour last Christmas eve I am winded from two body shots unseen I disguise it but he knows, I look in his eyes, he knows he comes for me and though the ring is an infinite thing I can find no place to hide then, an opening, a tunnel for my right hand and I watch my fist blur toward him and feel the contact rock the columns of his temple and he is dazed and he is mine and his eyes look through me and I call upon that old right hand one last time the hand that signed my title deeds, my wedding certificate my divorce papers the hand that held my babies, that held your face before that first kiss my sledgehammer, my bomb but, it is so heavy now and the fuse won’t light, and then, I know two seconds pass two seconds that will stretch over all my days two seconds when it was all there, another world two seconds when I betray myself, as I always do and so, I wait, with nothing left to get what I deserve and when he comes I do not run, and I am baptised in a flood of fists I fall through the roar of the crowd and am caught by the blanket of childhood the lights above are so bright, and so pure, and just beyond my reach I lie on my back and watch dozens of moths in frenzied compulsion flying head first into the lights again and again, and again Jesus or Rasputin 00:00 / 00:46 I wonder how many times these raindrops have fallen they land on the attic window loud and heavy reminding us that eventually they will win I wonder what these raindrops have fallen on spitfires and lollipops brides and widows endings, beginnings, endings I wonder if these raindrops have fallen on Hitler or Harold Lloyd, Cleopatra or Elvis, you, Jesus or Rasputin the sky is a grey lake pouring itself upon us muddying the garden puddling the drive trapping us, again it is June Plastic Bag 00:00 / 01:03 We stood on the canal bank under a bruise of a sky she was full of questions questions that as usual I couldn’t answer we stared at the fish “What type of fish is that?” “How can you tell which fish are boys and which are girls?” “Why is a swarm of fish called a school?” “How many fish are there?” I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know she pointed at a plastic bag in the water near the far bank “Is that a jellyfish?” I did know I told her that she was a silly monkey that it was just a plastic bag that jellyfish would never be in a canal only in the sea in saltwater she was quiet for a moment “Would jellyfishes like canals?” “Why is there salt in the sea?” “Will there ever be salt in the canal?” “Who put that plastic bag there?” I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know Publishing credits Fists: The Irish Times Winner of the Hennessy New Irish Writing 2019 Jesus or Rasputin: Miles of Sky Above Us, Miles of Earth Below (Cajun Mutt Press) Plastic Bag: exclusive first publication by iamb Share

Poet Aki Schilz reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Aki Schilz back next the poet Aki's poetry and short stories have been published online and in print in Popshot Magazine, Synaesthesia, Ink, Sweat & Tears, And Other Poems, Mnemoscape, Birdbook: Saltwater and Shore, CHEAP POP and An Unreliable Guide to London. She was chosen by Roxanne Gay to feature in the Wigleaf Top 50 (2015), was a Queen's Ferry Press Finalist (Best Small Fictions), and won both the inaugural Visual Verse Prize (2013) and the Bare Fiction Magazine Flash Fiction Prize (2014). With Kit Caless, she founded the LossLit digital literature project and co-edits LossLit Magazine . the poems If he asks 00:00 / 00:57 A mouth full of applause Wedding bells stretched between two hands Rush of silk as traffic At midnight all the trains hover over the water in silence: love as a sixpence or a moon, there’s no difference when you turn them clouds have no meaning here or a single orange flower growing out of the platform (he left you, hang up the phone before he returns to kiss your mouth shut) Knucklebone pressed into the small of my back Step over the unsaid things If he asks say nothing say [circle] yes/no The Fall 00:00 / 01:20 I have clasped your edges so hard they leave grooves in my palms, deep as the grooves of horse-reins beneath the bridges on towpaths wasted with bracken and buddleia. These, and mine, cut across lifelines: a geometric interruption. I cannot document dropping you on a sunlit day, startled by the sudden noise of a narrowboat any more than I can document losing you but the fall happens as if both were inevitable. The first: a drowning of lungs, the plosion of capillaries, a haemorrhage behind your eyelids like a summer storm. The second: a smaller drowning though no less significant, this arcing towards water of hard edges and palm-deep cuts: the only photograph I kept of you after your death. Did you dive in after it? she asks me when I tell her what has happened. I am at a loss to explain, when I shake my head, why I didn’t. It never occurred to me I might be able to save you this time. Flystrike 00:00 / 03:29 Tipping point, the cracked rim of a teacup, your spikes turned inside-out. In my cupped hands you curled, gently, despite your pain. I could sense something was wrong: you shouldn’t have been out in daylight, wobbling down the garden while the dog barked a warning into the rain. It echoed sharp into the bay, and you fell sideways onto the grass as if the sound had hit you. Starry moss, your toes curling, the mud caked around your neck: it looked like a noose. We took you in. You trusted me to hold you and I took you to my chest, brought you close. I could see a single fault-line, a wetted rim, thick with crust. No blood. What lay beneath was invisible to me, but I could smell it. It filled the car when we rushed you in, the dog in the back straining to look under the towel, whining as we punched the co-ordinates for the local vet into the sat nav. You snuffled, pushed all your strength through your soft snout to suckle from the pipette. ‘Drink, little one’ I said, and you did. Your teeth clacked against the plastic and hope surged like a current through my chest. We sped past lavender rocks, the sea blurring between them, silver slices glancing off the windscreen and birds looping ahead of us, clearing the way. The vet uncurled you, a little too roughly. ‘Look,’ he said, and showed me where the skin of you was coming away. The maggots twisted up into the light like strange white roots. ‘We can’t save him,’ he said. ‘Would you like to leave the room?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to stay.’ Something in my heart kicked out. I held it down, clamped my jaw shut. I wish he had been more gentle with you, wish the needle was not quite so big, that it could have been slipped into a spot that wasn’t under your chin, the whole thing in sight, right under your nose. Your nose, small wet thing that moments ago had sought me out, had tickled my palm as you took the water from me. I wished as the pink liquid flushed through your small body, I could touch you, stroke your spikes, curl you gently back into yourself. Instead, I clutched the towel to my chest. I said, ‘It’s OK little one.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’ The nurse snapped off her gloves. The smell was on my hands, in my mouth and ears, under my skin. In the waiting room, a naked dog was striking his cone against the wall. Publishing credits If he asks / Flystrike: written exclusively for iamb The Fall: And Other Poems Share

Poet Christina Strigas reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Christina Strigas back next the poet Christina Strigas’ work has appeared in Coffin Bell Journal, BlazeVox19, Feminine Collective, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Rhythm & Bones, Thimble Lit Magazine, The Temz Review, Pink Plastic House Journal, Twist in Time Literary Magazine and many others. Her collection Love & Vodka was recommended by CBC News – making it onto its 'Your ultimate Canadian poetry list' . Christina is a full-time public school teacher, and part-time course lecturer at McGill University. She lives in Montreal with her husband and two children, and is currently working on publishing two poetry books and a novel. the poems Measured Teaspoons 00:00 / 01:52 Who loves me anymore? People like to rehash old said shit, From five years ago … You punched a door, There’s still a wrecked hole to remind me. Pin their poetry on your forehead. Jinx, touch red, it’s identical now. Someone brings you red wine you smile taking about reading and writing you try to tell a joke fail miserably. Look around the room like a stranger. That’s not what I meant at all. Who loves me anymore? They see me with fugitive themes, Forgive me for always leaving, Flinch at the sign of my danger Writers like to play sex games in the day, hunting Adventurous and dangerous love. I can never tell who wants me, Damaged and wounded from giving away My secrets for cash or fantasies for free, Or if they do My ego never knows, Did you take out the garbage? I can never tell time anymore. It keeps rambling on and on like a song on the radio you can’t listen to anymore Indifferent to the wrinkles on my skin. It’s not Friday today? When was my birthday? I may be losing my witching powers, Maturing into the skin of my mother and father Perhaps they never existed, Maybe normality is flowing stillness into my veins, I have become what they feared. Old and out of date, Expired. I have walked into a party In the wrong era’s outfit, And when you try to explain it: The meaning of poetry, When they ask, Why you're wearing nylons with sandals, You keep repeating, Because I want to. Yet you realize no matter How you express yourself What you really want to say is: That’s not what I meant at all. 1973 00:00 / 02:55 i have authentic white tiny flowers in my hair the way i was supposed to live walking for my aunt, down the tiny cobblestone roads in the middle of summer, following the gorgeous bride, in the village, my parents were born and fell in love, singing Greek songs in the open air, watching how the Mediterranean sun plays golden tricks on my mother's short 70s crew cut. It's 1979 on the plane with my dad emergency landing to tend to the sick his father is dying and everyone is talking about olive trees. my hair is too short for Europe my knees too knobby but everyone loves my accent they say i'm beautiful i sleep at the top of the hill with my cousin Mimika and two other cousins have my name and moles. I find it weird that we all look alike yet no one sees the sun's brilliance like me or notices how the moon shines at twelve years old. they want all my clothes and look at the brand names while i care more about the sky and my grandmother's sad eyes. she likes to hug me like it's the last time she will every hug feels like her last hug. i felt death hug me when she squeezed and kissed me like that. we sleep in the afternoon or climb out the window to play with the hens. It's 1991 everyone my father loved has died I'm backpacking through Europe with my best friend and we visit my childhood but it's so long gone, i slept all through Paros Santorini saw all our dirty laundry Pensioni Andre had no mirrors so we hid well under the sun's rays. Every day lasted forever every love a lifetime. It's 1998 I'm three months pregnant in Agadir and doing some kind of pregnancy test it feels like this baby will live and he does. my life will never be the same again i'm a mother now. It's 2001 the ultrasound indicates it's a girl and i cry like a baby praying she'll stay warm and safe and never leave me stranded. with blood and tears. it's 2011 everyone sees Greece through the eyes of my children and we love each other madly every year every ocean brings us closer to death and the cup we were meant to drink together and finally alone is full of memories and our future is still full of dreams. he says no matter how old you are you are always young to me you never age. i love you. these are the years that grab me make me cry to our song and i sign death certificates. i grab hold of my soul and shake it a bit then i silence it. you thought you knew me but truly it's 1973 and the sun is the brightest i've ever witnessed and my mother's beauty haunts me. Dead Wife 00:00 / 01:05 I wrote you all the things I cannot tell your hazel eyes. I do not want to even look at you how unromantic of a poet like me. I wrote about— that time when Little Wing played in the 70s basement of Lily’s house on McKenzie Street. We did not know each other then you were at some other party playing spin the bottle, starting to brew your player moves, charming chess pieces. I spent my love on you like a gambler. I can’t I don’t want to be that girl That writes so many letters to her ex-boyfriends ex-lovers ex-husbands where they all have a conversation. They all have a substitute teacher when love calls. My ex was a teacher I killed myself for you like a murderer. I can’t I won’t wish for you to visit me refresh my six-year-old memory when love stumbles you sometimes forget to get up. I pretend your wife is dead. My reality has no filters. Publishing credits Measured Teaspoons: exclusive first publication by iamb 1973: Your Ink on my Soul (Underwater Mountains [1st ed.] / self-published [2nd ed.]) Dead Wife: Coffin Bell Journal (Vol. 2, Issue 4 – Masquerade) Nominated for Best of the Net 2020 Share

Poet Mark Fiddes reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mark Fiddes back next the poet Mark has published two books with Templar Poetry: The Chelsea Flower Show Massacre and The Rainbow Factory . In 2019, he won the Oxford Brookes University International Poetry Competition, came second in the Robert Graves Prize, and third in the National Poetry Competition. He's recently been published by Poetry Review, Magma, The New European, The Irish Times, The London Magazine and Poem Magazine. He lives in Brexile in the Middle East. the poems After Delius On the occasion of not leaving the European Community, March 29th 2019 00:00 / 01:37 For an hour or two over breakfast the lethal Etonians were hushed on the day we meant to leave. Common or garden birds threshed a chorus from thin British hedges. A bog-standard UK sun rose up sixty non-decimal minutes before Europe to shake off a bleary March. Pigeons paraded along the gables in regimental medal regalia. New blossom reported for duty bunting all the pissed-up alleys. Not a chemist ran short of insulin and the growling tide of lorries failed to make a delta out of Kent. Hate was too hungover to fry up the Full English with trimmings in saucy tabloids and talk radio. On the day we meant to leave, a bird of unsettled status flew in to Devon from an African hot spot laden with unregistered eggs searching the lanes for spare nests and any true love crying “cuckoo.” El Pacto de Olvido 00:00 / 01:30 We walk the canal under plane trees, words in one pocket, silence in the other past palettes stacked for la cooperativa, the air thick with dust and late harvest. We talk of work, cards we’ve been dealt, the missing people, our grown children, whose absences now lengthen beside us. I explain how this hour a lifetime ago, Nationalists executed the men too unfit to march to the “work camps” in France, leaving the bodies somewhere over there to rot, dropped like sacks in familiar dirt. They thought nothing could be quieter than a country of unmarked graves. Once in step, we speak of nothing more. Someone’s taking pot shots at the rabbits. Swallows speed type through pylon wires. An irrigation ditch fills, a tractor stutters. Black damsons clack against dry mouths. Homewards we scrape, shale underfoot. The price of peace is always a bitter fruit. The Kodachrome Book of the Dead 00:00 / 01:55 Frozen in their Kodaks, our old folk wear slippers to protect the carpet from their feet. Colours leech. A tap drips. Dinner lingers in another room. A yucca erupts on the lawn. The lounge is an orgy of fakery: leatherette armchairs, plaster dogs, silk orchids, mock encyclopedias and more fringe than necessary on lamps, hairdos, lips, pelmets plus random tassels wherever there is dangling and come-hither velvet. If a grandparent smiles it is like a wolf had stopped by for tea and a slice of Battenberg. Parents vogue in folky knitwear surrounded by cigarettes and the Sixties. Is this how they will see us, our early years tucked into albums balanced on the knee like babies? Will pages crackle as laminates separate and we stare back red-eyed as hounds from blind pubs? Whereas our last few decades will click past in seconds on a screen, backlit, cropped and cherry-bright. There they can find us, between swipes, catching our breath, wiping the joy from our sleeves. Publishing credits After Delius: The New European El Pacto de Olvido: runner-up in the Robert Graves Prize 2019 The Kodachrome Book of the Dead: winner of the Oxford Brookes University International Poetry Competition 2019 Share

Poet Helen Ivory reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Helen Ivory back next © Dave Guttridge the poet Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist whose fifth collection, published by Bloodaxe Books, is The Anatomical Venus . She edits webzine Ink Sweat and Tears , and teaches creative writing online for the UEA/WCN. Her book of mixed media poems –Hear What the Moon Told Me – was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, while her chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City appeared with SurVision. As part of Versopolis Poetry , Helen's work has been translated into Polish and Ukrainian. the poems All the Suckling Imps 00:00 / 01:32 Summon your children by their given names be wet nurse; harbour; slatternly distaff – let them suck of your virulent blood. Now issue them Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown to derange the neighbours rabbits, kittlings, polecats and rats have them spill from your skirts; from your crimson teats. * A hare on the threshold tame like a dog bright crooked cast in its lemony eye. * Basket of apples placed on the floor of a virtuous larder. A peppery grimalkin curled on the roof. A Goodwife takes to her bed body a roost of convulsions an apple a day an apple a day * A palaver of mice big as squirrels ravage the hayloft winter rises early a smother of crows draws its cloak across the pale vault of heaven. * A scabrous dog kiss cold as clay springs from the lap of its fostering bedlam to dance and dance the black dance of itself atishoo atishoo, we all fall down * Old woman old woman who lives in a shoe oh monstrous mother now what will you do? The watchers have come to unclothe your imps the prickers are here sing witchery, sing jinx Cunning If a woman dare cure without having studied, she is a witch and must die. ~ Reverends Kramer and Sprenger ~ Malleus Maleficarum (1486) 00:00 / 00:53 She comes when summoned with birth blood and earth caked to the hem of her skirts and dark little half-moons packed under broken nails. The hedgerows are her pantry: to quicken labour, there is cock-spur, balm of poppies to assuage your pain. Her senses are sharp as hoarfrost – she will bid you when to squat like a brute. And when the physician invents himself he will call at your door in the empirical light of day with his bagful of leeches and headful of planets. He will scribe the words of the Lord into your waxing belly. And when your daughter happens her crowning, he will rip off her head with forceps. Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Sorceress to Live Exodus 7:11 00:00 / 00:42 For her neighbour’s sickness was more than merely unnatural; for he sang perfectly without moving his lips. For she is intemperate in her desires and pilfers apples from the orchard; for she hitches her skirts to clamber the fence. For her womb is a wandering beast; for she is husbandless, and at candle time brazenly trades with the Devil. For she spoke razors to her brother; who has looked upon her witches’ pap and the odious suckling imp. For the corn is foul teeth. For the horse is bedlam in its stable. For the black cow and the white cow are dead. Publishing credits All poems: The Anatomical Venus (Bloodaxe Books) Share

Poet Victoria Kennefick reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Victoria Kennefick back next the poet Victoria Kennefick is a writer, poet and teacher based in Co. Kerry, Ireland, and co-host of the Unlaunched Books podcast. Her pamphlet White Whale won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition, as well as the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Ambit, The Stinging Fly and several other publications. Victoria was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to research at Emory University and GCSU in Georgia, and completed her PhD in English at University College Cork. the poems Cork Schoolgirl Considers the GPO, Dublin 2016 00:00 / 01:16 I am standing outside the GPO in my school uniform, which isn’t ideal. My uniform is the colour of bull’s blood. In this year, I am sixteen a pleasing symmetry because I love history, have I told you that? It is mine so I carry it in my rucksack. I love all the men of history sacrificing themselves for Ireland, for me, these rebel Jesuses. I put my finger in the building’s bullet holes; poke around in its wounds. I wonder if they feel it, those boys, I hope they do, their blooming faces pressed flat in the pages of my books. I lick the wall as if it were a stamp, it tastes of bones, this smelly city, of those boys in uniform, theirs bloody too. I put my lips to the pillar. I want to kiss them all. And I do, I kiss all those boys goodbye. January 00:00 / 00:42 I have begun the purge. Month of hunger, raindrops fall from window sills, ice slithers in puddles, the smoky breath of animals greets the air. Morning’s back already broken, veins obvious on everything. Emptying myself of all things ripe and wanton, I am winter grass. Observe me survive as earth’s shoulder blades that jut, cut up the sky that pushes down on all of us as if it wants to die. See, I am transparent as sunrise. Starving, I count my bones as valuable. Family Planning 00:00 / 01:18 You are tugging at my skirt, aged two, wanting a toy, a spoon from the drawer. You are a few months old, just able to hold your big old baby head up on that teensy neck. It is your birthday. I am sweating and empty and you are greasy-white with vernix, rising and falling with my breath. I survived and you did too, your father is crying. We are a little family, neat as a pin. Except you are still waiting, Portia or Lucia or May in parts. I carry a tiny piece I secrete so secretly each month, you grow impatient when water turns that warm and brilliant shade. It is alive while you are not. Daughter-to-be, if you could form your hands into little fists you would bang on my womb, that carpet-lined waiting room, but your father has your fingers and I have wrapped up your nails so you can’t rip me to ribbons. We keep you apart, even as we come together, but I hear him whisper your name, soft as blame in his sleep. Publishing credits Cork Schoolgirl Considers the GPO, Dublin 2016: Poetry Ireland Review (Issue 118) January: The Poetry Review (Winter 2019) Family Planning: bath magg (Issue 3) Share

Poet Amelia Loulli reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Angela Dye back next the poet Angela Dye is a writer, editor, podcaster, teacher, reviewer, interviewer and radio broadcaster. She runs many literary events and projects in Kent, England, and has worked for various magazines and businesses creating audio content. Angela's work has appeared in several print and digital magazines. She's currently writing a novel, as well as her second poetry book. the poems The Ruby and the Con 00:00 / 00:50 Oh you patriarchs who regulate the calyx vase, who decree the mix of wine, milk and honey, who place me on the shelf to admire, to tame, to spill. Know this: I possess myself. I hug my curves tight, I vibrate myself within my jar. I unsteady the shelf. I smash the walls. My mother’s chambers no longer constrain me. I escape as viscous perfume, filling all the cracks. I, woman, am so wonderful and vast, I will fill boots, books, beds, babies, benches and brains. We shall run the Rubicon. We shall fill the Earth. And that shall not constrain us. The calyx is the female reproductive part of a flower. A calyx vase holds the mythical wine, honey and milk – different combinations of which denote women's purity and immortality. Soup 00:00 / 01:33 Before the baby sun had been hurled hot into an unmade bed of sky, before earth was made, compliant and lush, we were dreaming the world, cooking up ideas, where nothing matters – he coerced me. Just once. Asked for soup. Just soup. Soup? Yes! I want it without humans in! Just a refreshing bowl of soup for the soul. Little things matter. Soup matters. Matter's in the soup: illusion and dreams, hopes and art, his dark materials to stir the soul. Season with love. So much love. Love to be made. There are many ways to kill a man. One could harm with charm, cut, drown, crown, disown, dismember, diss, hiss, piss take, mistake, disarm, cut, drown, burn, spurn, tickle, taunt, tar and feather, strap with leather, hail, nail. But remember this … the easiest way, by far the surest method to kill a good man, once and for all, is to slowly, ever so slowly, keep ... him … alive. The Borderline 00:00 / 02:11 We live in another world now, where forgiveness is no longer a magic spell, where potions are stolen, cannot be wolfed down, and Lupin cries to the moon. He wants to be good but he has this suit ... They say six foot is the best depth. This is so the stench doesn’t arise and the body is not taken so easy – for cannibalism, or even necrophilia. But five inches in, and we have hit hard strata. At first we thought we knew what we were looking at – two bodies at most, possibly, lying atop, a third. But after a while we needed the experts, the archaeologists, the social diarists and the film crews. The first cut was the hardest: that slice through still warm sinew and the gleam of bone. And now ... I cannot go any further than this. The spade has hit the denying rock that yields no more. Please say no more. I would have met you half way – I even wanted to hide the murderer in the cupboard, feed him warm milk from these old breasts. I thought that knowing we were monsters would keep us safe, our brushes with death keeping us alive. You didn’t tell us where the bodies lay. Keen senses of smell led us, dogs baying, that spotting of the perfect lawn perturbed, the fountain in the patio off kilter and the water killing the birds, the keepsakes shining in a window display. But she is a forensic expert – she will find them all. Although destroyed and with their souls sucked out, we have set them free roaming in a street near you. There can be no forgiveness now. It isn’t even needed. A monster can’t help but devour, doing what it is made to do. All one can do is run and hide. Publishing credits The Ruby and the Con / The Borderline: exclusive first publication by iamb Soup: The Echo Chamber (Whisky and Beards) Share

Poet Scarlett Ward Bennett reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Scarlett Ward Bennett back next the poet Scarlett Ward Bennett is a West Midlands poet whose debut collection ache – published by Verve Poetry Press in 2019 – has been nominated for a 2020 Forward Poetry Prize. She was nominated for Best Spoken Word Performer in the 2019 Saboteur Awards, and came third in the Wolverhampton Literature Festival Prize judged by Roy McFarlane. Scarlett runs several poetry workshops, and hosts the 'Versification' poetry evening in Cannock. A self-confessed hedgehog lady, she volunteers for West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue. the poems Culling Season 00:00 / 00:44 Somewhere in a town that is best known for how deep it has dug underneath itself, where the addresses are earthy like “May Dene” and “Old Fallow”, and roads fling themselves lethargically around woodland bends, a pot hole rips the gut out of an exhaust on an accelerating Ford with all the viciousness of antlers on bark. After all, it is rutting season, and it’s all I can think of lately; feuding stags butting skulls, concrete tearing out metal piping, and the way my neighbour boasted to me this morning of the fawn he shot through the eye socket. We're going to have to talk about it at some point 00:00 / 00:46 aren’t we? Except, I don’t want to. Can’t instead we talk of dandelion manes; the way they nose their way through cracks in the pavement, only to be scattered in infinite directions when kicked violently enough, scorned spores spiraling; frantic heads of fine-spun lace dizzying themselves away, as though away is the only place far enough from that damned kicking boot. Can we focus on the flowers and not think of anything else – not of how I ran home to my mum’s house, shame dampening the crotch of my underwear, and not of the beads from my snapped bracelet that I clutched tightly in my fist. What Is True Of Spring 00:00 / 00:54 is true also of ourselves. Learn from her; how she unfurls her flowered fists, waits for buds to burst from the end of branches, like beading blood on kneecaps, or lacquer slicked at the end of knuckled hands. Heal from your wounds womb first; blood is no omen of death, but of the pact we make with life. Even fossils dream of dawn, brittle from singing themselves hoarse clinking away under all that soil like forgotten coins in a deep pocket waiting to be unearthed. What if none of us ever stopped singing, the same way an oak remembers its notes of green once April comes back around no matter how much white winter had buried it in? Publishing credits All poems: ache (Verve Poetry Press) Share

Poet Carolyn Jess-Cooke reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Carolyn Jess-Cooke back next the poet Carolyn Jess-Cooke lives in Glasgow with her husband and four children. Her prize wins include an Eric Gregory Award, a Tyrone Guthrie Prize, and a Northern Writers' Award. Her third poetry collection will be published by Seren in 2021, and her fiction has appeared in 23 languages. Carolyn's most recent novel (published as C J Cooke) is The Nesting . the poems Hare 00:00 / 01:31 I kept you in bed with me so many nights, certain I could hold the life into you, certain that the life in you wanted to leap out, hare-like, go bobbing off into some night-field. For want of more eyes, more arms I strapped you to me while I did the dishes, cooked, typed, your little legs frogging against the deflating dune of your first home. Nested you in a car seat while I showered, dressed, and when you breastfed for hours and hours I learned how to manoeuvre the cup and book around you. Time and friends and attitudes, too. We moved breakables a height, no glass tables. Fitted locks to the kitchen cupboards, door jammers, argued about screws and pills someone left within reach. I’ll not tell you how my breath left me, how my heart stopped at your stillness in the cot, and who I became when at last you moved. There is no telling what skins of me have dropped and shed in the fears I’ve entered. The day beyond these blankets, beyond our door, is known to me now, fragile as moth-scurf, its long ears twitching, alert, white tail winking across the night-field. Yesterday, I Failed 00:00 / 02:31 I failed, and the failing was great thereof. I failed all the way to the sulphur cliffs of cynicism, then bungee-jumped. I shot a hole in one in failure. I failed and changed the course of history. I failed admirably, catastrophically, unremittingly, relentlessly, perspicaciously, deliciously, spaciously, and with the dexterity of the common impala. I did not merely stall, pause, or change my mind – I failed, like any serious attempt at oil painting in a wind machine. I failed, but the crops did not. I failed in a field, and filed as I fooled. I walked right up to failure, kicked it in the shins, and insulted its mother. I fell in love with failure. We got married and raised a family of failures. I failed to the sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle. I failed in the key of D flat. I failed my heart out, I failed until my lungs burned, my brain rattled, my skin flapped like a rag against my bones and my tongue uttered only ‘failure’... I failed, much to the regret of the management. I went scuba-diving in failure, I camped under failure, I hiked to the summit of failure, I painted the floor with superglue while failure was sleeping and when it woke up ... I laughed. I failed in several languages. I added failure on Facebook. I failed from caveman to Homo Sapiens. I failed stupendously, outlandishly, biblically, savagely, juicily, Byzantinely, heroically, intergalactically. I failed in hard copy, fax, text, email, Skype and podcast. I failed to the soundtrack of James Bond. I failed as magnesium is to water, as the Apocalypse is to a Saturday morning lie-in, as Godzilla is to the streets of Tokyo. I failed, and I failed, but at least I tried. Newborn 00:00 / 01:17 What are you like? A minute old, you’re a sky-blue candle quarried from the fire, beeswax on my belly, then a nub of warm dough and in the basket by my bed you’re a bag of ripe peaches, soap-bubble fragile, a slow-waving field fattening with wheat and at the breast you’re a zoo of verbs mewling, snuffling, pecking, wolfing, then coiling into sleep, where you’re a water-wheel churning ancestral reflections in the journeys of your face until it’s morning and you’re unleashed light, a pinking pearl, a key turning in the lock of clocked breath filling our house with hows – how did the soul arrive there? like a stitched wish or the way the wind winds itself into the sea’s receiving skin or did life find you, invite you to climb to the nib of the wick and, if so, what flame set you alight? Publishing credits Hare: 2013 National Poetry Competition anthology (The Poetry Society) Yesterday, I Failed: The Stinging Fly (Issue 13, Vol. 2) Newborn: Inroads (Seren Books) Share

Poet Colin Dardis reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Colin Dardis back next the poet Colin Dardis is a poet, editor and sound artist based in Belfast. He's been listed in the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award and Best Reviewer of Literature, Saboteur Awards 2018, and published widely in Ireland, the UK and the US. Colin co-runs Poetry NI , a multimedia poetry platform, co-edits FourXFour Poetry Journal , and co-hosts the monthly open mic night, Purely Poetry . His latest collection is The Dogs of Humanity . the poems The Unforgettable Dog 00:00 / 02:05 I told you the story of that day, remember, the one with us on the sandstone promenade, the bay’s breath hushed, just for us. And how into the day came one remarkable dog, alone, no collar, no tag, no visible owner. He held a gnarled tennis ball, tracking beside us, the request obvious. And how we marvelled at this dog running and leaping, corkscrewing backwards mid-air, to snatch the ball in his God-crafted jaws every time. Our smiles grew. And then he ran off, disappeared over the rocks and back to a home of which we would never know. I told you our story, of these few minutes. You could not remember. Knew of no dog, denied the beach, dredged out the bay. And because you could not remember, never beside me, never with some dog, then it did not happen; the story undone in one simple act of forgetting. The experience shared is the memory shared and without memory, who do we become? Perhaps you ran off too, somewhere, over the rocks, away from pools and foam; or perhaps the tide came in, unseen, to wash you clear of my life, leaving me astray, astounded, observing, remembering a lie. Stages 00:00 / 01:27 Back then, you would go through the stages: the voice box, the hair sprouts, the growth spurts; now, you just stage passing Go and pretend to hit all the required stations while collecting your pay check at the end of the month. And the thing about a Monopoly board is that it’s really a circle, and the only way out is either bankruptcy or jail. Some of us get to land on Mayfair or Park Avenue, but most sure can’t afford to stay there very long. The rent collectors are out with their long knives and the taxman is looking to take everything you inherited: from your father’s shoelaces to your mother’s good graces and charm. But I hid everything in a deposit box somewhere, left it to rust and utilised nothing of my fortune; that’s why I’m such a miserable wretch nowadays: the dregs of the dogs, down to his last stage There are no refunds, no guarantors, and no one to underwrite your screw-ups. God is coming to collect and the riches He expects won’t be found in your pockets. The Humane Animal 00:00 / 01:23 How many are dying tonight? How many tonight are listening to make sure someone else is still breathing, the dark seconds of void where neither breath nor movement exist and the other side of the bed is the unconquerable distance of a consciousness. How many can’t sleep tonight? How many are unable to lay despite their blackout curtains drawn to the world, the futility of fresh sheets and lumbar support as useless as an alarm clock for insomniacs. How many are scared tonight? How many want to burrow into the nest like the newly-hatched cuckoo and cry the loudest in order to be fed, waiting to be recognised as an imposter amongst the living and thrown out of their present. How many are unanswered tonight? We all are. We all are. We all are. Publishing credits The Unforgettable Dog: the x of y (Eyewear Publishing), now copyright of the author Stages / The Humane Animal: The Dogs of Humanity (Fly on the Wall Press) Share

Poet Mark Antony Owen reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mark Antony Owen back next the poet Syllabic poet Mark Antony Owen writes exclusively in nine original, self-created forms. His work centres on that world where the rural bleeds into the suburban: a world he calls ‘subrural’. Mark is the author of digital-only poetry project Subruria , as well as the creator, curator and publisher of online poetry journals iamb and After... the poems Tom & Jerry & me & you 00:00 / 00:57 I wish you had known your great-grandfather, my granddad, stubbed out by thirty years of smoking and lying about it. Anyway, he loved Tom & Jerry. I remember his cigarette wheeze; how he’d laugh at the pair and fold in two whenever Tom got smashed in the face. He fought in a war (Granddad, not Tom). Actually, Tom did fight a war: your great-grandfather’s name was Thomas – ‘TOM!’, as your great-grandmother reduced him. Jerry did terrible things to Tom. There are war stories of him, punching through doors to escape the memories of men he served with, men he saw killed. Yet the Tom I knew was a pussycat. Muntjac 00:00 / 00:36 A dog escaped from its yard, straying from the bounded woods, you drop like a ripened fruit – slip from your disguise of fog to reveal the awkward wedge of you, disrobed and alert. The sprung trap of your leaping; desperate kick at the wire wall that separates our worlds. You are willing me to freeze, be you, and instinctively, my muscles seize with your fear. A designated public place 00:00 / 01:03 You are in a designated public place, watching a thin stegosaurus of bunting get battered by the wind. The Jubilee beds, crowned by grey roses; the never-ending rain. This time of year there would normally be stalls, bouncy castles, young mothers wiping picnics from the faces of toddlers. Look up and you might see swifts, winding invisible maypole streamers round the shifting contrail of a jet. Today, swings unswung, slick, unclimbable frames. You are in a designated public place, yet you’ve never felt more private in your life. Come again when the bins are dizzy with wasps and the bandstand buzzes with hits you can hum – before that old gaoler winter chains the gates. Somehow a honey bee 00:00 / 00:24 Somehow a honey bee made it into the house. All the windows locked, doors shut. Found it could pass through panes with the ease of birdsong; knew no structure would bar the way to one so vital. Or had been here, all night. Publishing credits All poems: Subruria (Release Two) Tom & Jerry & me & you / Somehow a honey bee: exclusive first publication by iamb Muntjac / A designated public place: Places of Poetry Share

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