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Hear poet Holly Singlehurst read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Holly Singlehurst wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Holly Singlehurst lives and works in Cambridge, England. Her poems have appeared as part of And Other Poems , while her fiction has been featured in Banshee literary journal. Holly was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize, and commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition for Hiroshima, 1961. the poems Love song from a seaside souvenir shop 00:00 / 01:42 Hiroshima, 1961 After Yves Klein 00:00 / 00:39 On Agate Beach 00:00 / 00:40 Publishing credits Love song from a seaside souvenir shop: exclusive first publication by iamb Hiroshima, 1961: The Poetry Society – commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition On Agate Beach: exclusive first publication by iamb – a winner of The Pushcart Prize 2021

Hear poet Rowan Lyster read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rowan Lyster wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Bristol-based poet and physiotherapist-in-training Rowan Lyster is currently living with Long COVID. Her poems have been published widely: most notably, in Bath Magg , Magma , Poetry Wales and The Rialto . Rowan is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective 2022-23. Her pamphlet, We Will Be Fine , is forthcoming from Little Betty. the poems It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar 00:00 / 01:08 I am having a flare-up of brain fog. In the heat, the nurse said many patients report feeling a weighted blanket on their limbs. There is no timeline for recovery. Everything is always the hardest thing. I am having a bit of trouble with my breathing. A flare up of weighted blankets and elephants standing on my head. The nurse said sometimes your brain is cornflour mixed with water. It is important to live inside the fatigue diary. Actions causing fatigue, like completing a diary or self-blame, should be listed in the fatigue diary. The air is exhausted, a weighted blanket. Sometimes it is cornflour mixed with elephants. There is nothing new to offer here. The sofa and I resent each other. I have been referred to an app for patients and sucked all the sugar off the ibuprofen. Once again he has been pulled from a sea 00:00 / 01:03 the barnacles on the harbour wall have taken his hair and part of his scalp he is vomiting on my coat we both apologise then laugh the ocean recedes uncovers pieces of him I hadn’t noticed he is carrying my shoes for me lemon cake is arriving for his birthday the middle is full of poppy seeds people singing we are riding the dodgems when he drives straight into a metal spike it protrudes between his shoulder blades while he keeps asking me why they’ve let the signs get rusty a sound like fingers through lentils beneath us the ground is becoming thinner I stack shingles to resemble a beach it would be easier without his hand pebble-dry and cold in mine Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy 00:00 / 01:18 I suggest a fun night out, in which we will visit and destroy a series of homes. It seems proper to begin with the mansion, which, of course, we burn down. From below the ha-ha, we watch inhabitants flee in dressing gowns. Despite the flames reflected in your eyes, you lack a certain zeal. We move on to more conceptual methods: ant eggs in the curtain linings, floodlights installed outside bedroom windows, disheartening messages daubed on walls. We deal with colleagues, and then friends. You sleep with someone else’s husband; I steal a newborn and exchange it for a cabbage. Our family homes are less of a challenge than might have been expected. Through the letterbox, a manila envelope containing a warning note and new passports. At dawn, when nobody else is left, you bundle yourself into a cupboard, duct-tape your own mouth and ankles while I take a clawhammer to the fuse box, block the sink and leave the tap running, finding a little peace in the knowledge that I did everything I could to help. Publishing credits It can help to know that others are experiencing something similar: And Other Poems (November 8th 2023) Once again he has been pulled from a sea / Preoccupied by a sense that you may be unhappy: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Gaynor Kane read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Gaynor Kane wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Gaynor Kane from Belfast, Northern Ireland, came to writing late in life, having finished an Open University BA (Hons) degree with a creative writing module. She's since had poems, fiction, creative non-fiction and visual art published in journals and anthologies in the UK, Europe and the US. As well as performing at several literary events – The Belfast Book Festival, Open House Festival and Cheltenham Poetry Festival among these – Gaynor's organised, curated and hosted literary events for various other festivals. She's also judged for the North Carolina Poetry Society, and was guest sub-editor of Issue Two of The Storms: A Journal of Poetry, Prose and Visual Art . Her poetry is published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press . the poems The Lock 00:00 / 02:11 I can’t resist the challenge of working out your code. Listen to the click, click, click of teeth nipping past the pin. Listen for the tock of the clock, as the dials rotate. Listen for ticks of numbers falling in place and your combo clunk. You meet my nose with coldness and the scent of blood, newborns, and his collection of copper coins. Mother’s gold charm bracelet with clover, wishing well, clog and key. Or her grandfather’s old toolbox, a cacophony of giants: chisels, claw-hammer, hacksaw, caulk. Your colour has me thinking of boulders along the edge of Belfast Lough, where O’Neill’s red hand alighted after being cleaved and hurled from sea to land. Or mountains of fossilised rocks, stacked at the docks. Coal carted, then scooped in spade loads into sacks. You are tugboat shaped, but my thoughts go large to Arrol gantries and liners nesting within skeletal stocks, until fully formed. Rivets struck like rhythmic heartbeats. Chocks lodged in place, to stop them slipping out to sea, until waters broke and ships were birthed by tugboat midwives. Everything was monochrome, chalk, smoke, firebrick, slack. Dunchers and dungarees, grubby hands and faces at clocking-off, men’s boots still gleaming with pride. Pride passed down paternally, reflecting on shiny surfaces, until the yard was boat-less, barren, and the gates all locked. Envelope 1) a flat container, usually paper; 2) something that envelops; 3) a natural enclosing. 00:00 / 01:45 I have felt hand-cut paper, folded; held letters of the heart. shut feelings away; sealed by cardboard button & green twine, soft-stamped beeswax & gummed saliva. I’ve safeguarded policies on punishment, the Eton mess of government contracts, procedures for lubricants & movements & bills for climate conferences & parties. I have been the surface for a botched plan over lunchtime drinks; sometimes binned & other times brought into being. I’ve been a tube of long thin glass encapsulating gas, creating neon light & illuminating bars with my brightness. I have been blindness of a field covered in snow. Blue ceramic of tiles, holding the reflective mirror of a pool. I have been the hedge squaring a lawn. I’ve been the breeze buoying a dancing kite. I’ve had a window & seen the curve of the earth. I might have been a musty prickled husk of Autumn’s conker or chalky sedimentary shell, cradling yolk & albumen. In my first life I was an emperor’s invitation within unbroken pottery. Hope 00:00 / 00:37 is a pile of chalky bones, dusted off and laid in formation. Fine drill bits whirr as holes are bored and granules gathered for DNA testing. A life takes shape, a skeleton reverse read like tea leaves. Smashed skull— all the lines of a messy story— until the puzzle pieces come together and somewhere a family hear a knock at their door. Publishing credits The Lock: Venus in Pink Marble (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) Envelope / Hope: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Robin Houghton read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Robin Houghton wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Robin Houghton's fourth pamphlet, Why? And other questions was a joint winner of the 2019 Live Canon Pamphlet Competition. She's been published widely in magazines and anthologies, won and been placed in a number of competitions, and was longlisted in the 2020 National Poetry Competition. Robin is the author of A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines , and is currently working towards an MA in Poetry and Poetics at the University of York. the poems Tours of Haunted London #72: Nilsson’s Flat 00:00 / 01:48 etched glass over twin sinks & a chrome stand where they say Mama Cass laid her felted hat – getting her groove on baby after a gig or after dark it was free-fall – highballs of ice jiggling beads on necks – boogying on brandy & speed – playing zig-zag here was a black velvet couch – the one the cops dusted for dabs if the front door goes it's Harry – back from the Playboy Club with Cass gone they modernised the kitchen – it wasn't a sandwich that killed her – Rolling Stone was wrong! – fans still leave flowers in the lift shaft – this room stinks of puke and night sweats any questions? – yes you can use the loo – check out the graffiti at dawn the building shakes with the screams of Moon – cook me a steak or fuck off – just one last wild man story of many breaking Cass's tired heart again – like a scratched rumour you can just make out – can't live if living is without you he was thirty-two as well – some say a ley line was disturbed the block's coming down soon – feel how cold the plaster is Harry sold up to Pete & the couch went to auction – look look! here's Cass about to call home – cream handset off the hook – Missed 00:00 / 01:00 There are five of us in this taxi and my phone rings. The couple in front chat with the driver and my husband holds my hand. My brother is calling me from another country and he's with my mother. The driver sees my face in the rearview mirror and he knows. The plane won't wait for me and we are hours from the airport. The driver is speeding and the couple in front are chatting. My brother's voice is strange and I don't know what to say to him. My husband holds my hand and we are hours from the airport. The couple in front are whispering and the driver is speeding. My mother had asked when I'd be back but she didn't wait for me. I will write about this one day. Maybe I'll change the ending. New Cross Evensong 00:00 / 01:31 we are friends at Surrey Quays swaying like seventies buses at home time your hand holding just higher than mine shifting position with each inch of space won those inexplicable smells – moth balls, bubble gum – all of South London is in the carriage I recognise the glum unspeaking feel some comfort in it everyone in black we are now approaching a blessed silence eyes down for scrolling up for sighing let's take all the time we have idle-time all over us a train gently jilting its payload as usual let's rock along the ginger line hovercraft the old routes the Roman roads unpeeled tram tracks gone the tower blocks we hardly recognise each other now deep south through the gaps in the script old maps clocking off this is where I came to play I sing this time of day this reverie and tomorrow there will be blueprints sheets to spread for some of us skin to tattoo Publishing credits Tours of Haunted London: #72 Nilsson’s Flat: Prole (Issue 32) Missed: Why? And other questions (Live Canon) New Cross Evensong: Live Canon 2019 Poetry Prize Anthology

Hear poet Nathan Dennis read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Nathan Dennis wave 6 summer 2021 back next the poet Nathan Dennis is a playwright and poet of Floridian extraction. He is the Vintner-in-Chief of Wine Cellar Press, a poetry press dedicated to free and formal verse in equal measure. Nathan's work has appeared in The Knight's Library , Anti-Heroin Chic , The Cabinet of Heed and Serotonin. His upcoming chapbook, I Am Hades , is forthcoming from Exeter Publishing. the poems Waltz on the Adriatic 00:00 / 01:03 I’m running out of money. And the money I have, I’m burning on twelve euro Turkish Coffee. Sacking Constantinople, cup by cup, as a Deadbeat Doge seated outside myself in a composite memory of marrying The Sea, in the Drawing Room of Old Europe – where we turn our sins to museums, and make most serene our palaces of failure. My dwindling euro pays for more dwindling daylight, golden dusk that smudges off the cruelties of cold accounts: bank or historical. A sunset censor. A fuzzy shadow blanket. A halo of streetlights off the Basilica that washes our decay into the Adriatic. Venice: I weep the beauty of atonement as the stars tinker down a soft waltz on Piazza San Marco that I shuffle to in a twisting trinity of errors repeated, that somehow becomes more beautiful with each misstep. Blood Orange 00:00 / 01:23 I met a blood orange at the grocery store. I wore gloves when I picked up the blood orange. I wore gloves when I brought the blood orange home. I wore gloves when I took off my gloves. I asked the blood orange to get a test, But the blood orange said that tests were hard to come by And to trust her, because oranges are organic And I can trust organic. And the orange asked me if I had been tested, And I said no, but I wore gloves when I picked her up. So the orange said she wasn’t worried, so I shouldn’t be worried, But if I was worried, she would just peel herself. But I was very hungry. And her peel looked very clean. So I ran the blood orange under some water. And I lathered her peel until her peel relaxed. And I peeled her peel with nails clipped clean, Until the scent of citrus was screaming in my nostrils And the hemoglobin in the pith strained into my hands As rivulets, flooding the channels of my palm lines. And the death god that loomed so large in my mind Shrank so microscopic when looking at an orange unfurled, Asking me so kindly to eat. And vitamin C does a body good. Leviathan America 00:00 / 01:44 Danger! Danger! Harpoons are upon her – Us! Us! Leviathan America: Sperm whale, punctured and moored by her own spur, Bartered without care to any stranger. Danger! Leviathan America! At sea: Cannibal of Democracy. See how she grows fat: guzzling her krill Past her fill. Terror on the open sea: A fifty-foot blubber-laden danger. Stranger! Leviathan America! She: ravenous for ivory and oil, She: sells her calf to Ahab for a helm, She: stalks the seas for leaky heads of spoil. Have you seen that? A whale captain a ship? Watch the leviathan spear her own kin, Overladen with sin, she grows greater. Traitor! Leviathan America! Mutiny! Mutiny on the high sea! No barter left! She sold her sweet plunder. She sold all her oil for all her blubber. She sold her blubber for her ivory. She sold her ivory for her harpoons. She sold her harpoons for her ambergris. She sold her ambergris for drops of oil. And her ship rattles as the tempest howls, And her crew flees as the storm cleaves her bow. And all the sharks and orcas and krakens Circle the overladen cetacean With harpoons of her own perverse making. Lashing, lancing her till the chop foams red From her leaky head: weeping blood and dread Rancid failure: curdled over us – her! Hunted and drowned at our hand, our mother. Mother! Leviathan America! Publishing credits Waltz on the Adriatic: Neologism Poetry Journal (Issue 28) Blood Orange: Anti-Heroin Chic Leviathan America: Wine Cellar Press (Issue One)

Hear poet Aaron Caycedo-Kimura read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Aaron Caycedo-Kimura wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a poet, painter, and cartoonist whose poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal , Poet Lore , DMQ Review , Tule Review , Louisiana Literature , The Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. Aaron earned his MFA in creative writing from Boston University and is a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. With Ubasute , he won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. the poems Family Anthem 00:00 / 01:11 I walk into the garage from side door sunlight ELO on my Walkman my eyes dissolve the darkness to discover my parents locked in a slow-dance embrace whispering to each other like lovers but my parents aren’t lovers they’re Japanese never kiss hold hands say I love you not even to me once I asked Mom if she loved me she replied my mother and father never said it but I knew they did my parents hear my shuffle separate like guilty teenagers she escapes into the house he into the Ford opens the garage door I fumble forget what I was looking for but all afternoon replay that dissonant chord What’s Kept Alive 00:00 / 01:27 She crunches her walker into the sea of pebbles surrounding the stepping-stones, tells me, This bush with flowers is Japanese. That one is too, but different. I hover close behind, ready with an outstretched arm as if to give a blessing. Pick that large weed near the lantern — by the roots — and throw it into the pail. My father planned and planted this garden fifty years ago— hidden behind the fence of their Santa Rosa tract home— but he’s gone now. She hires a hand to rake leaves, prune branches once a month. Soon she’ll be gone. I’ll sell the house, return to Connecticut. A stranger will buy it, become caretaker of the garden, but won’t know that from their San Francisco apartment my father transported the Japanese maple, cradled in a small clay pot — the momiji now guarding the north corner— and that my mother chided him for bothering with a dying shrub. The Hardest Part 00:00 / 01:50 The fire truck siren downstairs raided the air of my mother's dreams. She'd scream in her sleep , my father told me, even after we married. More than a decade past the Second World War — for him, American concentration camps, for her, the firebombing of Tokyo — they moved into a San Francisco apartment that rented to Japs, a one-bedroom walk-up above the Post Street fire station. They painted their bathroom black — It was in style then— shelved books, unboxed a new rice cooker, watered a shrub of Japanese maple potted for their future garden. When the station got a call in the middle of the night, the rumble of the overhead door crumbled into the wreck that was once her home. Swirling lights flashed ancient trees into flames through the thin silk curtains of her eyelids. No warning, no drill, no cover. My father stilled her body, his broad hand on her shoulder or hip as they lay in the dark listening to the slowing of her breath. The hardest part of those nights , he said, was waiting— sometimes hours—for the truck and the men to come back. Publishing credits Family Anthem: DMQ Review What’s Kept Alive / The Hardest Part: Hartford Courant

Hear poet Jack B Bedell read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jack B Bedell wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Jack B Bedell is Professor of English and Co-ordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s poetry has appeared in Southern Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain and other journals. His latest collection is No Brother, This Storm . Jack was Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017 to 2019. the poems Neighbor Tones ‘All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.’ ~ John Coltrane ~ 00:00 / 01:07 Summer, Botany Lesson 00:00 / 00:43 Dusk, Meditation ‘ … like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.’ ~ Herman Melville ~ 00:00 / 00:40 Publishing credits Neighbor Tones: The Cabinet of Heed (Issue 12) Summer, Botany Lesson: L’Ephemere (Issue 7) Dusk, Meditation: One (Issue 18)

Hear poet Dave Garbutt read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Dave Garbutt wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Dave Garbutt is retired, lives in Switzerland and has been a keen birder since he was 12. He was born in North London, less than a mile from Keats’ House, and began his writing career while still at school. Recent publications to include Dave's poems range from Deronda Review and The Brown Envelope Book to BOLD! (an anthology on masculinity) and Sound and Vision . His poem Thirteen White Birds was shown at Leigh Spinners Mill in April 2023 as part of the Paper Birds exhibition. Dave's poem ripped was long-listed in The Rialto's Nature and Place 2021 competition. the poems Walk, Stand and Sit by the Hornbeam 00:00 / 01:30 Come with me into the moment the world relaxes We talk, chatting, gesticulating, not drowning. Here, the hornbeam catkins are out— wait. Stand. Sit. Still. Breathe. Watch. —Count six hundred heartbeats— A Great Tit calls, moves past, twig to twig it stops to sing— a bit early, but sunshine makes it right. Now more birds move, quiz twigs, parse branches, a Tree-creeper sings, a Dunnock from the hedge releases its ‘short unassuming warble’ my first for this woody place. Four Magpies swoop past. A Nuthatch hammers a hazelnut A Hawfinch sits and watches drops to the ground ... here is the world when humans are still— this world, without us, is the one we live in best. Water Vole 00:00 / 00:54 The first time I saw a water vole it didn’t see me, and I watched it for half an hour. I had time. I was running away from the last quarrel of my marriage, from the last quarrel of my life, into my last sunset. And this tiny whisker-twitcher, tiny grass chopper, reed wrecker, ate, looked, sniffed, groomed itself, sniffed, rested watched for sky-scares, watched for water-shrieks and for a few seconds slept. Then it slipped off its rest place, and swam, leaving me with a life still to come, and a future yet to happen. Magnol.i.am 00:00 / 01:20 Although I am but one cell budding into a line I am just as much a petal although I am spread, to wind & sun I am just as much a petal although I am creased, folded back by frost I am just as much a petal although there are bruises marking my satin white I am just as much a petal although I rest now, released, on the ground I am just as much a petal although a footprint crosses my silvery tongue I am just as much a petal although time pushes the bruises to cover me I am just as much a petal although I am dissolving to moss and leaf I am just as much a petal and tell me human with eyes and ears and hands and pen how about you? are you a petal now? or still a human? Since when are you both? Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Brigitta Hänggi

Hear poet Liz Houchin read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Liz Houchin wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Liz Houchin lives in Dublin and holds an MA in Creative Writing from its University College. Her first chapbook, Anatomy of a Honey girl , was published in 2021, and she was recently awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to support the completion of her debut collection. Liz's work has appeared in Banshee, Journal.ie, RTE, Visual Verse and several anthologies. Her poems have also been shortlisted in the Fish Poetry Prize, Bridport Prize for Poetry, and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. the poems Beauty and the Beech 00:00 / 01:22 I knew what they were saying behind handfuls of confetti under hatfuls of flowers ‘there she goes marrying a tree’ silly girl and her silent knight taciturn and towering over callow pea-green saplings ‘in a sludge brown suit in June!’ who dared speak as one vow cartwheeled down the aisle one murmured on the breeze ‘I’d say he’s some barrel of laughs’ the band played and I twirled gazing at my spotting point as they raised a mocking glass ‘let’s toast beauty and the beech!’ but the day gave way to crickets and stars my dress lay puddled on the forest floor and my ear pressed to his rippled trunk heard sparklers and peonies and pearls. It’s snowing in Omaha 00:00 / 00:31 He said, when I asked for a table inside and I tightened like a good sweater in a hot wash It’s only a sweater, he said, as I unwound it from a pair of tracksuit bottoms and pulled it in every direction away from its heart cast off 00:00 / 01:33 When we cast on, years ago, knitting our love sweater we followed our own pattern, starting with a slipknot new needles click-clacking as we found our rhythm uneven at first, our threads pulled a little tight in places —but too fine a gauge to worry about strangulation— we counted stitches in twos, like heartbeats, watching lines of plain settle smooth into our unthinking centre a u t o m a t e d l o v e l i v e s m a c h i n e d m o n o t o n y p e r f e c t p a r a l l e l p a i r But there it was: a peephole, there, in line seventeen. Who was counting after all this time? Me, I never stopped. I wonder if you had already noticed the dropped stitch, untethered, a loose loop ready to unravel us all the way and perhaps you let it drop to allow some other’s light illuminate your exit while I fumbled with a crochet hook to ladder us back up again, to make us look like new. Publishing credits Beauty and the Beech / cast off: Anatomy of a Honey girl (Southword Editions) It's snowing in Omaha: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Sarah Fletcher read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Sarah Fletcher wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Sarah Fletcher is an American-British poet whose poems have appeared in The White Review, The Rialto and Poetry London. Her most recent pamphlet, Typhoid August was published in 2018 by The Poetry Business. She is currently working on the full-length collection, PLUS ULTRA. the poems Capitulation 00:00 / 01:42 The Garden of Love’s Sleep After Messian’s Turangalila 00:00 / 02:48 The Judgment 00:00 / 01:37 Publishing credits The Judgment: The Rialto Capitulation: Typhoid August (The Poetry Business) The Garden of Love’s Sleep: The White Review (Issue 26)

Hear poet Marie Marchand read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Marie Marchand wave 20 winter 2024 back next the poet Inaugural Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, Washington State, from 2022 to 2024, Marie Marchand was nominated by iamb for The Pushcart Prize in 2024. Her poetry has appeared in Crannóg Magazine , Catamaran Literary Reader , California Quarterly and elsewhere. Marie is the author of three poetry collections – most recently Gifts to the Attentive – with her fourth, Mostly Sweet, Lovely, Human Things , due out in 2025. Marie is a graduate of Naropa University and The Iliff School of Theology, where she studied psychology, religion and peacemaking. the poems As Necessary As 00:00 / 01:05 I want to write a poem where every line counts as much as breathing. Where every word is as necessary as oxygen. Where if one stanza was removed, the whole architecture of the poem would crumble because every part needs the others that damn much. It would be a poem about what I have lost because how can I know anything else as intimately, as desperately, as that which is no longer under my fingertips yet is always on my mind—dancing like persistent ghosts, utterly vivid and concrete? These apparitions are more alive for me than this kitchen table, this paper and pen. I want to write a poem where every line counts as much as breathing. Then maybe these ghosts will feel seen and heard and I can lay what I’ve lost to rest. Dinner Party in Boston 00:00 / 00:51 Wave-remnants lap the edges of my memory. It was 30 years ago when we kissed in the ocean house on silts. The Atlantic’s wintry breaker spanked the salted wood beneath our feet like a metronome. Surrounded by water yet haunted by thirst I kissed you in the hallway and your cheeks turned to pure fire pomegranate-red the juicy tide of your body rising. Cool mist from the surf seeped in through the old home’s joints dampening the flames. We resumed mingling, talking small knowing that soon we would fall into each other’s ocean and be quenched. In Defense of Poetry as Therapeutic From the Greek therapeuein : to minister to 00:00 / 01:20 It’s true, when I’m having an asthma attack, I don’t reach for Keats or Kinnell— I take my inhaler and within minutes steadfast science rescues me. But when my heart is filled with grief, I write. When my life is shuttered by loss I go to the ancient poets to hear what they have to say. They are my lifeline. Their words get me through prod me towards something. Towards going on. Towards going on. The only thing that matters in the moment. The only thing that matters ever. Why read and write poetry if not for its curative powers inviting us to wholeness? Yes, poetry is craft. Poetry is community. But, above all, poetry is therapeutic: it ministers to. It divines understanding of the fledgling self and by showing us to ourselves, saves us from our own extinctions. Publishing credits As Necessary As / In Defense of Poetry as Therapeutic*: exclusive first publication by iamb Dinner Party in Boston: POETICS: Water – Life & Death (Bainbridge Island Press) *Nominated for The Pushcart Prize

Hear poet Helen Calcutt read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Helen Calcutt wave 2 spring 2020 back next the poet Helen Calcutt is the author of two volumes of poetry. Her first, Sudden rainfall (2014), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. Helen's second work, Unable Mother , described by Robert Peake as ‘a violent and tender grapple with our cosy notions of motherhood’, appeared in 2018. Helen's poetry, journalism and critical writing have been published widely, and she is the creator and editor of acclaimed poetry anthology Eighty-Four – published in aid of leading suicide prevention charity CALM. Her newest pamphlet will be published in 2020. the poems Pale deer, soft-footed 00:00 / 01:33 Grief is like a miracle 00:00 / 01:02 Mytilini 00:00 / 01:12 Publishing credits Pale deer, soft-footed: The London Magazine Grief is like a miracle: Wild Court (April 8th 2020) Mytilini: Sudden rainfall (Perdika Editions)

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

Hear poet Tom Bailey read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Tom Bailey wave 19 autumn 2024 back next the poet Tom Bailey, a poet from London, has had poems published in The Poetry Review , berlin lit , bath magg , Propel Magazine , Anthropocene , Under the Radar , The North , Poetry News and the Munster Literature Centre's Poems from Pandemia anthology. Recently awarded the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize , he was also one of several winners of the 2024 Guernsey International Literature Festival’s Poems on the Move Competition . His pamphlet, Please Do Not Touch or Feed the Horses , won the Poetry London Pamphlet Prize, and will be published in spring 2025. Tom currently lives in Edinburgh, and is co-editor of online poetry magazine And Other Poems . the poems Wheatfield with Crows 00:00 / 00:49 The field is on fire obviously. The horizon coughs up a mouthful of crows and the dirt track does not seem to know where it’s going. Funny, how often we are surprised by darkness, like the frontiersmen who went west for gold and found oil instead. Van Gogh once said that a row of pollard willows sometimes resembles a procession of alms-house men. Van Gogh once said The sadness will last forever. The sky is on fire also but it is a blue sort of fire, with a patch of white which is either a cloud or a moon. Poem Granada, Spain 00:00 / 00:53 Anyway frosts thaw in this spring sun, and the river comes melt-swollen down the mountain. Across the valley the plane trees hold up their hands to the light. Swallows flit and flicker in rings, and a pair of griffon vultures float their stillness in the heat. Something everywhere is surprised, and the river threads its noisy voice through the needle of itself. Somewhere a goat clitters over rocks. Somewhere a donkey brays in a field, and morning whittles itself into afternoon. All day a particular sunbeam has been searching for your face, not knowing yet that you aren’t here, that you aren’t anywhere. Please do not touch or feed the horses 00:00 / 01:40 Please do not touch or feed the horses. Please do not approach the horses or walk within five metres of their circumference. Do not try to speak to the horses or look them in the eye, and please do not attempt to befriend the horses. It is important not to interpret the facial expressions of the horses. Nor should you ascribe human meaning to the movements of the horses. Do not imagine the thoughts of the horses, or ponder the philosophical questions that the presence of said horses may or may not lead you to ponder. Please do not make use of the horses as simile, metaphor, or other such figures of speech. Please do not describe the horses in language inappropriate to their equine existence. Maybe you think you love the horses, but you must not lie in bed at night and let them fill your dreams: the sound of the horses cropping thin tufts of Timothy grass, the way their muscle-knitted flanks tense when a tractor coughs on the hill or the kissing gate swings shut. Please, friends, pass through this field. It is late. We have lost so much already. Publishing credits Wheatfield with Crows / Poem: exclusive first publication by iamb Please do not touch or feed the horses: Epoch (Vol. 70, No. 1) Author photo: © Holly Falconer

wave twelve winter 2022 Caitlin Stobie Doreen Duffy