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Hear poet Andy Breckenridge read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Andy Breckenridge back next the poet Andy Breckenridge is originally from Oban, Scotland, but now lives and works in Brighton, England, as a secondary school English teacher. He writes about self-imposed exile, place, relationships, cultural identity and memory, and his poems have been published widely in print and online journals. He's been a featured poet with Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word, and with the Northern Poet’s Society. His first poetry pamphlet The Liquid Air appeared in 2021, followed by an illustrated version in 2022. Andy's debut full collection, published in 2023, is titled The Fish Inside . the poems Tartanalia 00:00 / 01:55 I stand outside your window at night waiting for you to open the blinds and see my tartan face the whites of my eyes shot with blood lines – green irises popping see how the plain silver kilt pins jawbone my skin together in the wind see how symmetrical and intricately blocked I am – each sawtooth of green dovetails with dark blue in a precise matrix see how the straps and buckles fit so neatly through the slits in my waist – hold fast I was that night bus that snagged on departure from Glasgow Buchanan Street and unravelled en route to London Victoria to help you find your way back – now I frown at your lack of fealty and the accents of your kids and yours – while you sleep, I’ll slip sliver after sliver of tablet onto your tongue until your teeth pop like lightbulbs see my gridlines keep everything in check stretch to infinity like a spreadsheet weighing up the debits and credits (you are in the red) that’s me peering in right now, an arrow slit of borrowed moonlight that’s my breath – that’s me hanging lifeless in your wardrobe – following you in the car lurking on shortbread tins and tea towels as you scurry past gift shops at airports avoiding eye contact – weigh me Is my cloth too rich and heavy? Morning light slides past the blinds again and the first trains shake me out of the air. You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature … 00:00 / 00:45 Dizzy astride the rope clump on the swing in the Hazel Woods, you pendulum above the roots exposed on the earthy floor. Cool air wrings your eyes, adrenaline runs its fingers through your gut; the branch creaks out a rhythm like rust. You are still unable to identify a hazel or the bare bushes at the head of the loch whose silver fingers tug at your jersey where ticks hitch rides on your blood. You pluck away their bodies and legs, leave the buried mouthparts to grow out or dissolve in the flesh. Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter 00:00 / 01:21 You both always knew exactly what to do and set about your play in earnest knowing your time there was finite. Fine sand and cold February air pinched your small fingers, as you crouched, burrowed and shaped a friable cityscape of roads, tunnels, bridges, stairs and squat buildings. You never saw the low winter sun pool shadows in every dip. Or the tyre tracks beside you twist like prehistoric spines that stretched down towards the footprints and pawprints, the hieroglyphs left by birds, the careless signatures of lugworms or the blackened lines of dry seaweed marking tide lines like shed skin. Or the snow retreating to the peaks on Mull. Later, by your feet in the back of the car there are peeled off parking permits empty hula hoop packets discarded and dated. Rain flecks the shop front windows of the real town empty and holding its breath for the season. Publishing credits Tartanalia: Flights (Flight of the Dragonfly Press) You Can Take The Boy Out Of Nature ...: exclusive first publication by iamb Photograph: Ganavan Beach In Winter: The Fish Inside (Flight of the Dragonfly Press)

Hear poet Lesley Curwen read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lesley Curwen back next the poet Plymouth-based poet, broadcaster, sailor and winner of the inaugural Molecules Unlimited poetry competition , Lesley Curwen writes about loss in the natural world – loss she saw inflicted by the global capitalism she used to report on. Together with Jane R Rogers and Tahmina Maula, she collaborated on the pamphlet Invisible Continents . Lesley's solo work, Rescue Lines , was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in July 2024. A Wales Poetry Award finalist in 2022, Lesley has found homes for her poems with journals and publishers including Black Bough Poetry , Broken Sleep Books , After... , Atrium , Spelt Magazine , The Alchemy Spoon and Ice Floe Press . the poems Running free 00:00 / 00:59 rippled mane spits white beads sun gifts endless diamond flash on stippled flow sheets pulled iron taut a cloud-line shadows Plymouth slides south to Spain my boat tips and yaws I ride her like a gaucho rockinghorsebronco through seas finite but giant a cornflowerblue bling robe to cool a planet my boat and I plough through plastic, oil slicks, submarines shit, bodies, melted ice fleets of sardine, shark whale and cell-wide life in celebration, grief, what you will A parent never known 00:00 / 00:42 In the gym, mirrors meet at a dark seam where body is apprehended but face is half a line of flesh, a ghosting, nothing real. Impossible to see whose breath is misting glass. In this fashion, the unmet father/mother is present and concealed. The solid whole that lies beyond the join feels close, a step away, just missed. Faceless, the kin we lost and lose again. Ocean City 00:00 / 02:52 We are on the edge of the world. Always the draw of water’s tinselled margin, urgent roar. Tattered pigeons bleach bronze heads of mariners who left Mayflower steps flush with gold and hard tack. Spattered eyes look to ocean’s light its crooning, sweet unknown. Monuments to the infinite spivvery of seizing new worlds not new to inhabitants not worlds at all same planet, same air, same cursed seas. We are on the edge of everywhere at stone steps beyond pasty ‘n’ fudge shops decorated by a dozen plaques copperplate or fat capital. A toxic pink sprayed across the globe from here this nub and den of chancers, rogues astride their wooden barkys aching to leap over the edge. It is not the ocean’s fault. It skitters in morning sun without intent, tides swung by moon’s slide at gravity’s dictate. Blameless it sighs, waves rainbow-flashed by diesel meniscus sucking at particled air. No launches now from Mayflower steps though exploits persist. Three frigates anchored in the Sound, tankers hauling fossil juice, dark fin of nuclear sub. A multi-storied cruise ship squats the bay its orange shiplets bound for pirate shops. The ocean is not what it was. Neoprene swimmers lash arms through green soup herbed with heavy metals from dead mines fine solution of faeces from overflows swarms of plastic iotas rinsed and smashed by diurnal tides. In the dusty Minster clouds of purple fish swim sunlit glass. A creation window hurls scarlet atoms on cobalt sea. Harbourside, loud horns call. Another vessel docks in Plymouth’s endless back-and-forth. The swell licks iron ring in weathered stone, blurs a rusty edge. Publishing credits Running Free: Invisible Continents (Nine Pens Press) A parent never known / Ocean City: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Hilary Menos read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Hilary Menos back next the poet Hilary Menos won The 2010 Forward Prize for Best First Collection with Berg , and was a winner in The Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition 2019/20 with her pamphlet Human Tissue . Her second collection is Red Devon , while her most recent pamphlet is Fear of Forks . After reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, Hilary took an MA in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. She's worked as a student organiser, journalist, food reviewer, organic farmer, dramaturge and builder’s mate, is married with four sons, and now lives in France. Hilary is the editor of weekly online poetry journal, The Friday Poem . the poems Ivory Viking Queen The Lewis chessmen are a group of medieval chess pieces carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth, discovered in 1831 in the Outer Hebrides. There is some debate over their origin. 00:00 / 01:11 What has she seen, what has she seen, this sombre little Viking queen, hunched and brooding on her ivory throne, one hand to her cheek, one clutching a drinking horn. Is she mourning the battle-dead, the lost pawns, the cost of revenge, the endless cycle of harm? Beside her, the king is implacable, bearded. Her berserker is biting his shield. There is mystery, too, in her making — was she carved in the workshops of Trondheim or Jelling, or by Margret the Adroit, the best in Iceland with tusk and tooth and bone? From the cast resin face of this British Museum fridge magnet her maker winks at me. My money’s on Margret. Queen Esther’s Makeover ' ... Esther was brought also unto the king’s house, to the custody of Hegai, keeper of the women.' ~ Esther, 2:8 ~ 00:00 / 01:14 The verb form used is passive: they were gathered, they were prepared, they were made ready, and after a twelve-month beauty treatment — six months with oil of myrrh, six months with sweet perfumes (of all the Biblical oils, myrrh is top of the list) — each one was taken in to the bachelor king and would not be taken in again, unless he delighted in her and summoned her again by name. The words for ‘beauty treatment’ translate as ‘scour, polish’ (read more here about skin care in the Bible, Psalms, 104:15. Oil makes a person’s face shine. Vigorous scrubbing with ash imparts a natural glow.) But no mention of what happened to the other queen, the one who refused, who spoke back, using the active voice. Ruby Woo 00:00 / 01:43 All I ever needed to know about lipstick I learned from Emily Fox. Influencer, queen of the haul and swatch, she has fifty shades of MAC and she’s applying them, now, on her YouTube channel, working her way through the nudes, the pinks, the corals like a pedagogue, like a pro, as if she’d been gifted a Girl’s World Styling Head at birth. She slicks on Daddy’s Girl, then Sin, then Ruby Woo and I can’t stop watching, transfixed by her technique (two notches on her top lip, then four elegant strokes) and by the way she turns to camera when she’s done and smiles, and pauses. Smiles wider. Main beam! Emily taught me the power of a wet, red mouth. Now crowds of men in pubs part like the Red Sea and a dozen barmen fall over each other to serve me. O Emily, what goes on when the camera goes off? Do your cheek muscles ache? Does your fridge magnet say: ‘Lipstick is the red badge of courage’ — Man Ray? I’m more of a John Keats fan. Beauty is truth, truth, beauty. That’s all you know on earth, all you need to know. Don’t ask me what I know. I’m coming to a bar near you, coming for you. Me and Daddy’s Girl and Sin and Ruby Woo. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Róisín Ní Neachtain read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Róisín Ní Neachtain back next the poet Róisín Ní Neachtain is an autistic Irish-Scottish poet and artist now based in County Kildare, Ireland. Though mainly self-taught, she was briefly educated at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin, before studying for two years under Irish artist Gill Berry. Róisín is creator and editor of online literary and art journal Crow of Minerva , and has had her poetry featured in a number of digital publications. She's currently at work on her first collection. the poems Memory 00:00 / 01:12 I held my dreams in my palms Though they were bleeding A soft tremor against my skin Some were shallow Some like a cave Some pricked my conscience Their threads tethered to my flesh And I chewed their weights to set them free My teeth wore down I fell in a haze through our memories When a hollow sound echoed in my mouth And fell past my lips You bit my tongue and hummed The ebb of nameless laughter A cadence of sorrows Spinning a steep melody Now I am unfearful of pain A slow praise of closeness Breathing blue In midnight songs Tightening my pulse Fingers twisting in a frenzied dance To unworded lyrics My last need stilled Remembering Without Believing 00:00 / 01:21 Remembering without believing The stars appeasing Against their obsidian abyss Heat and light unseamed from dust Remembering without believing Questions pressed in psychosis And promises which feel no shame Illegible hypergraphic promises Of love and empty rooms and symbiotic existence And undivided sounds and realities And reproached pain and laughter And dissonant dreams Which lead to my repossession A petty heresy of Silence Look at this earth embedded beneath our nails Our language measured by prayers And lumen a measure of their glare Look at this skin scored by hate Their unfamiliar eye Rooted in fear All truths unchanged in time The Edge of Reason 00:00 / 01:22 A room Like a trite cage Between these four walls Where prodigal sons and daughters return And are rejoiced and bound once more A spiel read like a dead poet A bastard pain The object of such a conclusion Perhaps an accidental gale? Swept and tendering our bones Archaic songs of sorrow That lull us in their readiness Black on white Black on black White on white Letters made barely visible And nonsensical A few steps closer to the edge of reason A past and future arrested in a photograph What will happen if we awake again To see these passings going beyond that edge? To the beginnings of someplace? Someplace more of a sedentary mind A hollowed space in each Man’s chest Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Rebecca Goss read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rebecca Goss © Natalie J Watts back next the poet A poet, tutor and mentor who lives in Suffolk, Rebecca Goss is the author of four full-length poetry collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth , was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2013 – while in 2015, she was shortlisted for both the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Portico Prize for Literature. Rebecca is the 2022 winner of the Sylvia Plath Prize, and her newest collection, Latch , was published by Carcanet in 2023. the poems The Hounds 00:00 / 00:48 It’s as if something calamitous is coming. Their lament rising across fields, its claim on the dawn keeping all the birds silent. I want to know what stirs them, the force of this pack. What causes them to stand, muscled frames trembling, throats full of baleful song. I am wakeful, rapt and disrupted, their bays sonorous against glass. Should I slide the thin pane, push my upper body into emerging light let them scent out my sex, and tell them we are all afraid. O this night, this bidding, claws at the latch, pure thunder of them running, my mouth opening to the cool and agitated air. At the Party I Shadowed Susie 00:00 / 01:02 who was happy to slip away walk with me into the back field where I drank her 17-year-old wisdom could look at her hair the opposite colour of mine her blue jeans convincing myself my twelve years were not an issue both of us plucking at grasses when we got almost to the oak we ventured back to the adults neither of us missed I lost Susie in the drunken stir of my parents’ garden until night got ready to flood the party I thought I might go in search of her or the cats so went to the furthest barn and in the black that had rolled inside I saw Susie being held by Richard the boy I’d ignored because his punky clothes confused me now his left hand inside Susie’s back pocket as they sought each other’s mouths air urgent unfamiliar standing there considering myself betrayed waiting until breakfast to utter it the sudden turn of my parents’ heads curious to know what I saw my mother sensing something flicker staring at her daughter so full of heat and blood and questions Gate 00:00 / 00:27 Here she comes, hair a stream, path home, dog’s ears pricked to the latch, and I’m in the garden, pear tree spilling, day of poems behind me, hiding my stored dark, thinking I must look old and not extraordinary, her skin the truest surface wanting to kiss her as she drops her bag, turns, every atom of her near me, and I make my slight gesture, feel the quickening. Publishing credits All poems: Latch (reproduced with gratitude to Carcanet Press for its kind permission)

Hear poet Charlotte Gann read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charlotte Gann back next the poet Charlotte Gann is a writer and editor from Sussex who enjoys walking the South Downs in her spare time. Her first pamphlet was The Long Woman , which saw her shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award in 2012. Two full collections followed: Noir and The Girl Who Cried , as well as another pamphlet, Cargo . Charlotte also founded and runs online hub The Understory Conversation : a space for fellow writers to meet, talk and share in small groups and one to one. the poems The house with no door 00:00 / 00:38 The house with no door looks welcoming, with its wisteria and robins. I can see, through the kitchen window, a bowl of cherries. They’re the brightest, darkest, shiniest cherries. But that window’s shut and bolted. I move on round. I know I shouldn’t walk on flowerbeds. I keep thinking the door must be around the next corner. I’ve lost count now how many times I’ve circumnavigated. In the Classroom of Touch 00:00 / 01:36 This is how you hold a person , Mr Farnham says demonstrating. Your touch needs to be light but firm. Felt in the skin like a weight, a squeeze. No sudden movements, please. Still is best. The pupil he’s performing on closes her eyes, head slightly folded like a bird’s. She’s collapsed into his woollen front. See how my arms arc? the teacher asks his class. Hold each other like precious cargo. Never be rough. Don’t shove into the person you love. Don’t steal touch. Be clear about this: we give a hug. Thanks Lydia, back to your seat now. Giles–? The boy stares down at his feet, face pink. His worst subject. Mr Farnham waits quietly, bends his head, smiles. C’mon Giles , he says gently. The boy staggers down the ragged aisle between assorted classmates. Waits while this man opens his arms. Falls forward, hiding his face, his sobs. The teacher enfolds him carefully, whispers, You’re doing well, Giles . Calling Time 00:00 / 02:09 So I’d sit at my desk waiting and hoping and trembling before someone would say it – maybe me – A quick drink after work – and we’d go night after night, pint after pint after pint. We’d smoke sixty cigarettes, drink drink after drink starting at six when seven thirty seemed another, safe country but suddenly was upon us, then long gone and it’s more like half nine and our table a landscape of pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays after trip upon trip to the cigarette machine in the hallway and turn after turn to the bar for another round, another tray of toppling filled glasses and laughter and it still only Tuesday, say, and then the bar staff flashing the lights on and off and it must be after eleven and they’re calling a warning and stacking chairs at the other end of the narrow room and we’re the only table left and still we stay drinking and shouting until they call ‘Time’ and yank the noisy chain grille down over the bar and padlock it and turn the lights off and we grope our way blindly foghorning back up the stairs and even then not out into the night, contrite, rushing for last Tubes but into the hotel bar for residents only where the drinks are even more expensive and it’s just us two now usually and we order ‘A night cap’ then ‘One for the road’ lighting cold fags and slumping on that black-leather slidey sofa in this pot-planted environment with piano muzac playing softly and it’s hard now to keep my spirits up with you falling silent beside me so near and far away. Publishing credits The house with no door: The Lyrical Aye: Richie McCaffery Calling Time: London Grip (Summer 2022) In The Classroom of Touch: The Rialto (No. 81)

Read 45 poems from 15 emerging and established poets – and hear their authors read them too. Welcome to wave 19 of iamb. wave nineteen autumn 2024 Christopher Arksey Corinna Board Frances Boyle Julie Stevens Kerry Darbishire Laura Theis Lewis Wyn Davies Louise Longson Marc Alan Di Martino Michele Grieve Nicholas McGaughey Oormila V Prahlad Rhona Greene Suyin Du Bois Tom Bailey

Hear poet Pascale Potvin read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Pascale Potvin back next the poet Pascale Potvin, who writes as Viola Volée, has published several chapbooks – her newest, SEX, GOD, & OCD , arriving in February 2024 from Naked Cat Publishing. Thrice nominated for Best of the Net, she's also had her work put up for The Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction, as well as longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. Pascale's work has appeared in Juked , Eclectica Magazine , trampset and many others. She's Editor-in-Chief of Wrong Publishing, and writer/director of feature film, Baby Fever . the poems Down a Seized Throat 00:00 / 00:38 How can hair be healthy if it’s dead? My bloody earlobe says the most about me. A leaf falls onto the street and it hardens then softens back into a baby. Yet while summer brings old lusts, like birds for others, I never understood song; On the trail, I place a bandaid for blisters in my mouth, till the ridges of my tongue are gone. Because, what if a wasp dove into my Flavor Aid, like taste creates cult? What if it was a bird? It’d have to swim. What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD? 00:00 / 00:38 It means he closes his eyes, like umbrellas stop feeling the rain. It means that, when I wave to him, I make the grass move with the sky. And it means that, when I say hello, he’ll hear a rhyme: je te veux (my therapist said u might have a crush on me, so i need you too scared to become famous cause the people past our deaths might dissect your pages: there, they would find me folded up, up in the letters’ livers like you still tried to get me out). Museum One 00:00 / 01:03 did i ever tell you that i stopped at a museum, just a block from my house for the wifi? i couldn’t wait longer to be touched by you; teenage bodies are too fertile and we were the bodies in the god oh kiss my neck, like cutting a dandelion stem, i’ll do it, like rain water’s submissive to its leaf (i promise if one chair in the history of the world ever got turned on in a flash of unsolved natural mystery, it would be that one) like nature photography (selfie of me in a top that reminds me of u) and so what’s the point of living, or writing, i wonder? if there’s no one left to fall for? if there’s no one to seduce, in that order? i’m free, my pussy against the dirt, like it’ll never taste me again as an artefact or a grave i would’ve worn your name, gone on display Publishing credits Down a Siezed Throat / What Does It Mean When a Guy Says You Look Pretty While He’s On LSD?: exclusive first publication by iamb Museum One: excerpt originally from Fifth Wheel Press' 2022 calender (Fifth Wheel Press)

Hear poet Fidel Hogan Walsh read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Fidel Hogan Walsh back next the poet Hailing from Ireland's County Cavan, Fidel Hogan Walsh has seen her poetry appear in many journals, including Poethead , Pendanic , The Irish Times , The Storms Journal , and in the University College Dublin Archives. She's been heard reading her work on the Eat the Storms poetry podcast numerous times, and was a featured poet on A Thousand Shades of Green . Fidel's poem What Peace Feels Like made her a winner of the inaugural Enlighten Prize (with Hambly & Hambly), which she won again in 2021 with her poem for you . Her first collection, Living with Love , was published in 2020, while her second – Time , a collaboration with photographer Julie Corcoran – launched Ireland's Culture Night that same year. the poems We Are the Night Lovers (save our souls) 00:00 / 01:00 A canvas showing off on a sweeping splendorous indigo sky crowded in bright twinkling trailing stars Waning nightmares seek solace in the silver crescent of a moody moon Nocturnal shift ends on a peeking pink sunrise whisking away dreams Death itself wanted part of A river lullaby lulls sleep on a meadows lush green grass in the dark shadows of love — we are the night lovers Travel Through Time 00:00 / 01:07 We are born of water in a white mist of sea & of everlasting memory Where land & ocean touch wild wind storms sing in a whistle of waves Loud natural eerie sounds erupt from ancient callings of man & of beast On a rough morning tide with poor visibility I see you out of reach You adrift of free movement wandering aimlessly where memories have no meaning I now must travel through time to bring you back to our sacred beginnings Surreal ~ 22nd May 2024 ~ The life you know, is no longer known. 00:00 / 01:08 the mountains half in shadow & hues of deep blue they beckon only then do i whisper out your name quiet quickening echoes take you to my outstretched arms nonexistence reality were we of this world & of our time the sea we dip down to those stormy crashing dreams the end we are no more / you / me / & of now what remains deep green lush mountains & a calm sea Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Kevin Grauke read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kevin Grauke back next the poet With work in The Threepenny Review , The Southern Review , StoryQuarterly , Fiction , and Quarterly West , Kevin Grauke is the author of short story collection Shadows of Men . He's also the winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Kevin teaches at La Salle University, and lives in Philadelphia. His next collection, Bullies & Cowards , arrives in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. the poems The Secret of Tornadoes 00:00 / 01:07 Tornadoes, I knew at age four, were dragons spun to furious life from sickly spring skies. Watch meant be careful. Warning meant hide. Born in the Alley’s south, I learned this quick. Let’s make a fort in the tub! Mommy once shouted much too loudly, wrestling a mattress past the toilet. Houses could become like weeds pulled up and flung. Cradles landed in trees, sometimes still with babies. But then an older girl, already in school, told me the secret: Touch the sidewalk, honey. If it’s warm, one’s coming. A whisper—wisdom meant only for me. Honored, I stayed quiet. Pretending to tie a shoe I couldn’t yet knot, I pressed my palms to the sun-shot sidewalk, dirtying them in the unicorn dust of her hopscotch chalk. Frightened but grateful, I flew home fast to warn Mommy, my pink hands aflame with a May day’s false prophecy. Ant 00:00 / 01:00 I hope to capture this moment exactly, how the late afternoon sun on this sixth day of May is shining now on this journal page so perfectly, casting a shadow of my pen that looks like nothing if not a hummingbird darting its bill into and out of the flower of yet another attempt at something good. Soon, the sun’s gold will sink below the trees, but for now it holds steady, content to give me a little more time to try to capture its likeness. Onto the glare of this still empty page an ant wanders. Nothing more than a dark speck, it meanders about, a mobile period in search of a true sentence to end. I watch it move from here to there and there to there until it finally disappears over the edge, headed elsewhere, but not before leaving me a path to follow with the words of this very poem, now finished and named in its honor. First Lesson 00:00 / 02:06 Two houses down, a young man, a little girl, and a bicycle. Behind them, in the grass, training wheels tossed aside. Way down and far back, I feel both dad’s stooped patience and the mettle of his daughter’s courage. But what I feel most: the unspoken swirl of their fears—of spills and scrapes, of tears and pain. And it’s almost a more aching beauty, even as clumsy and raw as it is, than I, remembering my own once-tiny girl now grown, can bear on my own. I watch him, the father, so proud, how he claps and shouts while jogging alongside as close as he can manage without jostling an arm or handlebar. He sends out so much encouragement: Go! You’re doing it! Keep pedalling! When the inevitable comes, it’s no surprise. It is, after all, inevitable. The front wheel wobbles, turns too much to the left, to the right, to the left again. The end then happens so slowly—the flailing, the toppling, the falling over— almost if it were taking place in a series of stages (Duchamp’s bicycle descending the stairs) as she moves from upright to tilted to tilted still more to crashed to now splayed on the sidewalk like the insides of a dropped egg. Not unlike a hand-cranked siren from days even before my own, the two wheels spin two cries into the neighborhood silence: one the girl’s, one the father’s. Together, they braid a thin rope that each hopes the other will snatch to save the day’s grace. It swings between them, back and forth, then stops. Each is so certain they’ve let the other down. Except for the crickets, it’s silent now. She’ll learn, of course, and he will have taught her. Of this I’m sure. For now, though, failure. But in memory this will glow like treasure. Publishing credits The Secret of Tornadoes: The Minnesota Review (Issue 101) Ant: Alabama Literary Review (Vol. 32) First Lesson: Poet Lore (Vol. 118)

Read 45 poems from 15 emerging and established poets – and hear their authors read them too. Welcome to wave 10 of iamb. wave ten summer 2022 Annick Yerem Bill Sutton Elisabeth Kelly Elizabeth M Castillo Emma Kemp Gerry Stewart Jay Whittaker Ken Cockburn Kitty Donnelly Michael McGill Penelope Shuttle Richard Jeffrey Newman Ruth Taaffe Shiksha S Dheda Simon Middleton

Read 45 poems from 15 emerging and established poets – and hear their authors read them too. Welcome to wave 12 of iamb. wave twelve winter 2022 Caitlin Stobie Doreen Duffy Jenny Mitchell Jeremy Wikeley Jim Newcombe Jinny Fisher Leanne Moden Louise McStravick Ruth Wiggins Sadie Maskery Samantha DeFlitch Sue Butler Susie Campbell Thomas March Zannah Kearns

Read 45 poems from 15 emerging and established poets – and hear their authors read them too. Welcome to wave 6 of iamb. wave six summer 2021 Andy Nuttall April Yee Ben Ray Charlotte Ansell Dominic Leonard Douglas Tawn Elizabeth Langemak Kathryn Bevis Kimchi Lai Michelle Penn Monica Cure Nathan Dennis Pascale Petit Róisín Ní Neachtain Shaw Worth

wave twenty winter 2024 Daragh Fleming Dion O'Reilly Graham Clifford Jane Ayres Kevin Grauke Laura Lewis-Waters Marie Marchand Pam Thompson Polly Walshe Rachel Smith Rowan Lyster Sharon Phillips Simon Alderwick T S S Fulk Wendy Pratt

Choose a wave of poetry library/quarterly journal iamb to hear that issue's poets each read three of their own poems. poets one winter 2020 Ankh Spice Briony Collins Clarissa Aykroyd Geraldine Clarkson John McCullough K Weber Kim Harvey Lisa Kelly Mari Ellis Dunning Mariah Whelan Mark Antony Owen Mark Fiddes Matthew Haigh Natalie Ann Holborow Nigel Kent Rae Howells Rishi Dastidar Sarah Fletcher Steve Denehan Tara Skurtu two spring 2020 Aki Schilz Angela T Carr Anna Saunders Claire Tr é vien Emma Page Georgia Hilton Helen Calcutt Jack B Bedell James Roome Jo Burns Maggie Smith Mat Riches Matthew M C Smith Neil Elder Paul Brookes Reshma Ruia Sarra Culleno Scarlett Ward Bennett Scott Elder Seanín Hughes three summer 20 20 Aaron Kent Amantine Brodeur Caleb Parkin Carrie Etter Colin Dardis Eleanor Hooker Eliot North Erik Kennedy Holly Singlehurst Jorie Graham Laura Wainwright Maria Taylor Marvin Thompson Polly Atkin Ricky Ray Roy Marshall Sascha Akhtar Victoria Kennefick Vismai Rao Zelda Chappel four autumn 2020 Amelia Loulli Angela Dye Carolyn Jess-Cooke Christina Strigas Christina Thatcher Claudia Gary Elizabeth McGeown Heather Quinn Helen Ivory Jean Atkin Jo Bratten Jonaki Ray Leah Umansky Lloyd Schwartz Martin Figura Matt Merritt Melita White Mona Dash Rachael de Moravia Rennie Parker five spring 2021 Aaron Caycedo-Kimura Alan Kissane Brian Bilston Emily Blewitt Jemelia Moseley Jill Abram Joanna Nissel Katie Stockton Khalisa Rae Mariam Saeed Khan Maxine Rose Munro Nicola Heaney Pey Oh Robin Houghton Stewart Carswell six summer 2021 Andy Nuttall April Yee Ben Ray Charlotte Ansell Dominic Leonard Douglas Tawn Elizabeth Langemak Kathryn Bevis Kimchi Lai Michelle Penn Monica Cure Nathan Dennis Pascale Petit Róisín Ní Neachtain Shaw Worth seven autumn 2021 Candradasa Charlotte Knight Clare Proctor Daljit Nagra Devon Marsh Giovanna MacKenna Harula Ladd Ivor Daniel Jenny Byrne Kara Knickerbocker Peter A Samuel Tongue Sue Finch Usha Kishore Ysella Sims eight winter 2021 Beth Brooke Catrice Greer Cora Dessalines Fiona Sampson Hilary Otto JC Niala Leeanne Quinn Lucy Holme Marcelle Newbold Natalie Crick Oliver Comins Peter Scalpello Robert Harper Suchi Govindarajan Zoe Brooks nine spring 2022 Alexandra Citron Barney Ashton-Bullock Catherine Graham Charlotte Oliver Craig Smith James Giddings Jonathan Davidson Judith Kingston Kyle Potvin Liz Houchin Mark McGuinness Nóra Blascsók Olivia Dawson Rachael Clyne Radka Thea Otípková ten summer 2022 Annick Yerem Bill Sutton Elisabeth Kelly Elizabeth M Castillo Emma Kemp Gerry Stewart Jay Whittaker Ken Cockburn Kitty Donnelly Michael McGill Penelope Shuttle Richard Jeffrey Newman Ruth Taaffe Shiksha S Dheda Simon Middleton eleven autumn 2022 Charles G Lauder Jr Daniel Hinds David Butler Heidi Beck James Nixon Jan Harris Kittie Belltree Lauren Thomas Lisa Tulfer Lydia Kennaway Maggs Vibo Nichola Deane Rick Dove Sam Henley Smith Susan Fuchtman twelve winter 2022 Caitlin Stobie Doreen Duffy Jenny Mitchell Jeremy Wikeley Jim Newcombe Jinny Fisher Leanne Moden Louise McStravick Ruth Wiggins Sadie Maskery Samantha DeFlitch Sue Butler Susie Campbell Thomas March Zannah Kearns thirte en spring 2 023 fourteen s u mme r 2 023 fifteen autumn 2023 sixteen winter 2023 Anila Arshad-Mehmood Anna Milan Ben Blench Courtenay Schembri Gray Dale Booton Darren J Beaney Di Slaney Emily Cotterill James McConachie Jude Marr Mary Ford Neal Michael Conley Rachel Deering Sam J Grudgings Stephanie Clare Smith Alice Stainer Aysegul Yildirim Dave Garbutt Deborah Finding Devjani Bodepudi Ed Garvey Long Hannah Linden Ian McMillan J L M Morton Jamie Woods Jerm Curtin May Chong Ramona Herdman Valerie Bence Victoria Punch Abigail Lim Kah Yan Adam Cairns Andy Breckenridge C Daventry Dominic Weston Elisabeth Sennitt Clough Emma Lee Gaynor Kane Grace Uitterdijk Julie Easley Lesley James Luke Palmer Lynn Valentine Özge Lena Wendy Allen Alan Buckley Conor Kelly Dorian Nightingale Faye Alexandra Rose Holly Peters Isra Hassan J-T Kelly JP Seabright Jen Feroze Jenny Wong Matthew Stewart Pascale Potvin Phil Vernon Rebecca Goss Sarah Connor seventeen spring 2024 eighteen summer 2024 nineteen autumn 2024 twenty winter 2024 Carol J Forrester David Pecotić Eilín de Paor Helen Kay Ilisha Thiru Purcell Iris Anne Lewis Jonathan Humble Lesley Curwen Margaret Dennehy Nina Parmenter Sarah Holland Steve Smart Sue Spiers Thomas McColl Tracey Rhys A R Williams Deborah Harvey Hilary Menos Isabelle Kenyon Julieanne Larick Liam Bates Mims Sully Nicole Tallman Niki Strange Phillip Crymble Rachel Carney Sinéad Griffin Thomas Zimmerman Warrick Wynne Yvonne Marjot Christopher Arksey Corinna Board Frances Boyle Julie Stevens Kerry Darbishire Laura Theis Lewis Wyn Davies Louise Longson Marc Alan Di Martino Michele Grieve Nicholas McGaughey Oormila V Prahlad Rhona Greene Suyin Du Bois Tom Bailey Daragh Fleming Dion O'Reilly Graham Clifford Jane Ayres Kevin Grauke Laura Lewis-Waters Marie Marchand Pam Thompson Polly Walshe Rachel Smith Rowan Lyster Sharon Phillips Simon Alderwick T S S Fulk Wendy Pratt twenty-one spring 2025 Andrea Small Bob Perkins Fred Schmalz Gillian Craig Jane Robinson Joe Williams Kelly Davis Maggie Mackay Marie Little Mark Carson Moira Walsh Perry Gasteiger Robin Helweg-Larsen S Reeson Theresa Donnelly twenty-two summer 2025 Carl Alexandersson Charlotte Gann Fidel Hogan Walsh J A Lenton Julian Bishop Kate Jenkinson Katrina Naomi Kerry Trautman Loic Ekinga Mary Mulholland Patricia M Osborne Rishika Williams Samantha Terrell Sarah James Wren Wood