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

Hear poet Gaynor Kane read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Gaynor Kane 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 Lucy Holme read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lucy Holme back next the poet Originally from Kent but now living in Cork, Ireland, Lucy Holme is a poet and mother whose poems have featured in The Liminal Review , Púca Literary Journal and Re-Side. She also has work forthcoming in Southword , Marble Poetry , Poetry Bus , Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and new online poetry journal After... . In April 2021, she was a recipient of a Munster Literature Centre Mentoring Fellowship with the poet Grace Wells, and is now studying for an MA in Creative Writing. Lucy's debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis – shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award – will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2022. the poems The Haunted Kind 00:00 / 01:29 I can tell you all I know about awakening under scratchy winter blankets in the half-light of Sóller’s horseshoe bay. A view of the promenade, a 1950s sepia vignette. Off season. Tramuntana, olive-scented. Better with fewer bodies to watch our story unfold. Nights were cold in April although the days still had their welcome pockets of sun. We couldn’t gauge the depth of one another’s heart, so we handled them gently, like rare species. Bared faults before they were revealed, pushed shadows out. One night when I awoke, I felt a presence in the room that wasn’t you. Saw a pale hand turn the knob and then retreat. You said you sensed it too. Ghosts were all around us in the verdure, on the skipping sand. You told me of your cleverest friend, about your country’s complicated past. I kept my own history vague for fear of breaking the spell. The claims we make, early in the day, I just can’t lie and these are my worst traits. Laid bare, they shift like sediment on the shore. You take the sadness, add the words, mash them into something you can use, a cleansing poultice for old wounds. Best remember who you said you were, before the ghosts gather to call you out. La Yegua 00:00 / 01:38 Brown burnished gold, silken flank shivers with sweat. She comes near to sneeze, to stomp then leaves in a kinetic blur, a muscled sketch from Duchamp, I lay my palms flat as her muzzle sniffs and strong jaw chomp-chomps. She studies me. Lashes dark and wet, angles fine as cut glass. She resists form. After all, she is so young. They shout whoa pícara! Click their tongues when she rears and fumes. The bridle constricts blood flow, breath heaves as it tightens. Expansion curtailed, power diminished. I reach for her, but she eyes me with disdain. Turns to rise on hind quarters, lope like six beasts conjoined, across the prado. Every fly that lands creates a twitch that sends her in circles, proud breast raised skywards. She refuses to be scavenged, to be bled dry. Now I know her name, Carletta, I visit each sweltering day and build a life for her. Count the summers she has been on display. We greet each other as — not quite old friends — but something close. We are of a similar temperament: enraged by things we cannot convey. We speak a different language, but I can sight-read the low simmer, her impatience with her teachers. Against the rope fence, I hold her reins, white-knuckled, a luchadora they will try, and fail to tame. Altair Shines for my Beloved New Year's Eve, 2019 00:00 / 01:23 You are above him now, an eager light, just off starboard bow. Unbodied alpha aquilae, aflame. As I, far from inky ocean sprawl, search the city sky, mapping longing and loss. Shroud me in your polished glow, Altair, so I might have courage beyond tonight, onward to dawn. This year, grief cut me off mid-flight, when I had tried so hard to soar. It snatched what I couldn’t bear to lose, gifted unexpected treasures for which I had no room. Reason had me choose what I loved the best, resolve bade me solemnly to forget the rest. But if our eyes lock through you at midnight, we’re halfway back together. So tell me, eagle eye, nestled in the aether can you make us strong again? Can you help us plot our own small constellation, far from the flare of repercussions? To reconcile, so we might burn at full intensity once more? Just as you do. Altair, light the course home for my beloved, as he navigates the dark Atlantic path. Know that I am also at sea, pacing these cold corridors. Waiting for sorrow to loosen its grip on me. Publishing credits The Haunted Kind: The Honest Ulsterman (February 2021) La Yegua / Altair Shines for my Beloved: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Jonathan Davidson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jonathan Davidson © Lee Allen back next the poet Jonathan Davidson is a writer, poet and memoirist. He has been published widely, and his most recent book is A Commonplace: Apples, Bricks & Other People’s Poems , which appeared in 2020. Jonathan has also written audio drama for the BBC, and produced touring poetry theatre shows with Bloodaxe Books. He lives in the English Midlands. the poems A Letter to Johann Joachim Quantz Do not be sentimental or in your art ~ W S Graham ~ 00:00 / 01:15 Sir, You tutored me to not expect applause, and I was not disappointed. Though it was still chilblain weather, my fingers lifted like lapping water, letting and stopping the sounds, to make – I hardly reckoned how – one of your capriccios . So they stood me – my hands hard from hauling ropes, my face weather-reddened – in a sweating corner of a silk room and pretended to listen. What forced and servant music rippled through the chambers of the recently rich and along the canals! I was a carrier – as the barge, the smack, the wherry is – of freight or ballast, and out I went into The Baltic or The German Sea. So they kept me for this purpose only, and great service did I do them all, bearing away the frightening silence. Johann Joachim Quantz (1697–1773) was a flautist, composer and teacher, remembered mostly for his book On Playing the Flute. Father 00:00 / 00:49 I walked with my invisible father out into the fields on the edge of town. But they are gone now: new roads, new names, new people. Dad, stay here for a while, I said, and I’ll go and find out what has happened to our lives. He sat on the newly installed bench. And when I returned, furnished with stories of change, I found him utterly dead, his cold eyes on the cold world closed. So many years he had lived here and then this: his roads renamed, his fields built over, his people coming into view as strangers. A Quadratic Equation 00:00 / 01:17 A dad and a daughter are solving a quadratic equation. They are seeking the value of x using the appropriate process, beginning with factorisation. A solution is proving elusive; they are outside the problem looking in at curtained windows. Upstairs a son, who’s employed in the building trade, plays guitar unaware of the mathematical impossibility of ‘equal temperament’. And a mum is in the front room working out the likelihood of character a killing character b before the end of the episode. The daughter and the son cross on the stairs. She is fractious and has been sent to bed, while the dad puts in a couple more hours, but to no avail. Whatever the value of x they shan’t know tonight. And perhaps x has no value. Or perhaps it has many values. Perhaps it is discovered in the dissonant chords that the son untangles, or in the loaded silence between character a and character b before the gun goes off, or perhaps it is simply that which cannot be expressed although it is known to exist. Publishing credits All poems: A Commonplace: Apples, Bricks & Other People’s Poems (Smith|Doorstop)

Hear poet Jinny Fisher read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jinny Fisher back next the poet Before writing poetry, Jinny Fisher was a classical violinist, a teacher, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her poems have since appeared in Lighthouse, Against the Grain , The Interpreter’s House , Under the Radar , Tears in the Fence , Prole , Ink, Sweat & Tears and Osmosis . Jinny's writing has been commended and placed in national and international competitions. She was first runner-up in The Interpreter’s House Open House Competition in 2016, as well as in Prole Laureate in 2020. Jinny also runs the Poetry Pram: taking poetry to audiences at festivals for random one-to-one readings. Her pamphlet, The Escapologist , was out in 2019. the poems Privilege 00:00 / 01:25 Aged eight, my brother walks through the cathedral school’s stone doorway. He is assigned a number, to mark with indelible ink inside his shoes. He is taught only by men who have been taught only by men. Big boys creep to the beds of shaking small boys, who wake in cold, damp sheets. Masters walk pretty boys upstairs, for personal attention, special education. * But my brother can pitch a note, so is chosen to be an apprentice chorister, learning melody and polyphony from the boys around him. Cantoris and Decani , the Cathedral choir stalls become his refuge; his friends are animal misericords under ancient polished seats. He floats to the rhythm of versicle and response, to refrains of psalms and canticles that swirl up to the fan vaulted Sanctuary ceiling. Praetorius, Tallis, Purcell—their anthems shall cradle and comfort him always. And in peace he shall both lie down and sleep. Retrofocus 00:00 / 01:32 Brownie 127: The Beach. As we skimmed the deeps, his freckled back was my boat. I felt the rise and fall of shoulder blades under my thumbs, his mouth swivelling into view as he gasped for breath. Look: a squinty grin, a cartwheel, a sandcastle – fortified against the tide. Asahi Pentax: The Shed. Dust-coated cobwebs, thick as tea towels, draped the windows. I dangled my legs from the workbench, viced the battens while he sawed, and there were so many splinters to be gouged. Look: a table – sanded and glossed, a captain’s chair, three splay-backs. Nikon F: The Studio. A windowless shed at the end of the garden. Only my friend was with him. We all knew there were cameras on tripods, banks of flash-guns, umbrellas to diffuse the glare. I imagine his camouflaged murmurs as her blouse falls to the floor. Listen: Lovely – peep from under your lids. Now – a little smile? Little Brother, Big Sister 00:00 / 00:38 At the back of Deb’s wardrobe, Dan finds the frock: pink satin frills, unicorns, fairies— soon to be sent to the charity shop. Grandma’s beads from the dressing-up box set off the shine in his wavy blond hair. His unisex trainers match Deb’s rainbow socks. Dan poses and pouts to the full-length mirror, catwalks into the kitchen with a shrill ta-da! Father’s eyes roll. He storms out, slams the door. Publishing credits Privilege / Little Brother, Big Sister: exclusive first publication by iamb Retrofocus: The Escapologist (V. Press)

Hear poet Mariam Saeed Khan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Mariam Saeed Khan back next the poet Mariam Saeed Khan is a poet, writer, journalist and digital storyteller. Her poems have appeared in Pandemonium Journal and Daily Times , and she’s given a masterclass as guest speaker on The Desi Collective (The Writers' Block Party) , as well on Virtual Camp PK. Mariam was featured on Badass.gal as part of a Young Creative Council UK project marking International Women’s Day. She also appeared alongside other international poets in read poetry ’s National Poetry Month video, ‘What does poetry mean to you?’ In December 2020, Mariam took part in Columbia University School of the Arts' Digital Storytelling Lab Program. She is currently at work on her debut collection. the poems Skyline and Sealed Envelope 00:00 / 01:19 Packed the stars in an envelope. Stamped and left it at the lamp post. Just like a message in the bottle. Unlearned all that I learnt. Waiting to relearn in the sealed envelope, of what was said and not. The symphony skyline had my Nani’s heart of her yaadein – that’s what we say to our memories in Urdu. It gives us apaniat – that she’s still here. I never got to say her my final goodbye. For it was too sudden – death is. The last of my mother’s legacy from family tree. For whatever was, is gone. The last candle to blow; like the airport’s last airplane that left without one passenger. That missed the flight and the silence of it, within the terminal. I closed my eyes. Listening to my heart beat and thinking, the souls might be on the other side, floating in the times to come. When we least expect, they might show up in our unconscious sleeping zone. Turtle and Frog 00:00 / 02:38 Look at how far you have come. From oceans, beside the chamber of passages. From hells, where the fire burnt in the forest. When all else went north; a cup of tea, biscuits, and a melody of silences in our conversation was all the solace. I referred to us as, 'Turtle and Frog'; as once, I mistakenly brought a turtle instead of a frog because the green makes it everything serene. The hand of God with the fragile times, took you along the way. He heard you praying in the drawings of hidden tales of unspoken words. Your faith kept the journey. Struggling, healing, dying and fighting to keep alive. I heard you saying in a distant miles away in a dream: 'Your trials are not stronger than you. You outlast them anyway.' Who held her home and made it alive? The Divine rhythm rewired in our lives and friendships. In the cushion of surprises and birthdays, graduations and your wedding bells. With the acceptance, to stand up front and to kick the football when is the time to do so. After all, a wasted kick is a missed chance. So why not let the turtle save that and use it later. After all, the frog jumped from one leaf to another. Looking back to see where the turtle is now. We may be circling in stories of different eras and phases; but our eyes speak, whenever we talk and communicate in unsaid times. People talk about everything except the friendships that live it up too – but as with everything, they too need water and supply of trust, love and humanity. All in all, the turtle and frog took a detour under that tree of a ground that had the auditoriums next to it. To be asked, 'Till we meet again.' For no one is one man army and there is a backstory; times and hourglass of the comforting fire that keeps the cold away. I smiled and narrated this tale of friendship and sisterhood to my niece when asked to talk about, 'Once upon a time' – and here we are still going. Snowflakes and Cotton Candy 00:00 / 01:47 The one thing that our poets have been writing since eternity? Love. A four-letter word that got a universe within. But each coating of it, looks different on an individual. The sky gets its meaning from moods of our selves; whether we know it or not, the colors changes with time; our feelings flip over like dripping sound. Sometimes it is blue, other times very whitish and red-orangish. Yet, it is what it is – a ceiling full of bulbs with snowflakes. Over a long period of distance, it keeps us alive. It doesn’t make us homeless even without any home. I stretch my hand and watch the palm lines. Wondering where’s the line of cotton candy in it? Would the life experiences all about baggage of fluffy memories that one leaves in past? I put my hand over my other hand, the small cottage that makes the sweet candies is at work. Love is what the inner thermostat of the person is. Which is why some bridges leave you; other cross you by. While the rest are stationed in the mighty mountains, with its inner calling. Now I skateboard with the walls that got no name. A pattern of ladders is a mystery. Between the valleys, there lies within, me and you. The world was asleep. And we were just getting our first snow of the season. For me, that is love. Publishing credits All poems: written exclusively for iamb

Hear poet Joe Williams read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Joe Williams back next the poet Joe Williams is a writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is The Taking Part : a pamphlet of poems on the theme of sports and games. His other work includes the pamphlet This is Virus , a sequence of erasure poems made from Boris Johnson’s letter to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the verse novella An Otley Run , shortlisted for Best Novella in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. the poems On Platform Zero 00:00 / 01:29 On platform zero, the next train departing is the 08:26 to Oblivion, calling at Emptiness, Nihilism and Existential Dread. This train has no carriages. Please mind the gap between illusion and reality. If you require assistance, stand on a chair and scream. On platform zero, a man has been waiting for the 10:44 to Scarborough for 87 days. To pass the time, he has grown a beard and memorised the names of every Secretary of State for Transport since 1919. The information screen says On time. On platform zero, the 12:15 to London King’s Cross has been replaced by the 16:22 to Inverness. The Tannoy says they apologise for any convenience. Please wait for the doors to open before boarding the train. First-class passengers are advised to go somewhere else. On platform zero, you can view the plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail and the HS2 extension, which will definitely be completed by 2048, latest, unless it is delayed by planned engineering works or llamas on the line or societal collapse or unprecedented coastal erosion. On platform zero, they are building platform minus one. In the Lounge Bar of the Comrades Club Ashington, 1984 00:00 / 00:43 The bairns play under the tables, waiting for Lisa to finish her sweep of the room that tastes of tab smoke and last year’s graft. Lisa gets to Denny, head down, checking the bingo in the Daily Star. She lifts her bucket, delivers a practised line: It’s for the miners . Denny hoys in a pound coin, bright from a nylon pocket. You can ha’ this, pet. Ah divven’t like them. Tha wus nowt wrang wi’ the nurts. When Lisa’s done working the room she takes the bairns outside, where glass from a stoved-in nearside window catches her palm, drawing blood. Glastonbury, Parts 1 & 2 00:00 / 00:55 The first time was magical, baked in psychedelic sun, a third summer of love. Sat outside the dance tent, passing smuggled spliffs, our skins scraped the parched earth to sounds curated by Massive Attack. On stage, someone broke the news: John Major had resigned. Raised the biggest cheer of the day. The second time was Biblical, rain-slapped, mud-soaked. We didn’t see the papers that compared it to the Somme. Pre-mobile, we had no means of contact over ravaged fields. I never found out why I ended up in the rescue van. Might have been something in the whizz. I waited for you for hours. Publishing credits On Platform Zero: The Poetry Supertram (Chapel FM, Writing on Air Festival 2022) In the Lounge Bar of the Comrades Club: Oluwale Now (Peepal Tree Press) Glastonbury, Parts 1 & 2: Green Fields: Sorted for poems (Maytree Press)

Hear poet Penelope Shuttle read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Penelope Shuttle Katrina Naomi back next the poet Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall, and recently published her 13th collection Lyonesse – an Observer Poetry Book of the Month – and her pamphlet Covid/Corvid , a collaboration with Alyson Hallett. Recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award, Penelope was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and The Forward Prizes for Redgrove’s Wife . She is president of the Falmouth Poetry Group, founded in 1972 by her late husband, the poet Peter Redgrove. Her radio poem set in Falmouth, Conversations on a Bench , was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2020. Penelope is a contributor to BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and is currently at work on a new collection, History of the Child. the poems one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life 00:00 / 00:39 but mild clouds hold you drawn water settling in the pail holds you the old walnut’s cracked and serviceable trunk these parched purple and white autumn cyclamen circling its gnarly foot hold you the sapling at breast height the wing that’s folded in mild clouds drawn water they bear everything for you Noah’s notes (preliminary) 00:00 / 03:12 there’s meaning in the various colours of doves the blood of a he-goat is so hot it can dissolve diamonds the spider is an aerial worm that feeds on air a drink made from the tears of a stag cures heartache bees are the very smallest of birds, born from the bodies of oxen the cat is a shadow animal, the Bible has never believed in cats the eagle will not converse with falconers but a she-wolf will take communion from a priest the blue-eyed phoenix lives on a diet of dragons hunting dogs are just as beautiful as the tallest medieval horses, the destriers, or the soul when it is first spied as some tiny thing, a maggot or a grub when the starling speaks in French, you must listen the hare may not always be a Christian the moth found on a young boy’s kimono sleeve brings sorrow hawks stare at one another without moving their eyes, this is how their young are conceived the dragonfly never stops working on the twelve volumes of his memoirs the pig takes mercy on the vineyard, and is the world’s best wet-nurse the he-wolf must be tricked into sleep, then bound with a rope made from the sound of an ant’s footfall, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird the snake is the best dollmaker you could ever wish for the elephant! he takes up so much room, he won’t tolerate the crocodile he’s so wise, how can I forbid him? the three-toed sloth is nothing but a bundle of leaves, and so is the brown-throated sloth with her iron jaw and massive clitoris the beauteous hyena is no more and no less than a Queen The lion is the strangest of messengers, with his Tsar’s face, the chakra of his tail give him your full compliance the swan bids the rain leave off with a swirl of her meekly-shaped wings the oriole is an unimportant bird but proud as a hornet the winter-sleeper ignores the moon, and the two little toads only the mouse comes in with the blessing of God reforming the calendar 00:00 / 00:54 january turns the other cheek february pulls the moon through the hole in its heart march blows such fine fanfares he’s crowned Trumpet-Major of the Trees april’s a dark horse in may the roses are great with child june wears a hairshirt of gorse july considers the lilies or glides in the longboat of light august has the gift of tongues september blames no one but herself october paints doors to war rooms red november sucks blood from the world’s wrist and december? he hides his light under a bushel Publishing credits one day you said you felt unable to bear even little things of this life / reforming the calendar: exclusive first publication by iamb Noah's notes (Preliminary): The Poetry Review (Vol. 106, No. 4)

Hear poet Claire Orchard read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Claire Orchard © Ebony Lamb back next the poet A Pākehā poet from Aotearoa New Zealand, Claire Orchard is the author of Liveability and Cold Water Cure . She's had poetry published in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Turbine | Kapohau , Sweet Mammalian , NZ Poetry Shelf and 4th Floor Journal . Claire's work was also picked for Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems in 2014 and 2016. A Hawthornden Fellowship recipient in 2016, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and was a poetry columnist for Capital Magazine from 2015 to 2021. the poems After one storm, before the next 00:00 / 01:19 Packing sandbags, hand over hand, against the crumbling bank. Some days it all dribbles away, although they say the human brain retains everything somewhere or other, if I only knew exactly where my subconscious laid it down and the noise rain makes on a corrugated iron roof when heard from beneath the covers of a warm bed is still the best sound in the world. Opening drawers, things overflow, and where to start? Chickens come home to roost but what of these mental bantams, flapping about? Sometimes, moving in the shiny eye of it, I’ll catch sight of your photograph and I’d swear you’re just some model I’ve never met, posing with a full wine glass in an interior design magazine. When I bring up advance care planning 00:00 / 01:46 Mum says oh yes, I keep changing my mind about whether or not I want to be cremated and I say Mum, once you’re gone you won’t care and we’ll just do whatever we want. I’m not talking about after you’re dead, I’m talking about when you’re still alive, about what you want us to do if you can’t speak for yourself, if you’re unconscious or can’t understand what’s going on anymore. Oh, she says. Well, I don’t want to be put in a home, that’s for sure. Unless there’s no other option. So, if the only other option is being dead, you’d rather a home? Yes, I think so. I really don’t want to be in a home but I suppose if it’s that or being dead then I’ll have to consider it. Mum, I’m talking here about when you won’t be able to consider it. Like, do you want to be kept alive if there’s a good chance you won’t wake up, and if you do, you’ll not be able to wipe your own bum or feed yourself? What if you can’t recognise people, if you can no longer hold a conversation? What if you have a massive stroke, and then you stop breathing, would you want CPR? Do you want artificial ventilation if you can’t breathe on your own? These are the sorts of things, the kinds of scenarios you need to consider and then tell us what you want us to do. I suppose so, she says doubtfully. Where duty lies 00:00 / 01:05 It seems my great-grandmother and my grandmother did not get on, even though (or perhaps in part because) one fell in love with and married the other’s son. Yet, when the time came, the younger passed on to me the elder’s Sunday School award she’d kept safe through six weeks sea voyaging and forty-odd years up and down the country on trains. A novel by Silas K. Hocking, gilt embossed, illustrated, awarded in 1899 as first prize to nine-year-old Annie Entwhistle of Albert Road Congregational Sunday School for punctual attendance and good behaviour. And indeed what more could be asked or expected? Publishing credits After one storm, before the next: Sport (No. 46) When I bring up advance care planning: Mayhem (Issue No. 9) Where duty lies: Liveability (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

Hear poet Michael Conley read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Michael Conley back next the poet Michael Conley is a writer of poetry and prose from Manchester, England. His latest pamphlet is These Are Not My Dreams And Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple , and his work has been highly commended by judges of The Forward Prizes. Michael's short fiction collection, Flare And Falter , was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, and he's a co-host of The Other: a regular literary night in Manchester. the poems Meat Sofa 00:00 / 01:06 The best way to sit on the meat sofa is naked. It warms to your particular temperature: the sirloin cushions yield like the inside of a cheek and the myoglobin stains your thighs a pleasant pink blush. The meat is beef, from massive bespoke cows, probably. Surrender to the dead hug of the meat sofa whispers the voiceover in the advert, sexily. When you move, the sound is not tired springs or groaning wood, but the welcome squelch of a knuckle rubbing a tired eyeball. In just a few days, it will have become a stinking liability, hot and juddery with maggots. The removal men will refuse to go near it. But for now it’s beautiful, undeniably beautiful; gamey, marbled, glistening on the patio. Curl up and sleep here: nobody deserves this more. At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings 00:00 / 00:51 Possibly somebody loves, or at some point has loved, this man. But it’s hard to imagine right now. It’s hard to imagine that for most of his life he hasn’t been stuck at this ninety-degree angle, arms waving, jeans sagging at the waist. He’s so angry with the railings, with the mud under his boots and especially with the teenagers who are laughing at him from the picnic benches. You could empty a whole tub of vegetable oil onto his neck and lug him out by his belt loops but he wouldn’t thank you for it. And of course you can’t ask him what he was trying to do in the first place. He doesn’t know what his pain looks like from the outside. Ekphrasis 00:00 / 01:35 It’s unlikely that this painting, entitled Self Portrait Of MEL GIBSON Throwing Away Disposable Coffee Cup [By MEL GIBSON] is actually by Mel Gibson. How would it have ended up at this car boot sale, for a start, and besides everyone knows that neither professional actors nor anybody with right-wing views are at all capable of serious artistic endeavour. (Look at George W Bush, for example, his stupid little drawings, or Johnny Depp playing guitar.) To me, it seems worth more than the £20 sticker price: the blue background is as striking and pure as the memory of the first time you visited a nicer country and woke to the wine-dark sea, in the dawn. The majority of the frame concerns a photo-realistic rendering of Mel’s arm (or whoever’s arm). With those thick fingers crushing the white polystyrene, with the blood-red sleeve rolled to the elbow, it oozes masculine sex appeal. The silver circle of the wastebasket is a Blakean sun. I intend to buy it and slice off the bottom three inches where the aforementioned title is scrawled then hang it in my office cubicle where I will pass it off to interested colleagues as entirely my own work. It really gives you a sense of what's at stake, doesn't it I'll say, cryptically, and they'll nod. Publishing credits Meat Sofa: berlin lit (issue 2) At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings: These Are Not My Dreams and Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple (Nine Pens Press) Ekphrasis: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Perry Gasteiger read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Perry Gasteiger back next the poet Originally from Michigan, USA, Moira Walsh now calls southern Germany home – her poetry finding homes in a variety of Austrian and German journals. She's the author of Earthrise , and with Wilfried Schubert, Do Try This at Home . A founding member of Kollektief Dellgart, Moira has co-translated contemporary poets such as Olja Alvir, Ken Mikolowski, Halyna Petrosaniak, Maë Schwinghammer and others. the poems brick by brick 00:00 / 01:16 as if it’s all one color. But then there’s the Lake: a rainbow of sushing and loshing and ashing and flishing and sething and hayshing Inspired by the superstack in my hometown of Sudbury, Ontario, and a freak tornado that stranded workers at the top – just before they completed it. Leftovers 00:00 / 01:18 Sweet corn – hours old, stalk to table! Oak-leaf lettuce, garlic scapes! Beet greens, basil, cucumbers! I’m sorry. On days like these nothing can squeeze down my throat except, after dark, some good cheese and a weird combination of transportation starches. two for joy 00:00 / 00:55 Small room, only the right twin bed mine, half the bookshelf, half the table and one chair so half time chair sitting I miss those tranquilisers sometimes wish I’d kept the ones they slipped in a small paper envelope for my test night at home when the ward went up in smoke someone set a bed on fire and I missed it Two weeks later the next arsonist nurses changed the sheets too soon fine ash everywhere home again for a night I missed that too If I were still delusional seeking connections at all costs I would feel responsible for incendiary absence Publishing credits brick by brick: exclusive first publication by iamb Leftovers: Natterlogue (work by Natter Bolton night performers, 2023) two for joy: Ey Up Again (Written Off Publishing)

Hear poet Nina Parmenter read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Nina Parmenter back next the poet Nina Parmenter is a poet and working mum from Wiltshire. Her debut collection, Split, Twist, Apocalypse , was published in 2022. Nina's work has appeared in journals that include Magma , Raceme , Honest Ulsterman , Obsessed with Pipework , Atrium and Ink Sweat & Tears , and has also been nominated for both The Forward Prizes and The Pushcart Prize. Nina describes herself as easy to manipulate – but only if you're a dog. the poems Blooming 00:00 / 01:09 A celandine went first, and if we had ever looked, we would have known it was a freeze-frame of a live firework, we would have expected the violence that sparked from the inside out, the heat petalling sweetly, each stamen springing a hellmouth. A rose caught, thorns spitting pop-pop-pop from the stem, the leaves crisping, and as an afterthought, the buds, like charged kisses, lipped the flames to ragwort and vetch. An oxeye daisy burst, white-hot in its eagerness. We dialled nine-nine-nine, but our words fell lifelessly away, and as day bloomed into evening time, the honeysuckle, its lashes glowing in the last light of the sun, tipped a long wink to Venus and blew like an H-bomb. Where Does Darkness Come From? 00:00 / 00:47 The bee is a soft eclipse at the heart of a clematis, the noon lighting a constellation on each cluster of her fur, and the bee suspects it is she who brings the darkness, but she knows it like the catacombs of her hive and feels no remorse. Imagine a sweetness you would die for. Imagine shunning the sun even as it brightens the space you leave behind. Imagine your honey-drunk mind willing you into the umbra. Imagine the sugar stars waking. The Conversation We Don’t Have 00:00 / 01:09 The headache, I realise, is a clenched jaw. I tense up, release, stick my tongue out, waggle it, roll my head so determinedly that a conversation falls out, pink and slippery. It has been hiding behind my uvula. Close inspection reveals that it is self-contained, self-sustaining, high fat, low sugar, terrifyingly fresh. And although my stomach aches at the meat of it, I reach out a finger. Give it a poke. It tenses. Darkens. Grows somewhat huger. Along its flank, eyes appear. It stares. Angrily, I scoop it up, and stuff it back down my throat. I relock my jaw and head out. Publishing credits Blooming: Split, Twist, Apocalypse (Indigo Dreams Publishing) Where Does Darkness Come From? / The Conversation We Don’t have: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Natalie Crick read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Natalie Crick back next the poet Studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, Natalie Crick has had poems in Stand , The Moth , Banshee , The Dark Horse , The Poetry Review and elsewhere. One of her poems was commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020, and awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition that same year. Another of Natalie's poems received a special mention by judge Ilya Kaminsky in the Poetry London Prize 2020. In 2021, Natalie was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award, and nominated for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is co-founder and poetry editor of small literary press Fragmented Voices , which is based in both Newcastle and Prague. the poems Cut 00:00 / 01:17 the lovely fairies in Sister’s room have blades on their backs and lately Lee sucks lemons for their sharps looks for wounds in snow on his morning walk with Mam fantasizes he is sliced like a pear but today the blood smells real he wipes his hands on his trackies dizzy tries to walk not run because he doesn’t want to scare and blooming like a cherry tree stumbles out there is a metallic grinding scream when Next Door ignites the hedge trimmer the winter sun pierces Lee’s eyes blue sky sawn open in that moment the sky is too big for Lee far too big and empty he wants to find the stars wants a knock on his bedroom door wants to be red for somebody Doctors and Nurses 00:00 / 01:10 Lee’s Sister is upstairs Septembering in the back bedroom where Lee sometimes eats old bread. After long days of waiting, Lee moves like an infection up stairs that smell of cigarette smoke. Sister’s shadow is a boy of five in the right light. Lee lights her smile with a tickle, breaks the pill onto the spoon’s curve and tells his patient to suck on it. She coos. This is what doves do, excited through open lips. Lee tends to Sister’s most-hurts, examines the cut on her toe and kisses it. Allows her to undress to rub salve into her cattle state. Sombre Doctor Lee, grave in gloves, checks her pulse: Miss, there’s something you should know. Girlfriend-Watch 00:00 / 01:55 Poorly Girlfriend sleeps like a parched stone. Boyfriend watches her instead of television. Boyfriend watches when light slats dangerously expose her black eyes to him. His hand is a quill; the crow feather a flutter to ease out her bad, the nib a point stroking her cheeks. Boyfriend makes up Girlfriend’s face with motes of ash from his fingers. Her face is lengthening, looking up. To Boyfriend she seems Unsafe. Undelicate. He plays love with her, plays fetch, plays harm. He likes her to suck his fingers, He likes her to smile, always. Boyfriend likes to use the biggest knife to slice Girlfriend’s strawberries, likes to see the red of them against the lap of white at her throat. Boyfriend confesses how much he loves Girlfriend to the mirror. He whispers the names of the others he loves, but can never change the channel on the remote. Boyfriend watches Girlfriend instead of television. He turns the ceiling light on and off to see just what she will do, lights up the room bright to check she is still breathing. Off and On. Publishing credits Cut: The Manchester Review (Issue 23) Doctors and Nurses: The Interpreter's House (Issue 76) Girlfriend-Watch: placed second in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020

Hear poet Ozge Lena read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ozge Lena back next the poet Özge Lena's poems have appeared in The London Magazine , Ink Sweat & Tears , Green Ink Poetry , harana poetry , Verse of April , Carmen et Error , The Phare , After... , The Selkie , Red Ogre Review and elsewhere. Her poem Celestial Body was picked for Flight of the Dragonfly Press' 2023 anthology Take Flight . Özge's poetry was shortlisted for both the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021, as well as for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023. the poems Rose Tragedy 00:00 / 01:25 Whenever I think of roses, I feel a palm of thorns down my throat. I remember you. Your last smile. I remember that June day. That we were in the garden, drinking wine the colour of the lonely rose. Deep, dangerous magenta. That you were laughing. Then wind, and a petal floated in the air before falling softly into your glass. That it reminded me of something that had thorns, something happened a long time ago, some deep thing that pricked into my belly, eating me from inside. That you took the dangerous colour into your mouth. You chewed it to make me laugh. Wet pieces on your teeth shone like jewels. That you coughed. And you choked. Dark pink foams burst out of your lips. Then the ambulance. And the funeral. At last came the calm of autumn. With me, alone in the garden. With a glass full of innocent pink. With the thorns. I think of you while spraying toxin to kill their larvae. Because once a rose blooms, they grow eating its ovary from inside. Amaranth 00:00 / 01:04 there it was all of a sudden in the middle of the city bursting out asperous clusters of extensions bleeding shamelessly onto the pale ice like punctured lungs / you are in a collapsed world / you are in a fallen city in a collapsed world / you are with the white death in a fallen city in a collapsed world / you are a hungry thing / there it was all of a sudden in the middle of the city blossoming amaranth veins of extensions bleeding deathlessly onto the pale ice like exploded hearts / you are a hungry thing running naked / you are running naked to run into the last flower / imagine the taste of the last flower / imagine the sweet poison / Last Summer Before Seasons Disappeared 00:00 / 01:25 It was the summer of star shaped ice cubes on your pink chest or between my breasts. It was the summer of bottles of blushed wine that we kept drinking from each others’ mouths in the abiding afternoons when it was forbidden to go out both by the doctors and the government. It was the summer of daily curfews, of no work. It was the summer of not knowing what to do but to love each other and to hate each other and to swim on one another’s aflame body within cerise sheets, naked all day, hungry. It was the summer of sirens, of announcements, of heat-stricken bodies collapsing in the streets. It was the summer of dust, the summer of lust when your fingers were drawing love words on my skin in a language that I didn’t know. It was the summer of your going out to buy another bottle of blush and coming back later as a funeral. It was the summer of knowing the world was going to be the same never again, that it was falling into a starry void, falling free, forever, just like me. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Daljit Nagra read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Daljit Nagra © Martin Figura back next the poet Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Daljit Nagra has pubished four collections of poetry with Faber & Faber. He has scooped the Forward Prizes for Best Individual Poem and Best First Collection, the South Bank Show Decibel Award, and the Cholmondeley Award. Daljit's writing has also been shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and twice for the T S Eliot Prize. A Poetry Book Society New Generation Poet, Daljit has had his poems published by The New Yorker , the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement . He is the inaugural poet-in-residence for Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, presenting the weekly Poetry Extra programme. Daljit serves on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and teaches at Brunel University London. the poems Letter to Professor Walcott 00:00 / 04:48 Hardly worth calling them out , the old masters. Each time a cause gains ground, should their estate become glass house to alleged misdemeanours? Their body of rhyme can be felt, it propagates its own lineage. Should we read poems from a cave, half-witted by the missing forefather? I stand before the compressed volumes of verse across my shelves: who covered their tracks, who’ll outlive their flaws? Who’d topple the marble of some national bard, or gulag their name and the chela guarding them? How many writers, the world over, are behind bars for crossing a border of taste? It seems natural to harm art and the artist. Consider Larkin whose private views were amiss, who, if akin to his father’s brown shirt, who, if published by Old Possum's who laid rats on Jews … and I’ve lost myself, and the Work is no longer the work. If influence imparts bad genes, who to weigh in the scales of my nurture? Weigh Chaucer who forced a minor into raptus? Weigh Milton mastering tongues to bate his women like a whip? Weigh Coleridge pairing the horror of Othello’s wedded stares to those of a black mastiff? Weigh Whitman and Tennyson who’d cleanse by skin? If Kipling says we’re devils, may I weigh the man of If ? How do I edit the Frost-like swamp I’ve swilled – so many poets to recycle either side of this fireplace before sweetness and light. Before I’m woke, in tune with the differentiated rainbow and its crying flames. Should I calmly cease their leasehold if they’ve abused the canonical fortress? Or ride a kangaroo court on its flood of Likes? Take down each Renaissance Man to his manhood? But I hear the poems breathe: We can’t be judged by our birth, or judge our birth as Parnassian. And you, dear Derek. Your Adam-songs for an island sparked paradise from sanderling, breadfruit. Your spade dug the manor and bones fell up. The senate columns fanfared your arrival. They donned a black male and colour was virtue. You opened my mouth and verse came out. Your advocates cleaned your mess, their arms held down the age, as though gods roamed the earth to graduate girls. As though rape were the father of art. You were 'Dutch, n____', Brit, you were my Everyman! Why take on Caliban’s revenge? Your moustache a broom wedging its stanza of nightmare – in how many Helens? Did you lust after lines inspired by whiplash, taunted by sirens for your Homeric song? Intellectual finger-jabbing seems off the mark: in the papers Korean Ko Un’s erased, and who’d fly to a terminal if it was named for a serial pervert, Pablo Neruda? I bet they hunt the dark man, Derek, in pantheon death. Haunted or wreathed – how should you be honoured at Inniskilling? Well, it seems fitting you fall in the West where you carried 'our' burden. Beside the foul spot, I’d test my love again. You are in me: I’d never lose you, if I tried. I’d begin with these, your old books, anew. Now where on my shelves are you, travelling through the old world? Where’s your dog-eared Don Juan ? 00:00 / 01:44 00:00 / 01:44 Publishing credits A Letter to Professor Walcott: Times Literary Supplement (No. 6147)