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- Seanín Hughes | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Seanín Hughes reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Seanín Hughes back next the poet Seanín was first published on Poethead and featured on the inaugural Poetry Jukebox, based at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast, in 2017. Her work has been published widely online and in print – everywhere from Banshee and The Stinging Fly to Abridged. Seanín was shortlisted for the 2018 Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and published her debut chapbook, Little Deaths , with Smithereens Press in 2019. She's currently studying literature at University of Ulster and working on her first full collection. the poems I Want You To Know That You Are Alive 00:00 / 01:43 The natural law is that sometimes, this must hurt. You will find yourself hurled headlong into a mound of salt, skin raw, inside out. And you will know, then, what it means to be the wound— what it means to learn how to breathe through it all. Know that it is a bravery to live at full capacity; fill each lung with equal measure of dark and light. Drink every cup dry. Know that nothing is ordinary, and all things are temporary— we can never outrun this bittersweet truth. But here’s the secret: we can stop, for a moment, and taste it, unafraid of the sting. It’s easier when you know it’s coming; when you lean into the fall, go limp, and let the cushion of your knowing absorb the impact. You will heal again and again, until. You will. The Long Bones 00:00 / 01:15 Bring to us your blackest dog, your tightrope mania, your voices and visions; lay them on the table lengthways. We'll measure your madness, convert it to voltage. Be still. Bite down. Listen when we tell you, we’ve come a long way from fractured femurs, cracked vertebrae. Here. This holds the chemistry to heavyweight your limbs from within; no restraint necessary. Bite down, now. Be a good girl. Slight risk of trauma to teeth or tongue while you sleep, but we promise, this will eat the pain. Yes— on waking, you may forget your name, the year, or how you came to be here— but your bones will remain intact. They’ll hold you together safely until the world comes back. The Birds Are Silent 00:00 / 00:45 & then the lights go up to reveal it all— the beat of fist-deep purple in every chest a tremolo, each knot of bone wet with blood, bodies upon bodies sharing the same wild shake, a writhe of hot molecules. We know the truth now on this godless tilted spin around the sun, dancing ourselves into frenzied circles: the end is here, and all the birds are silent. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Share
- Clarissa Aykroyd | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Clarissa Aykroyd reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Clarissa Aykroyd back next the poet Clarissa Aykroyd grew up in Victoria, Canada and now lives in London, where she works as a publisher. Her poetry has appeared in UK and international journals such as Black Bough Poetry, The Interpreter's House, The Island Review, Lighthouse, The Missing Slate, The Ofi Press Magazine and Shot Glass Journal. Her pamphlet, Island of Towers , was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2019. the poems I dream the perfect ride 00:00 / 00:36 It was raining and the cheap black gloves chafed my hands. The reins and curved neck’s crest, a wave. I blinked the rain, I was horse and river – we flowed the jump but my clumsy mouth-jag scared the horse and I had to dream sunlight to calm him. He listened with his mind, breathed, so black and sleek and slicker than a seal in the patience of the rain, the white noise of the rain, his cantering a mountain beneath me, breaking the earth, living-deep. Amrum 00:00 / 00:22 Cloud spiral. Here – pale bone of the light. Sand riddles hissing – at my feet, my neck. Rising now the rosehip moon. The sky, bitten. All flags torn. Watson on Dartmoor 00:00 / 00:53 I first saw it in sun, edged with yellow like the dragged note of a violin: and yet, and yet something just out of tune like the faintest rot beneath the sweetness. It’s not of the earth, the moor. You drive as though ascending – to hell; mist rolled in, the wet air choked me. The light walked backwards and vanished. The grey tors grinned down on us. Holmes would love this, I thought. The touch of drama. And then came the gates of Baskerville Hall. Well, you know the rest. But the moor, that space, that’s what I can’t explain. How it was not of this world. How its clouds were close enough to touch, and yet its skies were high enough to elude my faltering translation. Publishing credits I dream the perfect ride: exclusive first publication by iamb Amrum: Island of Towers (Broken Sleep Books) Watson on Dartmoor: Ink, Sweat & Tears Share
- Helen Ivory | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Helen Ivory reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Helen Ivory back next © Dave Guttridge the poet Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist whose fifth collection, published by Bloodaxe Books, is The Anatomical Venus . She edits webzine Ink Sweat and Tears , and teaches creative writing online for the UEA/WCN. Her book of mixed media poems –Hear What the Moon Told Me – was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, while her chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City appeared with SurVision. As part of Versopolis Poetry , Helen's work has been translated into Polish and Ukrainian. the poems All the Suckling Imps 00:00 / 01:32 Summon your children by their given names be wet nurse; harbour; slatternly distaff – let them suck of your virulent blood. Now issue them Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown to derange the neighbours rabbits, kittlings, polecats and rats have them spill from your skirts; from your crimson teats. * A hare on the threshold tame like a dog bright crooked cast in its lemony eye. * Basket of apples placed on the floor of a virtuous larder. A peppery grimalkin curled on the roof. A Goodwife takes to her bed body a roost of convulsions an apple a day an apple a day * A palaver of mice big as squirrels ravage the hayloft winter rises early a smother of crows draws its cloak across the pale vault of heaven. * A scabrous dog kiss cold as clay springs from the lap of its fostering bedlam to dance and dance the black dance of itself atishoo atishoo, we all fall down * Old woman old woman who lives in a shoe oh monstrous mother now what will you do? The watchers have come to unclothe your imps the prickers are here sing witchery, sing jinx Cunning If a woman dare cure without having studied, she is a witch and must die. ~ Reverends Kramer and Sprenger ~ Malleus Maleficarum (1486) 00:00 / 00:53 She comes when summoned with birth blood and earth caked to the hem of her skirts and dark little half-moons packed under broken nails. The hedgerows are her pantry: to quicken labour, there is cock-spur, balm of poppies to assuage your pain. Her senses are sharp as hoarfrost – she will bid you when to squat like a brute. And when the physician invents himself he will call at your door in the empirical light of day with his bagful of leeches and headful of planets. He will scribe the words of the Lord into your waxing belly. And when your daughter happens her crowning, he will rip off her head with forceps. Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Sorceress to Live Exodus 7:11 00:00 / 00:42 For her neighbour’s sickness was more than merely unnatural; for he sang perfectly without moving his lips. For she is intemperate in her desires and pilfers apples from the orchard; for she hitches her skirts to clamber the fence. For her womb is a wandering beast; for she is husbandless, and at candle time brazenly trades with the Devil. For she spoke razors to her brother; who has looked upon her witches’ pap and the odious suckling imp. For the corn is foul teeth. For the horse is bedlam in its stable. For the black cow and the white cow are dead. Publishing credits All poems: The Anatomical Venus (Bloodaxe Books) Share
- Angela T Carr | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Angela T Carr reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Angela T Carr back next the poet Angela T Carr is a poet, editor and creative writing facilitator. Winner of the iYeats International Poetry Competition 2019 and The Poetry Business 2018 Laureate's Prize, Angela's had work placed or shortlisted in over 40 national and international literary competitions. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The North, The Lonely Crowd, The London Magazine, Poetry Birmingham, Strix, Mslexia and elsewhere. Originally from Glasgow, Angela now lives in Dublin. the poems Girl with Child on a Swan's Wing Grave 8: Mesolithic Cemetery at Vedbaek, Denmark 00:00 / 03:24 I was a girl when my father brought me to him – my dowry, the tawny-sheened hide of a buck, twenty bright strings of the teeth of a roe – I came, the tremble of a small wild thing. I came, a creature caught – a hunger, a heart, its string the beat of the forest. Strangers stripped me, braided shells in my hair, said my sons would be warriors, a chief’s kin: And my daughters, I thought, what of them? Men killed boars to roast and feast, the night air thick with smoke, their flesh, a drum and burning stars – they writhed about his head as he took me. In time, my belly grew a boy, a fawn – he kicked and quickened, my nearly child – I hunted him across three starless nights and, blooded, fell. Women washed my corpse, wreathed me in ivory, daubed me blue – my wedding fine, a pillow. They wept as they bore us out through the grasswood huts, past the hummocks of the elder dead, to the shade of the trees, laid out where the black earth bared and the sun, a bone knife, speared the charging sea. A tithe of red ochre, blown from a bowl drifted down, clotting where the birth-tide flowed. We were put to ground in the lope of the wolf's moon, my breathless boy in the cuff of a swan's wing – flint blade at his belly – and I, ringed in teeth, all the beasts of the forest at my throat. The Truth About Figs 00:00 / 01:40 Each ripe fig has at its heart a devoured wasp: a solitary female, to pollinate the fruit's inverted blossom; she crawls in at the meeting of the bracts, the ostiole: a hole so small it rips her antennae, splits the tectonic opacity of skeletal wings; sky-bereft and undone, she nonetheless tends the fig's dark garden, its minute inflorescence – strokes stigma, seeds stamen, tucks her eggs into the styles of ovule florets – and settles into death: the enzymatic gall of her own deflowering. Sink your tongue into the burst of purple skin; mouthful of fleshy sweetness, born of a sting. Quadratic Love Song 00:00 / 01:27 So many things will sit inside a square – a book, a bell, a tooth, a cup, a bone – but who would look and think to find them there? Who’d ink their shape in light when there was none? I think about the square that is a house, a room, where footsteps creak the wooden boards – the one that’s empty of the two of us – I’d name the sound if I could find a word. Though you were never one to fit a tongue or root equations as are graphed by hand – you’d lay your shadow as your sun demands and slip through pauses tighter than a drum. My arms have learned to love the weight of air, to circle what won’t linger in a square. Publishing credits Girl with Child on a Swan's Wing: The North (No. 62) Winner of The Poetry Business 2018 Laureate’s Prize The Truth About Figs: The London Magazine Placed third in The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2016 Quadratic Love Song: The Lonely Crowd (No. 10) Share
- Fiona Sampson | wave 8 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Fiona Sampson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Fiona Sampson © Ekaterina Voskresenskaya back next the poet Leading British poet Fiona Sampson has been published in 38 languages and received a number of international awards. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Wordsworth Trust, Fiona has 29 books to her name, and was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature. She is Emeritus Professor of Poetry, University of Roehampton, has served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Trustee of the Royal Literary Fund. Other honours include the Cholmondeley Award and Hawthornden Fellowship, as well as various national Book of the Year selections. Most recently, Fiona's Come Down was awarded Wales Poetry Book of the Year 2021. Fiona has also been a broadcaster and critic, editor of Poetry Review , and acclaimed biographer of both Mary Shelley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning . the poems At Lechlade 00:00 / 01:41 The church was full of dead bees somehow a swarm had gathered high inside a transept window back and forth the bees flew through the crossing their too low wrong note like a moan the building held as if holding itself moaning as it held the condemned bees passing to and fro in air that hung sacred etcetera between pillars but could not save them bees are angels too who will save us if we let them but now they flew uselessly offering themselves brown gifts in air above our heads and dead in the house of death on pews and on the red tiles of the aisle at the welcome table the steward refused to let us call the bee man we must wait till they’re all dead she said and I’ve always wondered why she wanted to deal death to the living bees in the gold church what fury or what loss would make you kill the life-givers the velvet singers in plain sight knowing no-one quite would dare stop you knowing we are obedient and that she could close the church against the life that comes flying in by accident as words do sometimes or a truth glimpsed in the high evening air Coming Of Age 00:00 / 01:08 In the beginning the waters covered the earth but before that earth was fire surely the air made fire turn to water air made water-fire like the Northern Lights flaming green and gold and blue through your iris in the beginning was like a game of scissors paper stone and I could not decide which to trust cold fists poking from anorak sleeves or paper blowing against the chain-link fence long mornings when maybe our teachers were bored too but we were igneous then we must have been cooling already for steam covered the sky the sea the sun when it settled on the window glass and still the sea was always at the foot of our day like a beginning like coming into language like God in the hymn books setting breakers of blue fire across the horizon At Mukito For Jaan Kaplinski 00:00 / 01:13 What’s here now when I come like Jaan’s sheep like Sappho’s lamb stepping down into the valley as the bright evening light slips and pools beside a wall along the water with the gnats and water-skimmers bright and dark falling across the stepping shoulders of the careful beast so quiet so inevitable little lamb of death calling the poet home although he called you first into the clearing with the pond the long-armed well the barn swallows and in the dark the nightingales sing inexhaustibly about the forest going on forever beyond the fence rail as poets do singing in darkness up among the wooden beams of habitation while the lamb comes to lie down at the threshold comes gently to your feet Jaan I didn’t call him here Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
- Brian Bilston | wave 5 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Brian Bilston read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Brian Bilston back next the poet Brian Bilston, author of the Costa-shortlisted novel Diary of a Somebody , has been dubbed both the ‘Banksy of poetry’ and ‘Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate’. His first book, You Took the Last Bus Home featured poems he'd shared on Twitter. His poem Refugees was adapted into a picture book for children, and his new collection of poetry, Alexa, what is there to know about love? was published in early 2021. the poems How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors 00:00 / 00:50 It’s not rocket surgery. First, get all your ducks on the same page. After all, you can’t make an omelette without breaking stride. Be sure to watch what you write with a fine-tuned comb. Check and re-check until the cows turn blue. It’s as easy as falling off a piece of cake. Don’t worry about opening up a whole hill of beans: you can always burn that bridge when you come to it, if you follow where I’m coming from. Concentrate! Keep your door closed and your enemies closer. Finally, don’t take the moral high horse: if the metaphor fits, walk a mile in it. She’d Dance 00:00 / 00:55 She’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. The kitchen was her grand ballroom; her partner was a mop. She’d foxtrot among the pots and pans, she’d paso doble to the sink, and as she swept across the floor, her mind danced, too. She’d think of how he’d held her in his arms at the Locarno and the Ritz - whirling, waltzing, a world apart - in the years before the kids, and longer still before the shadow the doctor spotted on his lungs. How dazzlingly they had danced! How dizzyingly she had spun! Her neighbours saw her sometimes, shuffling bent-backed to the shops. But at home, she’d dance like no one was watching although she liked to think he was. How Much I Dislike The Daily Mail 00:00 / 01:01 I would rather eat Quavers that are six weeks’ stale, tie up the man-bun of Gareth Bale, listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail, than read one page of the Daily Mail . If I were bored in a waiting room in Perivale, on a twelve-hour trip on Network Rail, halfway through a circumnavigational sail, I would not read the Daily Mail . I would happily read the complete works of Peter Mayle, the autobiography of Dan Quayle, selected scripts from Emmerdale , if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail . Far better to stand outside in a storm of hail, be blown out to sea in a powerful gale then swallowed by a humpback whale than have to read the Daily Mail . If I were blind, and it was the only thing in Braille, I still would not read the Daily Mail . Publishing credits How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors: Diary of a Somebody (Picador) She’d Dance: Alexa, what is there to know about love? (Picador) How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail: You Took the Last Bus Home (Unbound)
- Christina Thatcher | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Christina Thatcher reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Christina Thatcher back next the poet Christina Thatcher is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She keeps busy off campus as Poetry Editor for The Cardiff Review , a tutor for the Poetry School , and a member of the Literature Wales Management Board . Her creative work has featured in over 50 literary magazines, and she's published two poetry collections with Parthian Books: More than you were and How to Carry Fire . the poems Becoming an Astronaut 00:00 / 01:25 Brother, if you want to become an astronaut you must first earn a degree in engineering, science, or mathematics. This will take four years or more. After this you can choose: become a pilot, join the military, complete a PhD or recognize you exceed the height requirement (147 centimeters) and decide this is enough to try. Astronauts must then complete technical courses in meteorology and geology. You must learn to scuba dive, to survive in the open ocean, tread water for hours. You must fly a T-38 Talon Jet, learn Russian. You must receive medical training. You must accept the principles of microgravity. You must simulate space walks at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. You must repair and operate space vehicles. You must relearn how to move objects in a frictionless world. You must trust your mentors and rehearse your chosen mission. You must embrace fear but understand, too, that you are ready: you have been training for this since the first day you picked up a needle and took yourself to the moon. Detox Passage after William Brewer 00:00 / 01:21 You find spoons everywhere: under kitchen cabinets, inside comforters, poking through boxer briefs. Yesterday, you sat on the sofa and discovered spoons had replaced stuffing. You cut open cushions, heaved out hundreds. This is a clearing process. You dream only of metal. The pastor tells you: This is normal. You must simply let go of the spoons. You accept this but the sink still fills up with silver. The shower spits sterling. Rid yourself of temptation, my son. The pastor has our father’s blue-green eyes. You listen and nod: throw out every spoon in the house. You tell the pastor you can do it. You believe you can do it. God is with you, my son. The jerks in your arms and teeth begin to go. All you had to do was rid yourself of temptation. You thank God for new strength, bow your head to pray for more good, more clean, but every time you close your eyes you see that silver curve and linger. Hail 00:00 / 00:48 If stones were being thrown it would be better, at least then there’d be mystery and motive. Who did this— leapt into our high-walled garden at 4am with an arsenal of rocks? Instead I think it is a sign: thunder, high winds, rain and then a battering on the conservatory roof, our puffy-tailed cat running from the room, up-ending sleep. Like last year’s oak which rotted and fell, claimed a car in the office parking lot just as your body was carried like a grain sack to the barn— I fear this hail is exclaiming it happened: you finally let go of your life. Publishing credits Becoming an Astronaut: North American Review Detox Passage: commended in the 2019 Battered Moons Poetry Competition Hail: exclusive first publication by iamb Share
- Yvonne Marjot | wave 18 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Yvonne Marjot read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Yvonne Marjot back next the poet Yvonne Marjot washed up on the Isle of Mull in 2001 after a varied career that took her round the world. Her poetry, inspired by her surroundings, often links mythology with the natural world. She's been published online as well as in anthologies – the most recent of which being In Flight . Her debut collection, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet , won Yvonne the 2012 Brit Writers Prize for Poetry. the poems Workshop Inspired by the exhibition at An Tobar, Tobermory, Isle of Mull (August 2021) 00:00 / 00:54 How small a space is a mind, to track and trace our place in this landscape. Old stories retold, folded and pressed; pieces sliced and plotted, conjured in gold or barely guessed. Fabric as palimpsest: stone set on stone, dense with ink, tense with meaning. Complexity bounded, a nexus of time and intent. Tree shadows, courtyards, a village traced and lined, a vision confined, a vestige, a moment: a world unfurled. A tight-woven fastness – a limitless vastness: this place, so small a space to hold a mind. Artist Eve Campbell spent lockdown creating textile art arising from memories of the landscapes and places that inspired her – unfurling the world within the walls of her home. The Smith 00:00 / 01:44 In his hands the smith is holding light, his face caught in its glow, thought bent on his creation. Focused, calm, intent, with all his skill he brings it into life. His grasp is confident, fingers deft and sure. Fluent in his clasp, the tongs coax a fine, subtle spiral from the glowing rod of iron. He wipes his brow on his arm, bends to endure the flare of the forge: hungry, its red mouth roars as air wakes the coals. The living metal twists and writhes, vivid in the shimmering heat. His wrist transmits the impulse. He hefts the weight, pours his strength into the stroke, one with the force of each blow; the hammer knows its task. His neck is a molten column, his face a mask marked by the heat, lit from within like the forge. The anvil is rooted deep in the earth, the coals are the world’s furnace, igniting the heat that hides in the planet’s core. Sinews tighten as he shifts his grip, seeing the work whole. The hot iron smells like blood, like sex. Like life. He straightens, observes, moves it gently into water. Steam tempered, the lucent surface, beaded with droplets, gleams in the light. Outlined in crimson, his hammer lies still. He stands, annealed in the fires of his own skill. Harespell 00:00 / 00:16 The hare lies so calm in her form of grass, but she trembles still in the wind from the hill. For the wind is a spell, and the spell is a word, and the word is the weight of a world. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
- Jim Newcombe | wave 12 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Jim Newcombe read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jim Newcombe back next the poet Born and raised in Derby in the heart of the English Midlands, Jim Newcombe moved to London in 2006. Since then, he's lived in every quarter of the capital – enjoying an active cultural life of concerts and visits to theatre productions, museums, galleries and taverns. Jim's writing has appeared in numerous publications, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Prize, as well as for the Pendle Prize for elegies commemorating the First World War. the poems Eight Owls for Hieronymus Bosch 00:00 / 01:43 I Between the inward and outward wave upon the shore a rhythm in feathers that wasn’t here before called into being its substance and its law. II Between the masculine and feminine, between the how of her and why of him, came one with wings who shamed the seraphim. III Out from opposing poles that brought us here with eyes of sun and moon that knew no tear a tremulous presence maintained the biosphere. IV Between one nation’s customs and the next a primal entity that left the scholars vexed denied in its descent the doctrine of each text. V In the skewed trajectories of time and space it roosted aloof and in the darkest place rotated the clock of its expressionless face. VI The wood has ears, the field has eyes, and dawn reveals the eyes in every ear of corn that scans our thoughts, their verdict full of scorn. VII It is the decoy to all you think is true, to everything you ever thought you knew; the one note in its voice asks Who-are-you? VIII Both the signal to a secret and a lure, it hears the silence of a spider on the floor and sees most clearly when it’s most obscure. The House 00:00 / 02:16 Boundaries were defined by harsh words and bolted doors, yet by night I snuck past sleeping sentinels, the dark air pregnant with unanswered prayers, the page of each wall scripted with shadow, seeming to swell with pressure, as though something passed through it. Rain tapped at each window where the gloating stars peered in like patient voyeurs, the rhubarb blanched in moonlight as the clematis loomed, scaling the house, rending foundations I could not fortify. Spiders were hatched from cracked corners. I searched for clues, listened at keyholes for conspiracies, my memory mapped with creaking floorboards that betrayed my presence. I would spend hours in prayer and soliloquy trying to subsume the guilt I had inherited. Before they could be caught or killed the spiders would scuttle back to their dark dimension, as though a gash could suck up its own blood. Somewhere in hiding was the eight-legged mother of them all, her deftly strung web a grid of carcasses; wings, shells, corrupted husks mauled and festering. I couldn’t sleep for fear of it. Sometimes I would try the cellar door: deep and forbidding, that underground lair, where steps descend into a darkness that writhed with apprehensions. I couldn’t reach the light switch to dispel my suspicions which grew like rumours of a secret sin. One day I would confront whatever was down there and return victorious (if return at all) to where another, like me, would dare to descend along the cellar’s corpse-cold walls, dank and mildewed, the treacherous gloom now bristling, bristling and black with all that is unassumed. The Moon and The Sea From A Shake of the Riddle 00:00 / 01:00 VIII The moon and the sea – are they in harmony or at war? The martial marriage of the pale satellite and the brisk lush rasp of breakers – their sickly scurf and slosh, the weft and warp of crawling froth, and the pendulum tide like a nag gone berserk in its bridle, while the blind pupil of the milky moon dumb and vacuous, dimpled with craters, barren as the soul of an atheist. Holding dominion over the toiling water, that wormy, comet-scuffed wafer, that shrunken bauble of colourless light, still separate despite its travelled distance, its clean light of clinical intellect frozen from shadow, whose oblique brilliance does not illumine, but only reflect. Publishing credits Eight Owls for Hieronymus Bosch / The Moon and The Sea: exclusive first publication by iamb The House: Eunoia Review
- Angela Dye | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Amelia Loulli reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Angela Dye back next the poet Angela Dye is a writer, editor, podcaster, teacher, reviewer, interviewer and radio broadcaster. She runs many literary events and projects in Kent, England, and has worked for various magazines and businesses creating audio content. Angela's work has appeared in several print and digital magazines. She's currently writing a novel, as well as her second poetry book. the poems The Ruby and the Con 00:00 / 00:50 Oh you patriarchs who regulate the calyx vase, who decree the mix of wine, milk and honey, who place me on the shelf to admire, to tame, to spill. Know this: I possess myself. I hug my curves tight, I vibrate myself within my jar. I unsteady the shelf. I smash the walls. My mother’s chambers no longer constrain me. I escape as viscous perfume, filling all the cracks. I, woman, am so wonderful and vast, I will fill boots, books, beds, babies, benches and brains. We shall run the Rubicon. We shall fill the Earth. And that shall not constrain us. The calyx is the female reproductive part of a flower. A calyx vase holds the mythical wine, honey and milk – different combinations of which denote women's purity and immortality. Soup 00:00 / 01:33 Before the baby sun had been hurled hot into an unmade bed of sky, before earth was made, compliant and lush, we were dreaming the world, cooking up ideas, where nothing matters – he coerced me. Just once. Asked for soup. Just soup. Soup? Yes! I want it without humans in! Just a refreshing bowl of soup for the soul. Little things matter. Soup matters. Matter's in the soup: illusion and dreams, hopes and art, his dark materials to stir the soul. Season with love. So much love. Love to be made. There are many ways to kill a man. One could harm with charm, cut, drown, crown, disown, dismember, diss, hiss, piss take, mistake, disarm, cut, drown, burn, spurn, tickle, taunt, tar and feather, strap with leather, hail, nail. But remember this … the easiest way, by far the surest method to kill a good man, once and for all, is to slowly, ever so slowly, keep ... him … alive. The Borderline 00:00 / 02:11 We live in another world now, where forgiveness is no longer a magic spell, where potions are stolen, cannot be wolfed down, and Lupin cries to the moon. He wants to be good but he has this suit ... They say six foot is the best depth. This is so the stench doesn’t arise and the body is not taken so easy – for cannibalism, or even necrophilia. But five inches in, and we have hit hard strata. At first we thought we knew what we were looking at – two bodies at most, possibly, lying atop, a third. But after a while we needed the experts, the archaeologists, the social diarists and the film crews. The first cut was the hardest: that slice through still warm sinew and the gleam of bone. And now ... I cannot go any further than this. The spade has hit the denying rock that yields no more. Please say no more. I would have met you half way – I even wanted to hide the murderer in the cupboard, feed him warm milk from these old breasts. I thought that knowing we were monsters would keep us safe, our brushes with death keeping us alive. You didn’t tell us where the bodies lay. Keen senses of smell led us, dogs baying, that spotting of the perfect lawn perturbed, the fountain in the patio off kilter and the water killing the birds, the keepsakes shining in a window display. But she is a forensic expert – she will find them all. Although destroyed and with their souls sucked out, we have set them free roaming in a street near you. There can be no forgiveness now. It isn’t even needed. A monster can’t help but devour, doing what it is made to do. All one can do is run and hide. Publishing credits The Ruby and the Con / The Borderline: exclusive first publication by iamb Soup: The Echo Chamber (Whisky and Beards) Share
- Kim Harvey | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Kim Harvey reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kim Harvey back next the poet Kim Harvey is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and Associate Editor at Palette Poetry. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her work in Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Radar, Barren Magazine, 3Elements Review, Wraparound South, Black Bough Poetry, Kissing Dynamite and elsewhere. She won The Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award 2019, and placed third in the Barren Press Poetry Contest in the same year. the poems Standard Credibility Inquiry for Displaced Plant Life 00:00 / 02:23 Are you now or have you ever been considered an invasive species? How long can you survive in the desert without water? Have you ever lied to the U.S. government? Are you lying now? You let me know if you need something to drink. To what fungi have you been exposed? Are you infectious? Do you carry contagions? Are you viable? How much attention do you require? Are you wild? Tell me why you are afraid of fire. What is your country of origin? Do you seek the shade of others? Do you plan to uproot established trees? How far back can you trace your seed? Are you a clone? Are you barren? Are you a weed? Will you reproduce incessantly and choke the perennials? Why were you harmed? When were you harmed? So you were witness to a violence. Are you damaged at the cellular level? Under what conditions will you wilt or wither? How did you escape? And where have you been since? On whom or what do you depend? Are you a hallucinogen? Are you medicinal? Are you lethal to domestic animals or people? Can you be bought and sold? Are you illegal? And the Plant Answers Back [Redacted]: (muffled, inaudible) …my sister was burned part of me died too I don’t know how I got out I will tell you I flew I was a samara on the wind I can still feel her like a phantom limb [ ] I could [ ] smell her [ ] singed skin [ ] raining down around me [ -------- ] Even now I hear her howling Light & Shadow The best way to know God is to love many things. ~ Vincent Van Gogh ~ 00:00 / 02:17 A hawk takes a snake in its talons, flies to the top of the trees, aspens I think, above the canyon. Can we agree the snake is dead now? Your words, shards from a broken vase I turn over in my hands, crush fine like millet into the fallen leaves. Stop brooding on the form of things. Think of Van Gogh. Modest blue room. Towel hung on a nail by the door, bowl and pitcher, water if you’re thirsty – absinthe green spilling in through paned glass like a sickness. Loss, a lamp lit long ago. Wasn’t it you who told me blue was the last color to be named in every language? Show me again in moonlight the hollows of you – the places where your body starts and stops. I remember you told me about Van Gogh, how he ate yellow paint to try to get the light inside him. How when he died his body was laid out alongside easels and brushes in a room full of yellow dahlias and sunflowers. How, in the end, it wasn’t just the light he was after. What he wanted was to drink turpentine, to choke on black cadmium and lead. What he really wanted was to die eating his paints, breathing them in, every color, all of them – orange, sienna, crimson, ochre, gypsum, lapis, gold, cobalt blue. Winter Solstice Incantation 00:00 / 01:00 Snapdragon petals, pink and yellow, rose hips, gold paint chips tossed over my shoulder. Hellebore and phlox, candles to burn through the long pitch-black. This spell’s being cast at last light and you’ll come back through the mirror’s crack like Lazarus from the dead tonight if I can just find the right words. Close and closed, what you were to me and a door slammed shut between this world and the next. Outside, a wild wind whips through the trees, whispering its warning—what’s done cannot be undone. Slippery as winter ice, you’re gone. Publishing credits Standard Credibility Inquiry for Displaced Plant Life: Poets Reading the News Light & Shadow: The Comstock Review (Fall/Winter 2019) Winner of the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest 2019 Winter Solstice Incantation: Black Bough Poetry Share
- Suchi Govindarajan | wave 8 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Suchi Govindarajan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Suchi Govindarajan back next the poet Writer, poet and photographer Suchi Govindarajan lives in Bengaluru, India. Her poetry has appeared in publications ranging from IceFloe Press and Cordite Poetry Review to perhappened magazine and Usawa Literary Review . Her poems have also been included in two anthologies. Poetry is Suchi's first love – fiction is her newest. the poems Of blood and war 00:00 / 02:10 The first time it happens, you are barely twelve. So much blood must mean either wound or war, s o you run to your mother and ask if you are dying. This is not death, she says, this is existence — just the basic bloodshed of being woman. There will be a celebration next week, she says with silks and jaggery, turmeric and gold. But don't be swayed by such fleeting love; the real gift is an unwritten book, stitched with rope, bound with tradition, its pages ornate and yet so sharp with rules, they only slice the fingers of women. Because you are a child, you take this gift, and you come to believe in this unquestioning dark, the flowers that will wilt, the milk that will spoil, the men and other fragile beings that will take ill. Everything, she says, that can be defiled by you. Last April you helped your aunt make mango pickles. This month, even your touch will spoil them — all that careful soaking in brine and spice — all that ageing in the home's coldest corners where you will now sit for days every month, muffling the many mouths of your pain. You cannot go to temples now, says your mother. You cannot worship the goddess I named you after. You are still a child, she says, but you are enough woman You are still a child, but you are already too much woman for anyone to bear, not the men, not the priests. They must pray to save all their gods from you. You told me once that he loved you 00:00 / 01:29 You told me once that he loved you because you were simple. I wondered then if he had seen your bookshelf or your bathroom. Did he see that small callus at the base of your palm? Does he know the weight of your gaze as you look out the window? Even on cold nights, you never cover your feet with a blanket, yet you show me these socks he bought for you to wear. They are the exact shade of purple that you hate and call violet. You told me once that he loved you even if you weren't beautiful. I wondered then if he had seen you speak about justice or poetry. Has he seen how you hesitate before you burst into laughter? Does he know you have your grandfather's hooded eyes? You told me once, under the yellow light of a station, of your surprise at his love and his existence. It was a windy night, your wild hair was held in a bun. You were wearing a sweater that billowed like a storm. You told me then you would try and love him back. I smiled, and felt a new grief in my limbs. Current affairs 00:00 / 02:05 My teacher told me my poems should be more current, should celebrate things in the news like the breaking of sports records, like the eradication of diseases, new machines in our libraries, or how a child, just six years old, sang like he was born of birds. Don't just write about flowers he said, or philosophy or these clouds of unrequited love that billow about your youth. Until we broke the mosque, I did not follow his advice. Until then, nothing in the world had touched my cocooned life: I had touched nothing in the world. But now I felt like it was my chariot wheels that crayoned dried blood into the tar. I watched my parents turn to wolves at orange moons, cheering for men with pickaxes, waving their fists at a box they could not turn off. But when I went to my teacher my words now a raw torment my pen now moving hard enough to leave round bruises on the page behind (at last, I thought, a poem he would praise) he grew narrow and cold. In a play last year, he had painted my face blue, draped me in shawls of gold and Raamar green. I had broken a bow for him. Now he whispered mantrams to protect his gods, and flung my poem back and told me to stick to love and clouds and flowers. Something that would dissolve and disperse easily. Something that would not leave marks even on the back of a page. Publishing credits Of blood and war: Usawa Literary Review (Issue 2) You told me once that he loved you / Current affairs: exclusive first publication by iamb
- Marvin Thompson | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Marvin Thompson reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Marvin Thompson back next the poet Born in Tottenham, North London, to Jamaican parents, Marvin Thompson now lives in South Wales. His debut book, Road Trip , was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2019, Marvin was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize. He's been awarded grants to have his work translated into Welsh, and was selected by Nine Arches Press in 2016 for the Primers 2 mentoring scheme. He holds an MA in Creative Writing. the poems from Severn Sisters (after Patience Agbabi's Seven Sisters) Dear Martina 00:00 / 03:36 After 19 years of lies, I guess it’s time. My little sis (your mum) was a dream girl. Your dad? That Bristol Carnival weekend I lured him into my house. You were a foetal child listening to Coltrane’s Crescent. He was a thin boy. I got him drunk on gin and as noon grew dark with rain, I locked him in my basement. You’re ape-dark was the kind of filth he’d text her come evening time and she’d laugh it off: ‘He was my strong, blue-eyed boy!’ That was the least of it. She’d sob like a weak girl, scared he was cheating. ‘You’re so childish!’ I spat as one of our spa days came to an end. She lifted her blouse, back pocked by butt ends. It seemed simple: stuff your dad in the dark for a few humid days. Let him cry like a lost child in my basement. But that was a strange time, London riots that last August. Girl, was being tied up enough for a boy who told me your mum’s bruised ribs left him buoyed? From his phone, I caused your mum pain that weekend with messages supposedly for another girl. My gut acid rose, each text sexually dark. Your mum phoned me that Saturday teatime, weeping. ‘He’s blanking me like a child.’ ‘You’re carrying a shining tiara child,’ I sobbed. ‘Don’t lose it through stress.’ This boy in my womb isn’t yours. It was the first time she’d lied to him. Then came the end when I called my sis a tree-swinging darkie from his phone. We became nihilistic girls for one, star-filled Saturday night. Loud girls with nothing to lose. Because she was big with child, I drank for two, your dad hogtied in the dark, still unsure what I’d do with him. Boy oh boy I gave him a good horse kicking at night’s end, birdsong stirring while I sang, ‘Summertime … ’ At the end, that thin boy blubbed, his face blood-dark, his snot green as thyme. You were a fatherless child. Sorry. And sorry if this girl doesn’t press send. Samantha 00:00 / 04:02 Suitcases carouselled in Pacific standard time. A Black Barbie was dropped by a pouting girl. I crouched down for it. The girl’s grin was endless, the same kind of smile I hoped for from Kai’s children. He felt more my man when he mentioned them, his jokes buoyed. But then I pictured his granddad, Aid, in the dark of a 1940s Kentucky noon where church hats were darkened by woodland shadows. My gran watched time pass through her camera’s viewfinder, the crowd buoyed. Her friends were all grinning pigtailed girls, the rope just out of shot. Aid was still a child, his burnt limbs blurred. The photo marked the start of the end for my mum’s lungs. She asked me, ‘Please put this to an end.’ I froze: her bedside lamp pushing back the dark and her yellow eyes turning me into a trembling child. She pointed to her bag. Its leather was cracked like time, the photo in a pocket made for girls to zip secrets. ‘They lynched him. He was just a boy. Call me Mamma Bundren!’ His smirk was boyish. Then tears trickled, the room’s heat endless. I gazed at the creased photo like a girl infected by its terror and its darkness. A date was scrawled: 12/7/41. I heard time grind. Mum’s face looked faint as she lay childlike: ‘This photo gave me nightmares throughout my childhood. Your gran made me date a Ugandan boy out of guilt!’ Asleep, my mum’s scent seemed beyond time like my Tewkesbury gran whose words had soft endings and a Kentucky twang that twirled round her darkroom – a place that held more magic than Kodak girls. In the airport’s hotel room I dreamt Aid’s White girlfriend (a tall, sweet 16 who fled west with her child) and my first Skype with Kai: my, ‘Sorry,’ sounded bitter and dark. Us made my heart leap and leap like a boy. In the shower, I prayed that our meeting wouldn’t be the end. In the cab, my neck pulsed in panicked time. ‘My Nikon’s my life,’ I told Kai, the shore dark, Kai’s boy and girl chasing the sun’s end. We raced the children, smiling wide as time. Leila 00:00 / 03:37 In the shadows of a Royal Gwent ward, God called time on my DNR. My once sassy inner girl sobbed with envy. Undressing at shift’s end I recalled how I’d act like a spoilt child when my wife preened for work. I’d call her, ‘Ladyboy!’ and let her grab my arms, our kisses rum dark. Most afternoons I hide in the curtained dark re-watching The Wire to kill time. Like a toffee in the mouth of a doleful boy, noise dissolves to ‘Walk on By’ sung by my girl. When I found her, her bathwater was red as childbirth, a Bloody Mary staining her life’s end. God’s cruel game began in the West End. The DKNY fitting room was dark and I was there with black jeans – a child mourning her dead Jamaican dad. A knock halted time. I opened the door to see a shy shop girl. She asked to change the bulb, her cheeks boyish. Her accent? Cape Town. Her freckles? Oh boy! Her badge said Sabrina. That night in Crouch End we laughed and sank shots. A week later, like schoolgirls, we snuggled up and watched Luther in the dark. Sunday nights were our enchanted ice-cream time. I’d watch her sleep while scenes from my childhood churned my gut. I knew I was being childish but her Cape Town accent recalled school’s skinhead boys and PW Botha – his voice the vile sound of apartheid time. When our first kiss came to its sweet, breathy end hate invaded my lungs and made the world feel dark. I tried to talk about it but I’m a reticent girl; I clammed up and Sabrina became a good-time girl who held each Bloody Mary like a newborn child. ‘It's my accent?’ she’d ask in our bedroom’s dark, ‘No!’ I’d snap and she’d run to one of her Tinder boys. We decided to elope one June weekend, our hearts cartoon bombs ticking, ticking time. During anaesthetists’ dark, empty time, the sound of Sabrina’s, ‘Walk on By’ hugs me like a child. She’s still my buoy, my girl, my wife: her voice endless. Publishing credits All poems: Primers: Volume Two (Nine Arches Press) Share
- Jemelia Moseley | wave 5 | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Hear poet Jemelia Moseley read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Jemelia Moseley back next the poet Jemelia Moseley is a primary school teacher, poet and spoken word artist from London. Her poem United was published in The Fly On The Wall Magazine in September 2020, while her poems Black , Dying to bloom and Visions of possibilities were published in The Melbourne Culture Centre. Jemelia recently appeared on Numar 17 Radio in the US alongside fellow Alien Buddha Press poets and artists. Her chapbook Love, Joy, Tears, Beers and Poetry is out now. the poems Travelling in Mind 00:00 / 01:16 My body wants to get on a plane and travel far away I want to get away from this life of pain but my mind is thinking all these thoughts in vain because I’m stuck I can’t even really get on a train if it’s not for work or an emergency but I really do need to rest my mind with urgency as my thoughts are hurting me, potentially taking control of me My body is yearning to be free free from masks and free from COVID free from restrictions free from daily predictions I’m yearning for vitamin D yearning to be by the sea my mind and body is just yearning to travel and yearning to be free Imagery of palm trees, the cool breeze COVID on freeze in the pool up to my knees handcuffs released my mind feels free The sun is blazing I feel amazing As I let the sand fall through my fingers the thought of COVID still lingers like the memories of all our lost ones' unfinished stories but we live on in their hope and glory and respect each day as a present as our love for them will never pass The sun sets, stripes of orangey-red my hearts desires have been fed, my mind is at peace and body is filled with ease I lay back on the sunbed and I embrace the tranquility Misery Loves Company 00:00 / 00:42 I am watching TV as the TV watches me I see movement but I hear no sound In my own head space, my own maze, feeling really lost and I really want to be found The comfort of misery keeps misery surrounding me, they say misery likes company yet I am so very lonely I pray for strength and that my ancestors guide me my history seems to define me the unspoken, the untold the truth and the hidden the secrets and the unforbidden all the things I did and didn’t get to love and hold holding on to the things you love, that you outgrow holding onto things that get old And it’s true what they say … peace of mind and love can never be bought or sold Hope 00:00 / 01:07 Cold chilled nights Left outside frost bites Big bears and tiny little mites They hide, hibernate, I procrastinate Work rates, relationships, money How I give, how much I take How much I need, how much I make, The world, the villages, the cities The birds, the bees, the flowers, the trees The growth, my growth Promises, broken and kept the oath I took to love, to cherish To death do us part I wish we could go back to the start It was bright, the sun, there was light There was you, there was me There was hope, there is hope, room to scope A room full of laughter and hope Where there is hope there is love And where there is love there is hope, there is truth There is you, there is me, the sun, the light Piercing through our troubling nights, our mazed minds The wind it sings we listen Our tears they glisten, our hearts are a miss Our love it is missing We yearn for yesterday Sealed with a kiss, smothered with loss The predator's caught its prey Publishing credits Travelling in Mind: exclusive first publication by iamb Misery Loves Company: Harpy Hybrid Review Hope: Love, Joy, Tears, Beers and Poetry (Alien Buddha Press)
- Georgia Hilton | iamb ~ poetry seen and heard
Poet Georgia Hilton reads three poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Georgia Hilton back next the poet Georgia Hilton is a poet and fiction writer originally from Ireland who lives now in Winchester, England. In 2018, her poem Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh was joint winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize – her debut pamphlet, I went up the lane quite cheerful , being published by Dempsey & Windle that same year. Georgia’s first collection, Swing , is also published by Dempsey & Windle. the poems Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh 00:00 / 01:26 On Raglan Road I saw you first a dishevelled man with heavy black-framed glasses. So severe you looked but you had a wound that made you beautiful. After we talked that first day, I dreamt of you. You were walking towards me very fast and purposeful with an intent that might have been mistaken for malice, had I not loved you. I abandoned caution at first. But my father gave me a great gift when he said to me, Hilda, you cannot eat words and air, so I became a doctor and married the engineer. But not before I had given you poems with your own name in them, given you my youth. Let you open the catch to a window in my mind, thinking I would fly, but you had me chained to a pedestal. I, no marble idol, just a flesh and blood woman. And you were always an awful man for the drink, you said so yourself, Patrick. Oh to think I might have been one of those sorry women who follow their husbands to the pub screaming for them to come home before they spend the rest of the housekeeping. I might be a creature made of clay, Patrick, in fact, I’m sure I am, but you have a brass neck calling yourself an angel. Cinderella 00:00 / 01:19 If I were to slip into the river, it would not be at Poor Man’s Kilkee, where teenagers and vagrants take their ease with cans of lager. Nor would it be on O’Callaghan’s Strand, where the grey silt is deep, deep and a dozen swans are on the slipway. Nor would I make a dramatic leap off Sarsfield Bridge by the boat club, where an indecisive light flickers over the martyrs of 1916. No – I would choose this stretch, just downstream of the Curraghower with views of King John’s Castle and Thomond Bridge. By day the seagulls swoop and dive, swans fight the estuary current, and you can see the hills of Clare beyond the bend of the river at the Island Field. But by night my eyes are drawn only to the water – the roiling inky black inviting me to shed my history, surrender my skin. The old stone steps are there, I would not need to climb or jump but simply descend like a debutante – keeping both shoes on. On the Naming of Convict Ships 00:00 / 00:45 It seems cruel to name a convict ship the Eleanor. Eleanor, after all, is the parson’s daughter, who smiled at you once or twice. You could no more touch her than you can touch thin air. Eliza is the girl who took your hand at the county fair. Caroline is your sister, Georgiana the grim mistress you have only glimpsed on horseback. Jane is the governess at Manor Farm. Mary is the dairyman’s daughter. Elizabeth the name you sometimes murmur in your sleep, and Isabella is someone you will never meet. Isabelle, Isabella, Bella, Belle. Publishing credits Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh: I went up the lane quite cheerful (Dempsey & Windle) Cinderella: Lunate On The Naming of Convict Ships: Swing (Dempsey & Windle) Share