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Oormila V Prahlad back next the poet Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian poet, artist and improvisational pianist. Her poetry and art have appeared in journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review , Black Bough Poetry and Bracken Magazine . As well as being nominated for The Pushcart Prize, she's had work put forward on several occasions for Best of the Net. Author of Patchwork Fugue and A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys , Oormila lives and works in Sydney, on the traditional lands of the Cammeraygal. the poems Dirge in June 00:00 / 00:47 A lone tree wilts in the solstice night— a ripple in blue pashmina. Slow denudation— its trunk is a withering cross sowing moth wings in the night. All around the periphery of the dark hours frost-eaten buds decay, a carpet of papillae strewn on purl-furrowed soil. There is no mercy in the frigid sky. It descends in a shroud of clouds. Myrrh numbs the pain of bruised torsos, tortured limbs shivering in winter’s Golgotha. Padma mudra 00:00 / 01:09 The boy on the marshland is a pious lotus a helix of petals unsullied by the murk of mud. He lies awake at night in a hammock of moon— breath sustained by the thin gruel lining the stalk of his belly. His fingers moisten cotton wicks. Oil hisses into blue-eyed flames as primroses quiver in prayer. The boy knows that his salvation lies in the power of the syllable— he captures cold cursive in chalk on slate forging words forming phrases raising a bridge over the quagmire one kernel of knowledge at a time. An indigo god smiles, bamboo flute in hand glowing from an igneous wall. They will converse—boy and deity and alter what seems to be hewn in stone. Padma mudra is a hand gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism that resembles an opening lotus. It symbolises the journey from darkness to light. Maiasaura 00:00 / 00:37 I know her in her unravelling— her kaolin scales ground to dust scattering upon a tongue of breeze. There are lessons I learn early on— that I must grow a pellicle over my skin to heal the penury of touch. Frenzied murmurations mimic the shape of her armored heart— love is a severed appendage the shadow of a fleeing gecko a clot of cold blood throbbing in the dark. Maiasaura means 'Good mother lizard' Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Sadie Maskery back next the poet Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea. She's had her poetry published in numerous journals – among them, Fevers of the Mind , The Selkie , Green Ink Poetry , Crow and Cross Keys , Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Burnt Breakfast Magazine . Her chapbook Push was published by Erbacce Press, while her debut collection, Shouting at Crows was published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. the poems Beginnings 00:00 / 02:42 The first time we meet the shock is there but small, a pause in the celestial clock; a tick of time suspended, potentiality acknowledged. My heart refinds its beat. Life moves on. In quiet moments I find myself replaying the curve of shadows under your eyes and I wonder at your weariness. Another day, a touch of fingers on my shoulder and the heat flows, how can you caress so intimately? I walk away yet feel you across the room. When our eyes meet I know from the way our cheeks flush, we are magnets, an exquisite tug dilating pupils, veins, souls, it is more than imaginary, this pain, this want. We meet by chance, friends of a friend, and I want to say, if you were to take my hand right now, lead me to an empty room, press your leg between my thighs as I pull your face towards me, the wall cold against my back and the warmth of you so overwhelming I almost faint from hunger quenched, ferocity and joy, terror and delight, your tongue in my mouth, my fingers entangled in your hair, your hands caressing beneath the black soft cotton, belly, breast, my sighs, your breath gasping, diffident explorer, urgent devourer and all this Oh my God my dear did you not know? if you were to take my hand it would be beyond words, beautiful, defiled in ecstacy ... and inevitable – it has happened – it – will – happen – remember – the universe played this moment to infinity before we were born but yes, hi, no I don't think we've actually been introduced, although we've met. We've met. We've met. A Nice Cup of Tea 00:00 / 01:02 I knew he had died Because every day he woke first To bring a nice cup of tea in bed. And that morning the kettle Didn't wake me and he lay Still beside me. I eased into my slippers Padded to the kitchen. Made two teas, put them on tray. The nice cups, with saucers, Fine china that needed a wash Because of the dust, for show Usually, we could see our hands Through the glaze. Nice cups. With fresh milk, not yesterday's. Watched the kettle boil. The steam curled Across the worktop And disappeared. Where does it go I wondered. The sugar shook From the spoon a little. A nice cup of tea. Ruth 00:00 / 01:47 When we were young we played at the beach on a blustery day. The waves snapped against our legs. We bellysurfed through spume, not knowing if the wet on our cheeks was foam or rain or tears of laughter. Then you were tumbled by breakers against the groyne, the length of it, up with the wave and then sucked back by its retreat, and I still laughed because you were a rag doll flailing, sand and weed in your hair, mouth wide. You crawled back to me, stood, and from every inch of you blood welled, a thousand striations of intricate symmetry, delicate etchings, red rubies, mingling on skin marbled with the salt water but shock kept you numb, at first. I don't remember how you reached hospital, maybe someone from the pier phoned. I was confused, you went away, your parents came with white-edged lips and no words. I never saw you again. You were safer away from me and the sea. I went to the beach that winter to watch waves surge and ebb. There was no newly realised aura of doom. I ran fingertips along my body at night, wondered if your scars were raised or flat, if they held in their patterns the beauty of those first beads of blood through the pale, that surprise, and the wonder in your eyes. Publishing credits Beginnings: Push (Erbacce Press) A Nice Cup of Tea: Anser Journal (Dec 2020) Ruth: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

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) S h a r e

Emma Lee back next the poet Poet and reviewer Emma Lee is the author of The Significance of a Dress and Ghosts in the Desert . She was Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib , and the co-editor of Over Land, Over Sea : an anthology of poems expressing solidarity with refugees crossing the Mediterranean on small boats and rafts. Emma's poetry has featured in many print and online journals including Fevers of the Mind , Ink, Sweat & Tears , Clear Poetry and more. the poems The Bridal Dresses in Beirut 00:00 / 00:41 Each dress hangs from a noose. One is plain satin with scalloped lace, another an orgy of tulle, dreamy organza with appliqué flowers hanging from wire strung between palm trees. One is short, a shift with a tulip skirt, the sort of dress picked in a hurry to satisfy a shotgun or Article 522. The breeze breathes through them, bullies the dresses into ghosts, brides with no substance, angels bereft of their voices. What the Dust Left Uncovered After art installation The Fading Afterglow of Creation by Dave Briggs and Jack Squires 00:00 / 01:10 A screen sculpts a crumpled mass in an empty house, a 3-D image that takes the shape of what could be a heart. A sci-fi trope: machines outliving us. We all hope what will survive of us is not the pile of admin, worthless warranties, the embarrassing tweet, the spilt coffee, but our Insta life, our filtered wishes. The sculpture is not the easy outline of an emoji, but the complexity of valves, veins, a possibility of an organ, a human's engine. Here, what's left is our digital footprint, the avatar we taught to fight, scavenge, collect. Playerless it repeats the same responses, contact only from bots, a drift of binary lint. It's the unedited part of us that decided who we touched. The digital heart waits for us to breathe emotion into it, sculpting the memory of what it most wanted. The Wrapped Hedges 00:00 / 01:26 It looks as if a fog has whirled around the hedges, wrapping them in a swirl of candy floss like a fleece protecting them from frost. The implication is the hedges will be unwrapped to show a healthy growth, firm stems, perfectly green leaves, branches stretched in welcome. The covering takes on the texture of a regular weave, as if a team of spiders had worked solidly for months, but the structure is too crude to be natural, too regular to constructed by anything but a programmed machine. It reflects a grid of lines running from left to right with rectangular holes. If laid flat, it would represent a map of a housing estate, plans made by those seeking to enrich themselves on the grounds councils cannot demonstrate they have an adequate housing supply, that somehow executive, four bedroom homes, beyond the pockets of those on waiting lists, will meet and it’s fine to build in the country out of reach of public transport and amenities but it’s just these birds who will prevent building during the nesting season that are the problem. So man-made webs are their suggested solution; mimic nature to prevent it. Publishing credits The Wedding Dresses in Beruit: The Significance of a Dress (Arachne Press) What the Dust Left Uncovered: After... (December 8th 2022) The Wrapped Hedges: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

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 S h a r e

Ian McMillan © Adrian Mealing back next the poet Presenter of BBC Radio 3's The Verb, compère of the annual T S Eliot Prize Readings, writer, broadcaster and recent recipient of The Freedom of Barnsley, Ian McMillan is a renowned British poet who's been everywhere and done more. He's already written a verse autobiography (Talking Myself Home: My Life in Verses ), and now a memoir of childhood and the sea – My Sand Life, My Pebble Life . Ian’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs , resident poet for English National Opera, and a contestant on BBC 1's Pointless Celebrities. His most recent collection is To Fold The Evening Star: New and Selected Poems . the poems Half a Minute Before the Start of the World 00:00 / 01:00 There was an idea. Well, more of the ghost Of an idea. And the idea/ghost idea was The idea of a tree. Somewhere (remember, There was no somewhere yet) The ghost of an idea of a tree waited To become an idea of a tree and then A tree. On the day before your first day At school you are full of possibilities In your little socks. Maybe you hold A crayon close to a blank sheet That almost collapses under metaphor’s Incalculable weight. It is, look, look, Half a minute before the start of the world And that (insert blankness here) of a tree Has no idea what the world has in store for it But it dreams its leaves are burning. Try Knocking on Your Own Door and Opening it 00:00 / 00:40 Your shadow Either side. Lit by possibility. This is like Walking and sitting down At the same time. This is like Being the past and the future At the same time. Knock now. Knock. Both sides of the door at once. Hearing the knock And being the one who knocks. Gaze through The letterbox At yourself, Knocking and listening. Listen. This is like Writing and reading At the same time. The Last Speaker of the Language 00:00 / 00:59 The last speaker of the language said this: ‘My words fall unnoticed; snow in a wood. No one to talk to’s like no one to kiss.’ Nobody answered. No one understood. The last speaker of the language lay down On the grass only he had the words for And felt his dry mind beginning to drown In the sound of old sounds closed like a door. The last speaker of the language looked up At what he called something I call the sun I passed him a drink. I call it a cup: His word for that thing is over and done. The untitled moon set fire to the night. When languages die, who says the last rites? Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Stewart Carswell back next the poet Stewart Carswell grew up in the Forest of Dean and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, where he co-pilots the Fen Speak open mic night. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. His poems have recently been published in Under the Radar , Envoi , Ink Sweat & Tears , and The Fenland Reed . His debut collection, forthcoming in 2021, is Earthworks . the poems Earthworks West Kennett 00:00 / 00:34 I migrate back to this farmland burdened for summer with corn, where the mound distorts the harvest and the great stones form the façade of a house that swallows the dead and has for centuries. On a ledge inside the entrance a line of faces stares down at me, their flesh behind glossy feathers, and guarding its nest is the swallow, inverting the tomb into a cradle, raising five lives from this chamber. Listen to this 00:00 / 00:26 The river is fed by brooks that pour sound down the hillside. A season of rain fattens it. The level has risen higher than I expected, but it is level still and that is important: to stay balanced no matter how much rain has fallen, no matter how much you want to flow with that water away from this place. Sleepers 00:00 / 01:45 A curtain of ferns spreads at eye height to a child and parts from the push of a hand to expose the shrinking clearing and the treasure at its centre: an ancient sleeper laying like a sunken casket and shrouded by a puzzle of oak leaves. The specimen ornamented with metalware: rusted plates and bolts, brooches carried by the dead to the next station of life. Close the curtains. Change the scene. A figure stands at the end of the platform, his face masked by a flag. Steam spirals around him, a spire above rows of sleepers. There is one line drawn from childhood through junctions to connections, and the destination is close to definition. I feel the platform vibrate from something about to begin. The figure sounds his whistle. His flag drops and it is my face unmasked and it's time to leave this dream and I see it now. The trackbed has lost its track and I have lost track of time. I get up to check my phone but there’s no signal and my daughter is asleep, habitually dreaming of a better life to travel in and I see it now. The ancient sleeper is a relic, an inherited burden, second-hand history. I step outside, and the first engine of the day sets out light, and I see it now: I know what to do. Publishing credits Earthworks: Ink, Sweat & Tears Listen to this: Eighty Four – Poems on Male Suicide, Vulnerability, Grief and Hope (Verve Poetry Press) Sleepers: Elsewhere S h a r e

Maggs Vibo back next the poet Maggs Vibo – pen name of veteran, military spouse and visual poet Margaret Viboolsittiseri – is the author of ash poetry booklet Ashes to Ashes . She’s contributed to anthologies from Poem Atlas, Penteract Press, Steel Incisors, IceFloe Press, Coven Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, AngelHousePress and Oxford Brookes University Poetry Centre. Published widely in the US, UK, Canada, Europe and South Asia, Maggs showed pieces in 2022 with L'Air Arts in Atelier 11 of Cité Falguière in Paris, and at The Library of Congress in Washington DC. the poems The Year of the Ox 00:00 / 01:01 Try not to box or blow up Chuck Dem-ah CRAZ EEEEE SAW Free DUMB Oh Fragil-egos and the Gods … k-NO-w science criminal enterprises drilling-in-digenous wears a Cape Fear full of shit bags of waste lands of carn age everything harnesses the power of the sun, winds, dust, rainmaker of all powerful Holy rolling phony and traitorous bologna sand Which way did they go? Storm In red and CAP-IT-ALL Off fences didn’t stop and neither could a WALL STREET of protestors (zip) ties mouth Shut the F. up You’re dis – loyal and royally F.U.C.KKKed up! Up! UP and A-way Through this maze of trickery The Year of the Rat 00:00 / 01:57 I don't find inspiration In a rat. Not that Creature scurrying along the floorboards looking forward to theft I'm bereft when looking at that tail, that long gruesome nose sniffing whiffing for the smell of death. Of plague. of Misfortune The Year of the Rat. Fat politicians told us that we’d be free of this virus when in fact or fiction (no contradiction) In our rat. He is the disease we wheeze and cough in his direction wherever he might go just know we wish he'd fall into the trap he laid for himself when he called all this a hoax just smoke and mirrors reflecting back a rat we loathe The rat serves no purpose and has no Make it Great claim to life Except through death, trenches and holes, Sewerbellies Of our globe. (Hold) The rat in a maze. It phases us How intelligent and how much they’re like us We hate the rat because: We Are the Rat And this is the year (we must endear) This creature who will represent All our selfish desires With ire we must take back (our rat) and Pet This debt … we make for generations In the future A suture to hold this geyser of blood We must mop to the corner and all over our Persistence and petulance Henceforth, This, POOOOR creature Is the Year of the Rat The Year of the Tiger 00:00 / 01:47 Lady Liberty Lingering threats January 6th Sense of Skipping rope With the reins of a Trojan horse Riding into the eye Yet do not see Your stripes A billion dollar Arsenal of logos, T-shirts, and Assaults A cache Of cash Yet, still you play the fiddle Down in Georgia Peaches Bragging and breaking skin Smash-n-grab’em By their special props In a Lone Star States Of oppression Against a mouse You taunt A community of trained Cops and Thieves who Claim supremacy You'll see We The People I am AMERICAN My hand raised to defend The Constitution You burned We The People We Are Cursed We Are Broken Our kindergardens Soaked in Coffins draped No playground Fallen grace Untenable and broken Lulla-byes Purring kittens Eyes too young to see Such tragedies Hiding Cowering Yet calling Out-stretched tails Sharpening nails Scratching A Cross And clawing Back We are Tigers Angry feoh-lions Roaring No longer silent Soaring Manticores Publishing credits The Year of the Ox: Visual Poetry (Fevers of the Mind) The Year of the Rat: Distanced 3.0 (ang(st)) / The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press) The Year of the Tiger: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Stephanie Clare Smith back next the poet Stephanie Clare Smith is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, whose forthcoming lyric memoir, Everywhere the Undrowned , will be published in spring 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press. Stephanie's poetry and essays have been published in various journals including Bellevue Literary Review and Xavier Review . She currently lives in North Carolina where she's a social worker and mediator for families in crisis. the poems Small 00:00 / 01:18 Sleep is my friend, I tell myself. I don’t believe myself. I need more friends. What I have is Joni Mitchell songs stuck in my head. I really don’t know love at all. I make shapes with my body under the covers as though I am falling from a plane in the sky – a fetus, a windmill, a steak knife. Which shape survives a long-distance drop? The Times said a fetus – survivors fall small. In the morning, I wake like a clock. A chopper’s overhead beating the air. But this is not Nam or Afghanistan. The radio reports cops up above. A man dumped a woman out of his truck onto the avenue that feeds the heart of the city. Or else she jumped to escape the not-Nam/Afghanistan war in that truck. He fled on foot when the chopper hovered over. All day he’s at large like a storm in the sky. All day she’s out cold in a hospital wing. I feel all small; how she jumped or was dumped in the shape of log that rolled across the road that feeds the heart of the city. When a Horse Smells the End is Near 00:00 / 00:28 nostrils flare fist wide eyes shoot sideways halfway white a bad blows up bigger there nothing left to blind the view a storm stares through a round black sky a moon cut up a crack across the back of night and gallop gone to the edge foul the way it’s over Whereabouts 00:00 / 01:14 I dream I’ve gone missing. Wake up still here in this adopted state, out of place, nothing new. I throw back the comforter, count ten friends from home, lost or gone. Mostly gone. Mostly dope. They follow me to the sink like prayers. I cup my hands underwater. Wash my face, dress up my past, miss ten laughs. I drive to work, clip on my name. Be here for now. If I didn’t stay, if I’d kept on driving, someone here would call the cops, at least by Thursday. But it’s not a crime to just get gone. All I’d take with me is mine, low-key in my little car. I’d drive to other towns, all gone grey. Adopt every state. Take on new names. Hope, Mercy, maybe Shame. Maybe Eleven. The ten gone missing ride along with me and sing our songs. I stay put for now, feed feral cats, work overtime, eat out on Fridays. My little not-disappearing acts. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Deborah Finding back next the poet Originally from North-East England and now living in London, Deborah Finding is a queer feminist writer with a background in academia and activism. Her poetry has featured in fourteen poems , The Alchemy Spoon , The Friday Poem and anthologies from Live Canon, Renard Press, Victorina and Fly on the Wall Press. She came first in the poetry category of the Write By The Sea Literary Festival Writing Competition 2022, and was commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2022. Her debut pamphlet vigils for dead and dying girls is forthcoming from Nine Pens. the poems amortisation 00:00 / 01:34 you explained to me that amortisation is the depreciation of non-tangible assets which are things like goodwill and loyalty and relationships you can depend on it’s a complex calculation to figure out what these things are worth, the factors that add to or detract from their value and how quickly they can be lost but I want to try, I always did I can show my workings out, in your spread sheets, under which we did, to an advanced level, excel … I write this as addictive additive, also when you said you would love me all of the days. like infinity plus one but plus one was the problem which leads us to the minus column your creative accounting of her to me, to her of me, every evasion a reduction of your credit score and now we disagree on the answer I show you a number in the red you tell me of future investments and paint me a unicorn valuation but it turns out amortisation is just the process of slowly writing off a debt on paper at least. so consider it done, books balanced, no net gain loving you was a zero-sum game dear ______ 00:00 / 03:24 My therapist told me to picture you as a scorpion in a guided meditation, in which she had me imagine – in a very visceral way – crushing you to death with my foot, till you were nothing but shit and dust. Now, I know what you are thinking: surely a real therapist would never suggest such a thing! but to be totally honest with you she is somewhat unconventional in her methods and only the week before this she had asked me to imagine finding a grave and looking down to see your lifeless body in the deep and open dirt – the knowledge of your death giving me back my own breath which I'd been holding all these months terrified that I could see you on every corner your dark hair swinging behind you in front of me a kind of ponytail PTSD. I wish I was joking. Anyway, back to you as a scorpion, did you know it’s said they're viciously venomous for no reason? Have you heard that fable about the frog and the scorpion, that ends with the scorpion saying, it’s in my nature ? Well, I don’t believe that shit. I don’t believe you were born like that to sting for the sake of it. But it doesn’t matter because you are that now and you should be approached with extreme caution and protective clothing, if at all and I learned the hard way that anyone who would keep a scorpion for a pet is a fool. There’s an urban myth that if you light a circle of fire around a scorpion it will sting itself to death horribly … for a long time I thought about how I could set your world on fire: trap you in a prison with only your own poison for company, and glass walls and spotlights for all to see who you really are. I texted your name so often that my phone still wants to gift it to me in autocorrect whenever I type the first three letters but this is progress, because for a while just the E would do it. One day I hope I can look at your name in black and white or even meet someone else with it, and not hate them on sight and though today is not that day I know it must be coming. I don’t think of you so much now and I wear a scorpion earring. Not every day but on those mornings where I wake up shaking or when the offence of an injustice is simply overwhelming. It helps remind me that it’s ok if a battle is too bloody to fight, that self-care sometimes means you don’t get to win even when you’re right and the day I grew up is the day I understood that the sun shines just the same on evil and good. Ah, scorpion … despite all I learned about you it’s not in my nature to claim you have no path to salvation but it does bring me comfort to know that at any moment any enemy can be crushed if only in imagination. distracted 00:00 / 00:42 today I did not want to write about desire I had loftier plans for worthier topics some notes about injustices and a page already half-baked with an idea about a town but you walked me home last night after dinner and before you took a cab so now my hands are your hands thinking dextrously of the five delicious minutes spent kissing you in the rain, our cold wet faces in refreshing contrast to our hot wet mouths tongues tasting intoxicatingly of our desserts and of not having kissed each other for a week Publishing credits amortisation: Live Canon Anthology 2022 (Live Canon) dear ______: exclusive first publication by iamb distracted: Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal (Vol. 2, Issue 1) S h a r e

James McConachie back next the poet James McConachie was born in the UK but has lived for the past 17 years in a remote farmhouse in Spain’s coldest, emptiest inland province. He's turned his hand to more jobs than he feels are worthy of mention, and is never happier than when finding himself lost at high altitude on horseback with only the wind, vultures and music of Hildegard Von Bingen for company. Aside from poetry, James has written prose for the Dark Mountain project , and has more in the pipeline. the poems first post 00:00 / 01:03 dry heave, I ball my fists or bang my head off the table, I might weep into the dark corner of our stupored soul for knowing and forgetting all those moments of nothing grace a mother wets a tissue, wipes a streak of blood from her child’s face yet swept into the fire the eternal touch of honeyed hand Iskander scores the sky to the east and for what? small fears the language or the naming of the land, or some fucking flags always the same shit reasons, always forgotten but sorrow filths up the crescent beneath the nails forever and it will be written we should. have done. better. dry heave, I ball my fists bang my head off the table, and weep again, this morning it seems there’s always time for another cold horror, another mother’s letter liebre 00:00 / 01:00 three days of gales and I’m meshed into a tousled briar, clearing the corral, all thorns the handstain fruit long wintered away oil can chimes giving it the full four clangs slices and scratches of maybes and should’ves the blood the wind and the want give life, their constant brutal diligence, the letters laid in winter’s bright book of hours the garden, knee deep in my dereliction, sees the sun as it lands but doesn’t stick somehow the sky, a haze of headaches and icy hostilities bustling up over the tops and away out on the campo, a hare flickers under the cloud shadow, shrieking across the field, almost dark I gather logs, the stars show again so heaven’s veil is torn just a little, at the hem longings 00:00 / 01:30 oneday, imma dance like a dervish out of the dark scoop gold pennies from the sky scatter quinces at your feet, found at last your cool hand in the bright bower, oneday oneday, imma song the things I shoulda said to the silence of the windless glade and if unheard, it will only hope to summon the breeze, to the daylong quiet shade, oneday oneday, imma shine the nightingale’s silver lyre pluck such tunes as only a god might whisper to a bird, all sighs and secrets, to leaven the unhurried word, oneday oneday, imma speak the mark and measure of this time the sneaking sand, the simple sorrows, the the supermarket savagery of war’s fire and lime, oneday oneday, imma swim all the way over the ocean to the very rim of the world, the paper cowl will shrink and shrivel, just as it should the forgotten face, the skin uncurled, that was my own, oneday oneday, imma find the boy who startled the stars, who shares my smile then inks together these battered bars drinks deep the rushing sap, beneath the ragged bark oneday, imma dance like a dervish, out of the dark Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

May Chong back next the poet May Chong, a Chinese/Malaysian poet and speculative writer, has had her work featured in Strange Horizons , Uncanny Magazine , adda , Parentheses Journal and elsewhere. She enjoys spoken word (watching and performing), birdwatching and terrible puns. May's nature-themed micro-chapbook, Seed, Star, Song , is available as part of Ghost City Press' Summer 2020 series. the poems You ask the soil if you belong 00:00 / 02:10 What has always been whispered through other leaves grows bold, thunderclaps laterite-red: never. Transplant, hue and clay, your roots never the right length. Untrue/half-bred not hybrid, weed not plant. Be silent and show some gratitude for this flowerbed, for being at all allowed. If you protest, tear up taproots and leave, raw mandrake words and all. Never mind how we were all planted once upon a time. One more time. The loess left behind answers come home . You will be welcome and warm, one with brethren abandoned before seedcoat thoughts. Come home , you must return to ancestral yellow, mellow alluvium where no others are allowed. (But you have already torn/ been torn tongue from stem to survive. You feel the way you will wither, alone in a field of pinched heads.) Rocks whisper from where black dragons tumbled them riverwise. In your sap runs neverbelonging, mountain thrust into monsoon. We are all of us guests from nowhere. The knowing makes it easier to bear the stones. And still you want. You awaken. Again you ask the soil if you belong, and you should not be grateful for silence. Yet you are. Lockdown 00:00 / 01:11 Grant me space secured with key, myself and I. Walls of my own creation, closest to a one-man hug. A floor to take a stand on, because the letting in has meaning. Give me granite and blood concrete before those who have ripped 'moment' and 'wait' and 'just' from their dictionary. Swallow the deep diggers who think keys are only for those in hiding. My time has its meaning, its rhythm and combinations because bolts in the head are trouble and padlocks through the heart are worse. Ask the selves I debrided, husbanded, ribs toothed like tiger traps. Vulnerability has meaning, meaning let me slam the door closed and fling it wide to let you in, you who means something. And even now 00:00 / 01:19 A radish waxes defiant in the asphalt below JR Osaka station’s pedestrian bridge. A man thinks of its rich tresses, his granddaughter, the last time he felt like smiling. Near Wangsa Maju, a moth flies into a packed LRT. Small as hope, alive. A whole carriage holds its breath until it lands on a Bangladeshi worker's chapalled toe. Some nameless brown bird gurgles into the rain-soaked morning. Soon there will be sun and wind enough for everything to dry gorgeous. Silence is learning how to unlock love, unlock tears from behind teeth, loose them with the gasp of something born anew. You learn from your elders how to make broth from the good bones of a world and still, and still, and still— Publishing credits You ask the soil if you belong: Bending Genres (Issue 19) Lockdown: exclusive first publication by iamb And even now: Banshee (Issue 12) S h a r e

Dale Booton back next the poet Dale Booton (he/him) is a queer poet from Birmingham whose poetry has been published variously by Verve Poetry Press, Young Poets Network, Queerlings , The North and Muswell Press. He has work forthcoming with Magma , and recently hosted the Young Poets Takeover at Verve Poetry Festival. Dale's debut poetry pamphlet, Walking Contagions , is available to pre-order from Polari Press. the poems Church 00:00 / 01:05 when told that God is not meant to be understood I crumbled felt the weight of expectation as it dragged my body below the floor and held it there if knowledge is power then why can I not know why I am so powerful is it that my voice can be used as a weapon that my thoughts can soar beyond these four walls I’ve heard it said captivity is a state of mind I’ve been told theologists are the wisest of all well I beat Pastor at chess at pool broke out of the cage he put me in little child the Lord moves in mysterious ways but is never wrong so you tell me why you tried to darken my heart denied my being why the spirit of someone can only be what you say it is Classroom 00:00 / 00:54 how strange that want to preserve what is so obvious I have heard parents speak how they don’t want their children to know of people like me just like I don’t want my classes and colleagues to know how alone I feel we erase what we fear what we cannot understand drive it into the shadows in the hope it will never make it to light again here my voice is foreign this place where sexuality is a question-and-answer session each one a stone’s throw further from purpose no room for growth no stature that can define a willingness to teach those whose kin would want you dead Nightclub 00:00 / 00:52 I have heard the music speak to me it was the bodies of friends and strangers that introduced us kindred arms wrapped around the uncomfortable relax we move as one there is strength in physicality there is softness in letting go that not-so-sober shove onto the dancefloor that not-so-innocent rush to be close to some other proximity is breath a closely guarded secret here my breath is not foreign this place where love and lust are two words that begin with l like living Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Peter A back next the poet Published widely in such places as Laldy , Spindrift, Poems for Grenfell Tower, A Kist of Thistles, A Kind of Stupidity and Bridges or Walls? , Peter A won first prize at the 2016 Paisley Spree Fringe Poetry Competition. During 2020, his work was anthologised in Words from Battlefield, Poets Against Trump , Surfing , The Angry Manifesto and Black Lives Matter – Poems for a New World . Peter's debut chapbook, Art of Insomnia , was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2021. the poems Found in France 00:00 / 02:30 Though you would have to concede its picture perfect rural beauty here for the record are the things you wouldn’t like about the place. The middle of the countryside such a distance from anywhere. The crowded transport transferring from the airport. The open windows to keep the place cool inviting houseflies. The doorway dogs, the ever-darting omnipresent lizards. The lack of television. The steps, useful for others, which would be impossible for you. Around those steps the lavender which at home would aid your sleeping but here for you a nightmare, attracting wasps and bees. The spider’s improbably small body, impossibly spindly long legs, waiting in the shower room, patiently. Also the tiny white spider – I bet you never saw an entirely white spider! The mosquitoes, the hornets. The blood-sucking horseflies almost certainly lining up to feast upon you in particular. The bats awaiting the chance to be entangled in your lush long hair. The swimming pool that would be out of bounds for you. The conversation in which you would not wish to speak. The revelation before bedtime concerning the cleaner’s cat, its trophy mice and the minor flea infestation – successfully eradicated we think but let us know if you get bitten . As for me, the only aspect of the French place I do not appreciate is you not being here. After 00:00 / 00:54 After words their last have spoken and from here gone Afterwards it is said cockroaches will make the earth their own Do you see already some may be working to inherit behind the scenes planning preparing strategies awaiting the endgame from which all cockroach-types are due to benefit after the black rainfall/after the slaughter of words and laughter After Late night teardrop 00:00 / 00:40 I should certainly stop viewing old home movies, not because of their patchiness or participants’ awkwardness – that’s all part of their charm. Not because of their faded definition – I always liked the Impressionists. Not because they are silent cinema, recorded with the cheapest camera, but because they leave my heart haunted. Publishing credits Found in France: Art of Insomnia (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) After: Sci-Fi (Dreich Themes) Late night teardrop: The Wee Book of Wee Poems (Dreich Wee Books) S h a r e

Leeanne Quinn back next the poet Leeanne Quinn's poems have been widely anthologised, appearing in The Forward Book of Poetry 2013 , Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916 , and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Before You , was published by Dedalus Press and highly commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry 2013. Her second collection, Some Lives , was also published by Dedalus Press, and was noted as a 2020 Book of the Year by The Irish Times and The Irish Independent . Originally from Ireland, Leanne now lives in Munich, Germany. the poems Interference 00:00 / 01:15 Try not to listen, avoid admission. Electrical currents emit perceptible sounds. Don’t power down appliances, let sound carry. Try not to think in terms of the body, the racket of the blood is not your concern. Learn the habit of distraction, above all don’t personify, don’t permit, this is not a human voice. Electrical currents do emit perceptible sounds. The trick is not to listen. Avoid admission. The racket of the blood is not your concern. Don’t power down. Learn the habit of distraction. Don’t think in terms of the body. Electrical currents do emit. The racket of the blood. Above all, try not to listen. Don’t personify, learn the habit. Let them carry perceptible sounds. This is not a human voice. Accidents (An excerpt from a poem of the same title) 00:00 / 00:59 Winter has culled the city, edging all colour out. Salt covers ice, stark and stubborn, on the pavements below. You walk with your thoughts elsewhere, think of the different worlds you have known. There is little here to love—this is a place where loneliness grows, where memories wake you like a gun going off in the night —a night that takes care of what you have done or not done, of who you have loved or not loved, of those you have saved, or forgotten. You walk the winter streets, hoping to catch the last of the light, as it fades where the snow falls. On a Flat Earth 00:00 / 01:07 What colour is the sky? Why does a ship’s hull disappear before the mast? What is the true distance of the Sun from the Earth? Explain the cause of tides. What is the dip sector? What causes the Sun to rise? Explain lunar and solar eclipses. Account for daylight. Explain winter and summer. Account for loss of time when sailing. Explain the deflection of falling bodies. Elaborate on experiment three. Account for the moon’s phases. Discuss the planet Neptune. Elaborate on experiment six. Explain the stages of the Earth. Give Earth’s true position in the Universe. Account for formation. Account for destruction by fire. Publishing credits Interference / On a Flat Earth: Some Lives (Dedalus Press) Excerpt from Accidents: Before You (Dedalus Press) S h a r e