IAMBIC
Evocative New Poetry Collection Immerses Readers in Timeless Pulse of English Verse
IAMBIC pulses with the ancient rhythm of English verse-each beat a step deeper into the uncanny. This debut collection blurs the line between lyrical beauty and creeping horror. With hypnotic language and a cinematic eye, Marco Di Chio leads readers through ghostly forests, shifting mirrors, abandoned houses, and haunting memories. The poems speak of longing, death, memory, and madness-often in the same breath.
Drawing inspiration from English literary tradition, IAMBIC honours the meter of Shakespeare and Milton while crafting something entirely new. This is not just poetry to be read-this is poetry to be heard, to be felt, to be feared. Once entered, it doesn't let you go.
Beyond its formal mastery, IAMBIC is rooted in the places and moments that have shaped the poet’s life. Some poems capture the quiet rhythm of daily walks with Lola in Cadder Woods, the restless energy of Glasgow’s streets, or the stillness of the Clyde Canal seen from the terraces of Lochburn. Others move inward, tracing personal grief, the weight of memory, and philosophical reflections on time and meaning. Interwoven throughout are cycles of haunting narrative poems, imaginative fairy tales where animals and trees debate philosophy and life along the shores of the Clyde Canal, and horror stories told in precise iambic lines, works that draw their unsettling power from the same well of lived experience and observation.
The book is available in Paperback and ebook, and will be released worldwide on the 4th September 2026
Product details
Publisher : Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
Publication date : 4 Sept. 2025
Language : English
Print length : 630 pages
ISBN-10 : 1836153589
ISBN-13 : 978-1836153580
“ In IAMBIC, I wanted to create poems that move you as much as they haunt you—blending personal, lyrical reflections with moments of cinematic horror. The poems explore love, queerness, memory, and fear, and aim to pull readers into worlds so vivid they feel almost like dreams, or nightmares, that stay with you long after reading.”
Marco Di Chio
Excerpts
“The seasons falter, stuttering their refrain,
the summer burns where winter used to lie;
the rivers writhe like serpents choked with pain,
and mountains breathe a slow, exhausted sigh.”
“The truth is neither cruel nor kind to bear,
it simply stands where silence dares not go;
a mirror held to light we cannot share,
a shadow cast by all we cannot know.”
“The past is not a place that we can leave,
it walks beside us, breathing where we tread;
each memory a thread we cannot weave,
but ties us to the living and the dead.”
“They do not speak of men like us with grace.
They twist our want and write it down as shame.
But I have traced devotion on your face,
And kissed you in the shelter of a flame.”
REVIEWS
SPR
A fervent outpouring of painstakingly crafted verse, Iambic by Marco Di Chio is an operatic ode to memory, love, friendship, nature, and the divine. Imbued with nuance in every vivid scene and summoned sensation, this intensely realized collection resembles long-form storytelling, laden with unforgettable lyrical symbols and striking meditations on both the minutiae and vast magnitude of existence. Revelatory in its imagery, powerful in its message, and metrically meticulous, with nary a slant rhyme to be found, Di Chio's poetry regularly flirts with perfection, and effortlessly overflows with profundity, making it an authentic master class in precision and linguistic power.
AUSTIN MACAULEY PUBLISHER
“… a collection of versatility; confronting honesty and intense expression alongside hope, light and distinctive spirit. A poignant, inspired and assured debut collection contemporary in its accessibility as a poetry collection it transfixes the reader, resonating deeply and, at times, unable to be read without a catch in the throat as the emotion which drives the work is deeply evocative, transportive in the informality of the authorial voice. …”