Welcome to the Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Archive
This archive is formed from all the posts from that original Ink Sweat & Tears website, it now consists of everything we have published up to the end of 2019. IS&T was founded by Salt author Charles Christian in 2007 as a platform for new poetry and short prose, and experimental work in digital media. Charles ran the site single-handedly, publishing new work every day till 2010, when now sole editor, poet and artist Helen Ivory came on board as Deputy Editor. The Ink Sweat & Tears website continues to run and can be found here.
You can either click on the poems below which run from most recent to oldest, or you can search for particular poem or poet, there is also a list of all the categories to click through. From Prose & Poetry to Words and Images, Haibun, Tanka, Haiku & Haiga, in addition we have all of the Poems of the month and Poetry picks, old blogs and news, award nominated, reviews and interviews.
Please do take a look.
Search the archive
Prose and poetry
Poems and prose published on the website from start to finish.
Martin Ferguson
Central Insect Agency after Lawrence What brings you in so quiet ? why such bright banded citrine stripes ? when did you smell the strawberries ? Is it that you destabilize us...
Allan Johnston
Aspens These trees shimmer in no breeze— the moon’s a wild rabbit above us— no breeze or one so slight we don’t feel it— mad ghost breathing— bark curled scrolling tops of...
Mara Polgovsky
Erica bloated by x-counts of cortisone she offered her excuses for the breath-loss at the circular staircase (going up) in the midst of the pause Tablada’s haikus and the...
Nathanael O’Reilly
Answers A lone slightly-crushed blue M&M rests on the classroom’s grey carpet between rows of wooden chairs. A student writes with her right hand while inserting two fingers...
Will Birkin
Small Waters You’ll find me in small waters, with my eggs like eyes and eyes like two gold watches, handless as my green and almost body: coalesced by a will of weeds. It’s a...
Aishwarya Raghu
A Poem about Frost Swan resting on an empty lake: white but for the lake. Blue but for the swan. Winter will set in from the leftmost corner of the lake. Eagle swan. I can no...
Juliet Humphreys
Talking to Monet People, I tell him. I can see people: shadows, black-burnt, threading their way between trees — and there, behind, Parliament rises like a cathedral I’d say...
Clare Crossman
Ward D9 (For Linda and Helen) We are a murmuration of rose-ringed parakeets, plumed in our floral nightdresses, flashes of colour. Turning our heads sideways to catch each...
Chris Johnson
Talking to myself - at The Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace, London 1851 ' A barometer filled with leeches in a bottle of water; fancy that'. I almost felt a bullet singe me...
Sam Wood
Words are everything Lines. Muscle soak. If you love something let it snow let it snow let it snow. Snorkelling. To shop is to be essential. I like radical consumerism. I...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Chin Li
A long-distance voice That was the last time he called me by my name. His voice low, rather hoarse. Here and there, he paused; his speech slow, affecting a sadness I wasn’t to know. Long-distance call. Not unexpected. The usual. When will you...
James Knight
Cockroach I began when the cockroach fell the cockroach was on the ceiling the ceiling was in a hospital the hospital was in a city and the cockroach on the ceiling fell underneath the ceiling and the cockroach were my mother and her belly and...
David Calcutt
from Wintering 1 Things are hunkering down. Roots burrow deep, nosing among the winter nests, the curled fur and trembling antennae. The seed lie snug in the earth’s closed fist. Complete darkness. And a heat that’s miserly, generating just enough...
‘Off-Peak Single’ by Oz Hardwick is our first Pick of the Month for 2019
'This, for me, is the perfect prose poem' was the comment of one of our voters and we don't think it too far from the truth as we declare Oz Hardwick's 'Off-Peak Single' as our Pick of the Month for January 2019. Voters loved the contrast between the mundane and the...
Ross McCleary
I put a wolf in the basement The wolf is arguing with my neighbours. He is asking to be let out. He is persuasive, and good at small talk. He is no danger to them, but he is a crack in the pipes. I cannot remove him, cannot take an axe to his...
Kitty Coles
Stonecutter What tool is best to slice the skull apart, to split it neatly, cleanly as a melon, and winkle out that small stone at the temple, cuddled up like a frog in its deep-mud winter burrow, growing fat as its skin sucks in the life of its host?...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
Five Haiku from Matthias Hoefler
Five haiku:*a wood burningstove. what's that wise cat doing on it?*her pink handoutstrechedclam shell*white noise raindrops yet my spiritagitated.*solitary red leaf falling A Glade commercial.*Piebald cathuddled in grass rime coming on*Matthias Hoefler is lord of...
Ten Haiku from Bill Cooper
small herona blueberry crownbegins to flare *trotters at nighta speckled moth swings wide *dead hamsterlining the tinwith mint leaves *night krewea toddler sipsfrom last year’s...
A haibun from Stephen W Leslie
Red Tailed Hawk On the way to work I noticed a largebird by the side of Route 66. On a sudden impulse I pulledover. It was a large red tailed hawk decked in a gorgeous mane ofwhite and brown feathers. One inch claws clenched, his...
A haibun from Danny Pelletier
Cleavage Stories about his drunk college buddy, who once scaled an impossible geological structure when the rest of the party was looking in the other direction, don’t linger on his tongue. “How’d you get up there? We only looked away for a minute.” “I don’t...
Nine Haiku from Bill Cooper
peeps and trillsa winding trailto the dogwood *after a rompan edge of goldin the horse’s eye *flying squirrelthe ready acceptanceof a thin branch*the farm horseout of harnessscent of straw *step stoollearning dad’s waysto maneuver the brush *beach...
Pris Campbell is voiceless
*Pris Campbell is a regular IS&T contributor who has published her haiga and free verse in numerous online and print journals. She has five collections of poetry out. The most recent is The Nature of Attraction , with Scott Owens (Main Street Rag Press). She has...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
The Sixth Day of Christmas – Sarah James, Sarah Watkinson and Joanne Key
With Persimmon Little things catch in my throat at Christmas: noticing more cracked mugs, the concrete corner of our kitchen which is still unlinoed; the matchsticks that still prop white tiles. At the table, I lose tally of our daily...
The Fifth Day of Christmas – Penelope Shuttle, Alwyn Marriage and Julie Hogg
Submission Instead of a short poem a sonnet say or a villanelle I’m writing a very long one perhaps about Christmas perhaps not forged out of iron words and irony and when I send it to you Helen it will arrive not by email but stashed on a big...
The Fourth Day of Christmas – Chris Fewings and Stuart Murphy
Unlucky numbers On the first day of X-mas a kid-gang brought to me a mirror printed with the reflection of supermarket special offers, half-price happiness. I scrubbed at that mirror till my arm ached. On the second day the sun played...
The Third Day of Christmas – Peter Eustace and Julie Maclean
They Said They said so many untrue, unkind, unfair Cruel things behind my back And later on even to my face – Always three or four of them, At least, better to make their point … Afraid, more like, on their own, I might for once have made other use Of my...
The Second Day of Christmas – Grant Tarbard, Katy Evans-Bush and Seth Crook
Nikolaos the Wonderworker Asthmatic pipe smoker, gift giver, you wear a crown of holly fixed on your Medusa strands, beard of clouds stuck fast on top of wire. A pile off of the tinker's cart in the crook of your arm resting on your cauldron...
The First Day of Christmas – Catherine Ayres and Ken Evans
Advent service Three o’clock and the hall is a collapsed lung. Candles glow through a fug of Lynx and condensation. God is with us. He is ready for a song. The boys in the back row are weary. They have writhed through the rituals of celebration and now...
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Word and Image from Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
The musician speaks of the PacificWe are the something of sirens this, our urgent-sound:laughter deepening an acreageof littered whisperings; eyelash sea-greens.Steady me. In this breeze, moments come free. Place your hands on my shoulders and I’ll...
Word and Image from Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
your eye protects the soft-toed snowdrop I tether the thin white legs with a finger of soft soil a scraggling, harboured by worms *Poem by Helen Pletts whose two collections, Bottle bank and For the chiding dove, are both published by YWO/Legend...
Words by Max Wallis, Image by Agnesbic
Allow yourself this one dayhungover from love. To sit in your sad cocoonbed-lain on lemon bon bon sheets and sick with ache,cuddling your bones. Let the day roll into night.Do not fret about the red numbers in your account,about deadlines and business worries; pick up...
Text art from Ira Lightman
*Ira Lightman makes public art in the North East, and lately Willenhall and Southampton. He devises visual poetry forms and then asks local communities to supply words that will bring them alive. He is a regular on BBC Radio 3's The Verb. Duetcetera (Shearsman, 2008)...
A photopoem from James Sutherland-Smith
YoungThe yarrow, the bulrush, the burdockthe long-stemmed wheatgrass, a single irisleaning like one of the paparazzifor an exclusive front page shot line the path either side of a girl runningas though she might be dreaming she escapesthe applause of a crowd round the...
Word and Image from Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
Alchemy Your face like a kitten, small in the morning, where two commas mark a smile broad enough to section the heart of a lamband turn a pressed coin of copper the likeness of aurum. Was it a fool’s morning, that set me bright on my way my ventricles...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
August 2015 Pick of the Month
Voting is now open for the Pick of the Month – your favourite poem, flash fiction or review – for August 2015...
July 2015 Pick of the Month
Voting is now open for the Pick of the Month – your favourite poem, flash fiction or review – for July 2015 Our...
Winner of the UEA FLY Festival Short Story Competition 11-14 yr olds: Yen-yen Loke
If anything, this year's shortlist for the 11-14 age group for UEA FLY Festival Short Story Competition was...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Devika Basu reviews ‘Dreams of the Sacred and Ephemeral’ by Kiriti Sengupta
“I consider poetry my existence”— it is indeed a revelation on the part of a poet who has coined chiseled words...
Konstandinos Mahoney reviews ‘Acrobats of Sound’ by Colin Pink
Colin Pink’s impressive first collection, Acrobats of Sound, takes its title from...
Susan Castillo Street reviews ‘The Swell’ by Jessica Mookherjee
Writing in 1989, scholar Werner Sollors caused a bit of a stir when he challenged the...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.