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.
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Prose and poetry
Poems and prose published on the website from start to finish.
Stephen Giles
Glastonbury Weekend Back home in the flat, first meal alone in six days, and the sausages catch. Real flames. First the grill pan, then fast up the walls, like some...
Ashleigh Davies
Apollo In the leaner times it was a bread and butter supper, slaked with milk, perhaps on the cusp of the turn, the tang fizzing on the tongue-tip. In the fatter times, beef and...
Matt Broomfield
safe zone living light in the safe zone on MSG sachets on beans and the biweekly egg music of the spheres quick-step with the squeegee here the havens of peace for the wild here the...
Stephanie Limb
Pearl You say, ‘Hold on to me, I don’t want to lose you in the night. I keep waking up on my own.’ You push your feet between my knees, cling to my neck. My body doesn’t know a...
Daniel Richardson
Red Mullet First they said that everyone although it might be impossible for us to understand, our understanding being limited, and we agree that our understanding is limited...
Colin Honnor
Primrose Hill I open the light door, its latched hoist swings away to drop in pools your hand clasps they slip into the pool glow a dredger coughs upriver cormorant angles to...
Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou
Coleopteran Mum and Dad are in the living room, discussing, and I’m sitting across from them at the dining room table with the white, knitted tablecloth on. I’m painting a...
Gregory Kearns
Perfume Stranger, you smell like my dead dad. I have a cloud of weepy nostalgia for whatever perfume you have bought and wear. Stranger, what is this scent called? If I’d had to...
Bruach Mhor
Your Words linger with gossips, checkers of contracts, play golf with accountants of happiness. They never express an adoration. They never extravagantly bless. Their toenails...
Stanley Wilkin
Snake Arriving in my garden at noon, Uncoiling it settled to catch the sun, I opened the veranda door and stared motionless At it, afraid. Flicking its tongue out towards me as...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Claire Cox
The card given out at his funeral has no obituary. No order of service. Just his name, curlicued and slant, year of birth, hyphen, year of death. Above that, an old print plate of his reproduced landscape-wise, its surface sectioned into eighths, each...
Andrew Shields
Rhine Swim When you slip into the river and float downstream, first swim a little, then tread water to keep your head in the air, then tip it back and kick your legs up to the surface. With your ears underwater, the world goes silent, and if you close...
Alix Scott-Martin
Sisters We found her at the bottom of the garden like a dropped apple, held her in the hollows of our palms afraid we might spill her now that she was ours. We kept her in an ice cream box, lined it with kitchen roll, pierced the lid for air, made a...
Alison Binney
#WhyIDidntReportIt All he was doing was standing alone in the pool, spreading his arms out the width of the double lane, just looking, all he was doing was taking the point you’d just made, making it over again to the rest of the team, just...
Oz Hardwick
Off-Peak Single The turnstile jammed, trapping me half way through, casting me in the role of inconvenience for the queue that gathered in Fibonacci curves, bristling with smartphones and resentment. I scanned and inserted my ticket...
And your Pick of the Month for December 2018 is Catherine Ayres and ‘Christmas Eve tea’
*The word 'beautiful' was repeated over and over in the comments and, although it is a word sometimes overused when describing poetry, in this instance it felt just right and voters made 'Christmas Eve tea' by Catherine Ayres the IS&T Pick of the Month for...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
Four haiku for a Monday morning by Bill Cooper
ocean breezea half step laterscent of lime thundersnoweach daughterhugs a leg new furrowa shimmeron rose quartz first camp nighttwo small boysso awake* Bill Cooper is Distinguished University Professor and President Emeritus at the University of...
Three haiku by Larry Kimmel
over café au lait open-throated laughterand a perfume you can taste~ ~ ~ ~ ~cicada afternoon –in the sanctuary’s coolnessstained-glass parables~ ~ ~ ~ ~suddenly (purple freckles on her lavender-clad breasts) a shower* Larry Kimmel is a US poet...
New haibun: Izak Bouwer visits Cochise's stronghold
Cochise's StrongholdCochise was a Chiricahua Apache leader who took up armsin 1861 against an encroaching US Army. He died a naturaldeath in 1874 and was buried in his favourite place of retreat,now called Cochise Stronghold, in the Dragoon Mountains...
Four haiku for Friday by Bill Cooper
cranberry boga honeybee drainsthe pink flower darkening skyorange leavesa deeper glow green teathe tasteof distant stone slanting sunred ivyon grey stone* William (Bill) Cooper is the Distinguished University Professor and President Emeritus,...
New haiku: Patsy Goodsir is in Oban
Alone with his thoughtsenjoying the Autumn sun,he closes his eyes.* Regular IS&T contributor Patsy Goodsir was in Oban at the end of last year and composed this haiku after seeing this scene.
Short cuts for a Friday
Here's a collection of shorter pieces to ease us all gently into the weekend...Quite early one morning‘Y’ Tumblehalf past tena black and whitewaitresshaiku’s the menu‘black pudding, mushrooms or tomato’as shepherd alcoholicswarn of Swansea ...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
On the Twelfth day of Christmas…Ray Miller and Neil Fulwood.
Nativity Bethlehem is bolted shut and there no jobs in this England the innkeepers hold cardboard doors when he been on his bike so long that say no room and we full up for twenty, forty miles and more an angel’s crying for her mum and left and...
On the eleventh day of Christmas…Jan Harris
Christmas Brittle as a glass bauble poised to fall from the pine’s soft tips, or a wine glass perched on the table’s edge. The season when everything glitters and sparks: party people, sequinned and jewelled, hands meeting like flint and steel;...
On the tenth day of Christmas… Chris Michaelides and Reuben Woolley
Seasonal Now that rain reflected lights refract the decorated streets, with fractured ribbons, shivering through the darkening days, obscure, tangential, liminal, this ancient season sinks down into Earth; its signs: a sharpened flint, burnt...
On the ninth day of Christmas…Ira Lightman and Helen Kay
Ira Lightman makes public art in the North East (the Spennymoor Letters, the Prudhoe Glade, the Gatesheads)...
On the eighth day of Christmas…Rosie Brown
Dec. 5th. 2013 We did wonder. People were laughing, it was human nature, just another day. But Darkness came, we thought it would. A dribble at first, liquid toes dancing, teasing. But beyond, his vast seething body was approaching, silent through...
On the seventh day of Christmas…Dick Jones and James Naiden
Stille Nacht On the night that I was born, the bells rang out across the world. In Coventry, in Dresden, the cathedral bones sheltered worshippers with candles, witnessing the ruins. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, the story goes, the...
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
C. Albert’s ‘Swallow’ and ‘My Mouth is a Hollowed Apple’
Another word and image pairing from our artist/poet in residence C. Albert. Swallow My Mouth is a Hollowed Apple I swallowed the seeds and core. Do strawberry men feel vulnerable wearing their seeds on the outside? I swept the...
Spring poems from Anne Berkeley and Caroline Carver, image from Douglas Robertson
Spring Lament by Douglas RobertsonBookmark Take this spurredvioletfrom the spreadof cordate leavesunder the willow –five petals and a stab of lighthooked on a pinand shakingwith rain Keep it pressedto the place you are nowwhere for the very firsttime the...
Sarah Bower's royal wedding
The Princess Speaks MandarinThe first time Fei Yen hears the princess’ voice is a mid-morning in January. Strip lights blaze above the work benches, and she wishes she could hold her hands up to their heat; even in the white cotton gloves, they are frozen. Mr Li has...
C. Albert begins Spring and Easter
I am delighted to welcome IS&T artist/poet C Albert in residence to begin our Spring and Easter feature.... In Waiting ********* They Met on a Telephone Line He was common brown....
Another Word & Image from our Artist in Residence C. Albert: Prayer
Prayer You were bubbles of wonder when we met that went pop, pop, pop. Each strike by electric shock made you forget. You came to my studio for a drawing class that day and asked, Do you pray? Will you pray for me? I said yes, to...
C. Albert’s ‘The Meaning of Roundling’
A poem (with image) from our artist/poet in residence C. Albert. Flora the Poet The Meaning of Roundling With the edges of our eyes, we catch glimpses of roundlings peeking through windows. Gentle creatures, ready to bolt, fragile with dark...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
Winner of the UEA FLY Festival Short Story Competition 15-17 yr olds: Aedan Fisher
Last week, we were once more privileged to be part of the UEA FLY Festival (Festival of Literature for Young...
Pick of the Month June 2015
Voting is now open for the Pick of the Month - your favourite poem, flash fiction or review - for June 2015 Our...
Wynn Wheldon reviews The Devil’s Tattoo by Brett Evans
It is hard to escape the feeling that Brett Evans – or, at least, the poet Brett Evans, if you...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Jane Burn reviews Grant Tarbard’s ‘Loneliness is the Machine that Drives the World’
Grant Tabard’s Loneliness is the Machine that Drives the World led me into it with immediate interest –...
Lynn Woollacott reviews ‘Shippen’ by Dawn Bauling
Dawn Bauling is the current editor of The Dawntreader and Sarasvati poetry magazines and co-editor of Indigo...
Graham Burchell reviews ‘The Lightbox’, by Rosie Jackson,
‘Because of Him, Hummingbirds Will Die’ In a collection called ‘The Lightbox’ one might not be surprised...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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