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.
Lesley Ingram
The Rape of Diana headline: The Daily Telegraph, 21st July 1969 It was the way she swayed they said, the come on, the dare. It was how she hypnotised with that slow blink of her...
K. S. Moore
The Changeling Spiders The changeling spiders borrow their skull-heads from fairies, who leave them in corners, to spin out earthly imaginings of themselves, haunt and drop with...
Jack Little
The Metro After 1AM Each station marks an anonymous arrival. Behind screens, each tunnel descent is metal cold and hot air, cutting deeper into the Earth bright lights blinking...
Maxine Rose Munro
He grows I gave birth to Restless, and oh how he prowls this house, testing, testing the strength of my walls. Pushing at limits to find weaknesses he stores for future use,...
Tim Love
Stranger tractor The chaos of story creation settles into seven plots. A key turns, releasing birds from a 5-barred gate, a 1-bar atonal stave, to peck like words in churned...
Dipo Baruwa-Etti
Seats Before a table of white People, I stand with ballet Slippers strapped/soft soles Head pointed towards the angels. A dance, I commence. Pirouette Grand adage, en point...
Rosie Driffill
Snow Globe Twilight and a snow globe find her watching. Slow-tip flurry of chalk flocks a partial scene, the postcard side; no 80s red, No hurricane lamps for sale, no stainless...
Susan Castillo Street
Pact The lawn’s carpeted with yellow leaves. Gardeners on a mission, we rake them into doubloon mounds. The air is sharp and clear. In the sky I hear a distant plane. Closer by,...
Dan Stathers
The Boundary Dug in the gum of a field the stone stile sits, boot-worn and old with the hedgerows; its aged, slate skin bone-hard and clammy as I lean my hands on its beaten...
Jenny Hill
The Concise British Flora in Colour The Reverend W Keble Martin, 1965 Netting the soul of meadow, woodland, towan, with one thousand, four hundred and eighty-six portraits, you...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Gboyega Odubanjo’s ‘Obit.’, a timely Pick of the Month for October 2018!
Rarely has an IS&T Pick of the Month reflected so entirely things as they are now. Four young men, ages 15-22, stabbed in south London between the 2nd and 6th November is four too many and Gboyega Odubanjo's 'Obit.', though written and published before...
Anna Milan
Five Times 1 Mother rubs her eyes at the kitchen table. Says she’s drunk. The midnight light stares at me, and I wait for the shade of bed. 2 I am almost naked under a duvet of dried grass cuttings. The morning sun warms me in this hidden place,...
Peter Daniels
Home Truths Here are the woods, managed by a skilled crew, and one good straight birch picked out with a red stripe — is it condemned or chosen? Here are the characters: the magpies check out glitter for the nest, the crows fidget in the wind,...
Angela Readman
Warkworth The pelt drags me across sand like a drown animal. I walk miles, eyes fixed on Birling Carrs, a lime light of seaweed and coal. Birds nesting in cliff face , a chorus stuck in a skull. I didn’t know what was here, buried by tides. I...
Jenny Hope
On becoming a bee Choosing when was difficult. What time of year? Winter could get me five months or so, if you were lucky enough to make the cut, to be spent mostly in the hive. Bee Hygge? Honey-scented? I’m over romanticising. It’ll be clustered...
Gopal Lahiri
First Birth The two owls shout from the rooftop A hurricane of bats flies around, A father devours his own child in silence. The rising stars struggle to breathe in The first to go out in the dark is the slum boy knowing no one is waiting, A monster...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
End of August haiga by Stevie Strang
It's the final day of August so let's see it out with the gorgeous haiga...* Stevie Strang is a native Californian finally doing something with her photography and the million or so words that she has collected on bits of scrap paper ever since she learned how...
Three haiku by Richard Stevenson
prairie flood –your choice of car or truck:a barrel of pickles # # # # # three days of rain –my wife and I shop fora water fountain?! # # # # # Leddy Headbutter,Oscar, Charlie Muzzlewhite –our jazzy blues pets * Richard Stevenson is a...
New haiga: Beltane Blue by Rachel Green
* Rachel Green is a novel writer who will shortly become an novel author but she starts every day with walking her dogs and writing poetry. She has also started 'tweeting' an early morning haiku from her Twitter account – you can find her here...
New haibun: Danny Pelletier is reading his sister's poetry
My Sister’s Poems After the divorce, my sister moves from a temporary crash in our parents’ house to a smaller apartment down the street, leaving in her wake scattered boxes. I paw through her high school memorabilia, discover that my eldest sister, like me, once...
New haiga by Francis Masat
* Francis Masat is co-editor of Key-Ku (Florida Keys haiku) and author of Lilacs After Winter (haibun) and other books. The haiku used in this haiga appeared in Mainichi Daily News and received an Honorable Mention, Best of 2006.
Five haiku by Mel Goldberg
the few daysbetween youth and ageone lifetime* * * * *butter meltingon warm breadSunday morning* * * * *At the antique storeI sawmy memories* * * * *morning coffeeon the patioyour chair, empty* * * * *the house is gonebats circle in the eveningabove the empty space*...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
The Sixth Day of Christmas: Penelope Shuttle
London, December I only love London in winter Monet Daybright city darts in for an evening paper, comes out dark-savvy, neon-wise… trace the city in your tilting eye, river cocking its snook through the post-codes, idling past...
The Fifth Day of Christmas: Deborah Alma, Brian Johnstone
Playing Scrabble with my New Lover So stupid, but I hadn’t remembered that the last time I’d played was in the old house, until I found the two stubby pencils, torn envelopes addressed to us both and old scores, settled. I poured...
The Fourth Day of Christmas: Sarah James
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Four calling birds…. [calling birds is a corruption of the original colly or collie birds – blackbirds] The Calling Against winter sun, a Christmas card seen in a moment’s stillness,...
The Third Day of Christmas: David Morley
Abandoned Christmas Tree Plantation We are waiting for a Christmas that never came, each species a friend of a friend of some needle-hue. All the years, heights and postures are present like children in a school that no child ever leaves. Each...
The Second Day of Christmas: Andy Bennett, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Letter to Alfie On a beach in Alicante, a hundred days and a thousand miles from Whitby, Mummy will read the vampire story she just unwrapped. Because it’s nice to get away once in a while. Daddy’s eleventh Playfair Annual is already out of date. Kindle saw to that....
The First Day of Christmas: George Szirtes, Peter Phelps
Black Dog Running The dog is running through the snow - just watch him go! A word of command and he’s gone into the woods alone. There his ilk congregate and bark...
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Jessica Patient tells the story of the lost
* Jessica Patient won the WordSkills creative writing competition in 2008 and has several flashes, poems and short stories published. Her blog is www.writerslittlehelper.blogspot.com She is currently writing a novel.
A wordless image from Peter Weber
Regular IS&T contributor Peter Weber has just sent in this 'wordless image'
New concrete poem from Chris Major
As the fallout from the police violence at the recent G20 conference in London continues, Chris Major sends in the following comment...
A double act of misunderstood love
This is a double act, starting with a short prose poem Angel by IS&T editor Charles Christian and followed by Unravelling, a response written by East Anglian poet Beverly Ellis. There is also a soundfile containing a recording of these two poems being read.Angel...
New Billy Collins animation
It's the weekend – and a public holiday across much of Europe – so here's another Billy Collins animation. In this one Collins reads his poem Walking Across the Atlantic with animation by Mike Stolz of Manic.
Chris Major is angry
For those of you out of the loop... Ian Tomlinson was a 47-year-old newspaper seller who, on his way home from work last week, became caught up in the G20 demonstrations in the City of London – and collapsed and died of a heart attack. So far, so sad but now...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
To Celebrate National Flash Fiction Day, Some Flash from its Director, Calum Kerr.
Smells as Sweet...
Andrea Holland – The Cafe Writers Norfolk Commission with IS&T
The Café Writers Norfolk Commission was established five years ago by the Norwich-based writers network Café...
Statement Regarding Recent Plagiarism
On Friday, US poet Charles O Hartman (current Professor and Poet in Residence at Connecticut College) contacted...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Nick Carding
in the dark it is night now and will be for some long time because a friend has come to live here...
David Pollard reviews ‘dying notes’ by Reuben Woolley
In what way can it be said, or indeed written, that notes die? Reuben Woolley understands that death...
Jean Atkin reviews ‘Reward for Winter’ by Di Slaney
Reading Di Slaney’s first full collection from Valley Press, I’m taken straight to where the smell and taste of...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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