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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Poetry Picks

Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019

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 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 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...

Words & Images

Words with images previously published on the website.

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.

Reviews

Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.

Interviews

Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.

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