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.

Luigi Coppola

      Some Streets Some streets have doors that don’t open Some streets have curbs waiting to be bitten Some streets have curtains to hide the inside Some streets have cars with...

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Sarah Davies

       European Medieval History Looking up, it seemed every fear was given great stone wings I told someone once, this was a spacecraft in the gothic style, I told someone else it...

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Rebecca Gethin

      Jan Palach For months I’d imagined tanks arriving here wondered from which direction they’d arrive – up Haverstock Hill or down the hill from Golders Green? Demonstrators...

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Thomas Calder

      #3 (SOMEWHERE NONSPECIFIC) THE CURTAIN OPENS... Beside exterior laundrette, a young boy delivers Coffee Shaking like a wet noodle. PICTURE: Customers Sitting, All aligned in...

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Claire Temple

      A Waste Redoubled Holborn Library is emptying out, the children's library has gone, the stink buy accutane uk online amplifies as the books leak out and the tapping of keys...

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Jean Riley

      Hitting Home Jets scream into the valley.  I bend to cover you with whispers, spread finger-shields of bone but you stiffen and that I can't erase harm on waves of sound,...

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Harry Owen

      Prodigal How could we fail to embrace you? Yearning so much, so long, for your presence, it was your arid absence that became the norm, though of course it isn’t, could never...

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Charles Thompson

      Geese now Geese now racketing themselves to the south like a surprise storm and far to the south and thus now - from the painting - thirty bustling along with their quick hot...

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Ariel Dawn

      All Time Runs into this Holiday Inside the bottles are leaves, ribbons, letters I wrote while Rhys slept through morning. A grey cat leaps onto the glowing terrace and circles...

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Naomi Wood

      Objects I carry these objects with me From place to place. Fewer each time, I’m pairing back the dead weight. I’m losing layers of threadbare tropes. But each time I pack up...

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Poetry Picks

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

Ezra Miles

      Empire   The river has called for you. You step onto the light of day as you climb out from a granite tunnel carved from the mantle. The water has formed small grey pools in your feet and it soaks you. A pale spider is hanging from a hollow...

Rebecca Sandeman

    Epoch And I can’t can’t do the 7:45 wetness on the bathroom floor anymore I step in it And my socks are sad on the way to work. Conduit Road is more miserable having items which weep unexpectedly. I’m sorry that I break once every 28 days. It’s an...

Caleb Femi

    Rose of Jericho I am waiting for water; do not blame my Father though he made me a curling spine of dried roots. In a home not built for foliage he did his fatherly duty to pass on only what is necessary to survive. The night I thought I became a man he...

Louisa Adjoa Parker

    Those wild, pre-Brexit days after Josephine Corcoran Do you remember those wild, pre-Brexit days when immigrants filled our seas with their bodies, floated death onto our beaches forced us to see images of dead immigrant children while we were eating our...

Peter Watkins

    The pursuit of the absolute It emerges then disappears again; it come and goes; it’s there and then elusively it slips away again. Fuck it. FUCK IT! It is impossible you say, head in hands. It cannot be done. Nothing is ever finished, you’d need a...

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.

Sonia Jarema says 'come to me'

Come Come to methe ice whispered.Come to me –you can walk on water. I turned away and looked at the snow that had hidden the expanse of lawn and left powder shaken down one side of each of the trees making them slimmer. It had also dusted their bare branches...

Winter – and a new haiga

* Jeffrey Winke is a haiku/haibun/haiga poet and public relations counselor. Recent publications include That Smirking Face, a haiku-art broadside collaboration with Matt Cipov (Milwaukee: Distant Thunder Press, 2008) and PR Idea Book: 50 Proven Tools That Really Work...

12 Days of Christmas

All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.

The Ninth Day of Christmas

Eight Maids-a-Milking Lord knows what happened whenhe double-clicked on ‘Ornamental Milkmaids.’He swears he only ordered one. On Monday, eight cows arrived. They clattered down the ramp and he signed for them ( I was out at the time) then herded...

The Eighth Day of Chrismas

ResolutionHungover in the cow-fresh air, they leave their after-party friends to stuffing frosty cars with leftovers and sleeping children. She wishesthat they had a dog, or tartan travel rugs. The pub is mulled and mistletoed,ashine with polished warming pans...

The Seventh Day of Christmas

In Cold DimensionsI study the lives on a leaf: the little sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions A strange way to see.A stranger’s way. Her garden is an exhibitionwith lit rooms, masterpieces,and her rooms are parterres;the shape and size of their...

The Sixth Day of Christmas

Living YuleI was there, when men squatted on haunches 
to chip flint and weave webs of belief
 from seasons and circles of death and growth.
The stink of boar-grease stiffening my braid
and blue whorls whispering under my skin 
offered hope that darkness could end.I...

The Fifth Day of Christmas

Bad QuartoIt seems my Folio’s out of jointwith the version that you scribbled downwhile sub-plots drew the spot from kingsand courtiers waltzed on from the wingsor were bottled off by groundlings.My favourite scene? The woodland spreewhen, sappily, I carved your...

The Fourth Day of Christmas

Another Christmas   Last Sunday before Christmas. Blue sky, transparent afternoon moon. Plasma screens are flying off the shelves of Woolworths. On the hill, brown smoke billows from the hospital incinerator; body parts, foetal matter.   Dan Wyke28...

Words & Images

Words with images previously published on the website.

New podcast by Mark Waldron

Here's our latest poetry podcast recording, courtesy of PoetCasting.co.uk. The poem – Look My Love – is by Mark Waldron. Mark was born in New York and grew up in London. He’s been writing poetry since 2001 and his first collection The Brand New Dark was published...

New podcast by Byron Beynon

Here's our latest poetry podcast recording, courtesy of PoetCasting.co.uk. The poem – Mrs Davies, Verdun – is by Byron Beynon. Beynon is from Carmarthenshire but has lived and worked in London, Cardiff, Norway, France and Australia. Since 1999 he has worked as a...

Billy Collins animation: Budapest

* Here's another Billy Collins' animation. It's not that we're obsessed by him (although he does write exceptional poetry) but rather that he also seems to inspire exceptional animations. This one – to accompany his poem Budapest – is also by Julian...

New podcast by Steph Leal

Here is the latest in our Ink Sweat & Tears series of podcasts. Called Scar, it is by Stephanie Leal, a performance poet from the USA. She completed the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2007 and currently lives in Norwich, England. This...

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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