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.
Matt Merritt
Peninkulma The precise distance at which a dog’s bark dissolves into nothing. Much further, you might think, in the snow-soft forests of Scandinavia than some dormitory suburb,...
Ken Cumberlidge
Too late it becomes apparent that this is one of those poems in which the teasingly unresolved title doubles as the opening line soon after which, you find you've lost the will...
Sten Rod Ramkhur
The Room Laughed The room laughed. “I don’t know why people laugh" He said. "The man who used to sit in the middle there Well he hung himself last week. This is a serious...
Matti Spence
There are changes There are changes I would like to make and there are those that are made for me pay attention to your heart-beat which appears to happen by itself -...
Craig Dobson
Bad Biography His home town had glory holes poked through its park’s bog walls. Outside, a granny in a tartan coat rummaged bins and fed club-footed pigeons for hours. Old...
Mick Corrigan
No more ordinary mornings There are no more ordinary mornings when Greenland comes pouring through your letterbox and the chickens have stopped giving milk, when you don’t have...
Mark Totterdell
Realm From an upstairs window here at home, the double line of ragged hills looks flat as file dividers in slightly different tones of blue. The thrill of finding a wide realm...
Gill Horitz
About Breath we’re together round a small screen like I remember when you were young round the hearth but there’s no flame and the doctor is pointing with a red pen at a...
Nicki Heinen
Missive This is my dead letter my notebook of sifted seeds my kraken spilly of ghost thoughts In the middle of the night when it is soft and varnished as a boat’s hull, when the...
Simon Williams
Cat Call At five a.m. or maybe earlier the cat scratches like a black wolf to get in. One of us climbs out of bed, sleep blustering us to automatic. He jumps aboard. We settle...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
‘A conversation with my daughter about my brother’s suicide’ by Helen Calcutt is the IS&T October 2019 Pick of the Month
It is fitting that Helen Calcutt's 'A conversation with my daughter about my brother’s suicide' is the Ink Sweat & Tears Pick of the Month for October 2019. The theme of National Poetry Day in October was Truth and what can be more truthful, more honest than...
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
The Hidden Once they were hidden Forest covered the fear Drowned out the silence... Darkness stood on the way home The clock of the heart was beating in seconds Dash up there quickly, spread the arms Hair will fall down gently Hidden from...
Peter Daniels
Moments of Vision The ultrafuturistic train glides in, and the station crystallises round it, sparkling marble and sky blue daylight. We glide out, the track beneath us imperceptibly smooth. England is becoming Tuscany by stealth. The cities...
Carole Bromley
The Day his Father Left He had to write about yesterday. How could he, given what had happened? And how was it possible to write about anything else? His classmates’ pens were already moving, writing about the ordinary. His pen was still. He...
Niall M Oliver
Straight off the bat Straight off the bat, I reckon you know better words than me. Big juicy ones bathing in the pool of your tongue. Show- stoppers on each fingertip, pointing me towards the nearest dictionary. I'd say you keep a few snugged up...
Miles Salter
Profuse I have nothing to say about what happened. It’s been dealtwith. I’ve issued my apologies. Things didn’t turn out like I wanted: it was an accident, of course it was; the fish was being handled well. Esme gave me the money for the herring,...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
Ian Mullins
pollen count high – bee on a cherry coke splutters its wings * burr of phones – the soft hooves of the Glasgow train * slicing cellophane – three a.m cab hushes the snow * summer fall – ripe blackberries juice underfoot * pink frosting – slavered...
Christine Taylor
* the “bookettes” meet to discuss the latest gin * my students strive to earn an A-- lockdown drill * no more navy blue boy blazers wildflowers * freshly cut chrysanthemums another memorial along the highway * sticky willow another message to delete *...
John Hawkhead
* late again she calculates the arrival time of his first lie * small white butterflies she starts to think it might be too late * origami making a padlock of their certificate * John Hawkhead is a writer of haiku and other short...
Charles Tarlton
TAHOMA AND NIKKI FADE IN: MONTAGE OF SHOTS 1) Bright sun overhead in a cloudless sky. 2) Dying flowers in a dry garden bed. 3) Shimmering mirages on a desolate highway. 4) The Navajo-Nation Bank digital thermometer reads “108°F COYOTE a little...
Anna Cates
Innuendo steaming beef— hidden in a country song lady's patootie The songwriter didn't know how best to juxtapose the image and so chose innuendo, stars and asterisks, patootie metaphors, shimmering beneath the disco ball. The singer chuckles out...
Pravat Kumar Padhy
* lunar eclipse a moonflower on my way * abandoned bench-- shifting of shadow of an autumn tree * a seagull in its maiden journey-- sea to the sky * spider net-- the light captured by mistake * Pravat Kumar Padhy’s literary work has...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
On the Sixth Day of Christmas we bring you Helen Pletts & Romit Berger, Grant Tarbard, Z. D. Dicks
Street dog Soft fur, stroke fur in each and every fine hair your heat and life, best at quiet, knows ragged not. And in this hour, I plunge my hands into your fur and they are there. This. ...
On the Fifth Day of Christmas we bring you Cliff Yates, John Greening, Amlanjyoti Goswami
I’ve Just Invented the Tai Chi Sprout Stalk Form Boxing Day and I’m in the garden practising the Tai Chi Spear Form with the curtain pole that Andy found for me in the tip. The kids are watching through the window over breakfast. I’m just doing...
On the Fourth Day of Christmas we bring you Julia Webb, Joanne McCarthy, Karen Little
Christmas List Is this the dream we have had all year – the whole house smelling of burnt toast, the black and white cat sitting on the bottom stair chewing tinsel while the ginger tom looks on, a floor littered with screwed up paper, tights from...
On the Third Day of Christmas we bring you Alison Binney, Kathryn Alderman, Carole Bromley
Christmas Eve in Dad’s kitchen and now only I know which bits of Delia we follow, which we skip, and what The Dairy Book of Home Cookery (1968) still knows best. I know to find the stump-handled jug for the cranberry jelly, and why eight pints of...
On the second Day of Christmas we bring you Roberta James, Carol A. Caffrey, Maeve Henry
Christmas Cards I posted them. Piles of envelopes into a letter box alive with curls, mouth wide. I pushed them in, then skipped a beat, startled by the thud, that ricochet of drum and heart, before they settled, each envelope in wait, their flaps...
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Beth McDonough, Chris Hardy, Jane Burn
Walking to the Solstice I raise you a bunch of haws' tight fists, darkly reluctant to quit thorns. I compliment you in frosted drips, mash, sticky from orange-bright hips. I give you hard burgundy brambles never destined to grow soft or more ripe....
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Colin Campbell Robinson
from The Doors - the ghost variations Part 3 this is the end, my friend jim morrison 11. Here are double brown church doors with iron bolts and studs. Keeping out the heathens, keeping out the just. Realising he has no memory he...
Jane Salmons
Dummies We ride the escalators in pairs upwards past the plastic palms, the static rapids. Our flawless skin shines blue in the half-light, the smell of palma violets hangs in the air. We dare not speak, nor touch, for fear of waking the blinking eye...
Emily Wilkinson
Emily Wilkinson is an interdisciplinary artist and poet based in Shrewsbury. She works with collage, words, writing, paint, textiles and bookmaking. Emily has exhibited in Shropshire and Scotland, and was artist in residence at Wenlock Books in 2014. ...
Kevin Reid
Victorian Sisters I. Hardy. Well preserved. She mothered them. They found her alone. The rose still kind on her lips, olive still ripe on her skin. It was winter. II. Her fun faded. Her shadow grew bolder than her former self. Pale and...
Word & Image by Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
Reconnaître I want to remember the way back. It seems Orion has the compass' foot, Swinging his other leg out into the dark With the confidence of a man who walks on stars. I use the skills of the corncrake tonight. I need to remember in the...
Word and Image from Michael Bartholomew-Biggs and Howard Fritz
Take Two After Howard Fritz A flock of geese migrating, startled by a minor earthquake, interrupt a couple’s tilted tête-à-tête. Her headscarf’s pink and contrasts with the drink she clasps – a red Cinzano he’s just bought her. With his...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
‘Frequency Violet’ by Kate Edwards is Highly Commended in the 2018 Forward Prizes and appears in the ‘The Forward Book of Poetry 2019’
We are beyond excited to be able to announce that Kate Edwards' poem 'Frequency Violet', which charmed and delighted...
UEA FLY Festival 2018 Competition Winners 11-14 yr olds – Amelia Jones and Wilfrid Watson
More superb winning entries from UEA's Festival of Literature for Young People, this time for the 11-14 year old age...
UEA FLY Festival 2018 Competition Winners 15-18 yr olds – Megan Leung and Lauren Murray
Ink Sweat & Tears once again has been a proud supporter of the Poetry Day at UEA's Festival Of Literature for...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Melissa Todd reviews ‘On Watching a Lemon Sail the Sea’ by Maggie Harris
I had the luck to watch Maggie Harris launch this collection at Tongue Punch, the Tom Thumb theatre’s...
Pat Edwards reviews ‘Rowan Ridge’ by Chris Kinsey
I should start by saying that, although I love being out walking in wild places, I am not especially...
Nick Browne reviews ‘tutti frutti’ by Konstandinos Mahoney
Konstandinos Mahoney’s debut collection fizzes with joie de vivre. Though it doesn’t...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
A poem and an interview with Katharine Duckney, the 2013/2014 recipient of the Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia.
Gamete When you talk about the children you’d rather have with the future instead of my...
A poem and an interview with Jennifer Grey, the 2012 recipient of the new Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia.
Seven Conversations with the Undertaker I You turn the lights on when you come home: tobaccoflame,...
Helen Ivory answers six questions about editing IS&T
Here's a little interview I did for blogger Jim Harrington about editing IS&T :...