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.
Tom Bennett
Travelling Light A balloon scuds through the train an ‘L’ it is or is it a ‘7’? Evasive though its wake is empty of pursuit and the door gives way courteously. In the second...
Susan Taylor
No One Expects Stars they're dead sharp like fossils or dance steps of snowdrops. Their chief weapon is surprise… lightness and surprise. Their two chief weapons are lightness,...
Mhairi Owens
Hippocampus At Corryvreckan, there’s an arm that reaches from a dark sea pit towards the strait’s surface. There it catches tides and throws them back, forcing surf that...
Matt Nicholson
Cerebellum (a secular prayer to the vacuum) Teach me to draw, to poach eggs, to bring a streak-free shine to every mirror in the house. Teach me to swim, bare, beneath the...
Rachel Burns
White Noise You are drunk singing downstairs and I’m reading a book by Deborah Levy in bed. I’m inspired, it makes me want to buy an electric bike and wish I had a friend who’d...
Ian Seed
Destination It was hot and dusty. I’d fallen asleep on the train and only woken up just in time to get off at the small country station, where I had to change trains. My...
Diana Cant
Bearing Gifts You visit us with gifts – whisky, a bottle of prosecco, flowers, bestowed with cheerful generosity; our horizons lengthen, you update us, upload us into modern...
Gary Jude
My glass-bottomed feet are happiest in water, especially the sea, and glow a deep aquarium blue. Little fish kiss the O of their open-mouthed reflections. On cold, clear nights...
Clair Chilvers
The book of death Each night I craft the perfect poem a device for sleep or when I wake in those dark hours to find the world a fearful place I think of rhymes and common...
Scott Silsbe
Red Lightning A sprawl of light takes over the night’s horizon. The authorities are quick to shoot down theories that it’s something otherworldly or problematic. There isn’t...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Paul Grant
There is something more Mostly now I want to Slit the throat Of every sunset Then stroke its cheap bleached hair And tell it Everything will be ok Sometimes This sadness is So sweet That all you can do Is smile As the tingle Moves all through you As you...
Jean Taylor
The Shape of the Gap I give you the gap in my body shaped like a conference pear. You might keep it in a silver box or else in your anorak pocket wrapped in a man-sized tissue. The surgeon who gave me the gap said I was looking down both barrels of a...
Megan O’Reilly
15th of April Saturday morning, I watch condensation drip down the window and steam rise from the brim of a blue coffee cup. Today marks a year since your death and I still sit at this same window, sip from a cup you gave me two Christmases ago....
Steve Xerri
Self portrait : diptych I It will do, the Polaroid's black- &-white : but a ground of sky-like azurite with aetatis suae XX lettered in gold would better suit this curly-head in starprint shirt, his life set permanently to May, cheek burnished...
‘In Her Bones’ a prose poem from Anne Ryland is our Pick of the Month for May 2018.
After a hard fought contest - it always is - Anne Ryland's 'stunning' 'original' 'vivid and unexpected' prose poem 'In Her Bones' is the Ink Sweat & Tears Pick of the Month for May 2018. And it is testament to Anne's skill that she brought the articulated skeleton...
Stefan Parker
Inside Your heart is a foot pedal on an airbed pumping away, as I feel your first kick at this late hour. My hand on the hillock; a creeper on a gravid marble sphere. Can you hear my voice inside that colloidal world? Was that a punch against the dark...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
Three haikai for the weekend
Here are three haikai (two haiku and one tanka) from three separate writers... Gray Day wet snowbird twitters watching as all turns to white hard to fly today by Mike CarsonSardine crammed and waterlessfar from sea's gentle gulletmy metal...
Three haiku from Patsy Goodsir
Three new haiku + a photo from regular IS&T contributor Patsy Goodsir who is just back from a holiday on Lanzarote in the Canary Isles...MACHER SUNSET Charcoal mountains sleepburnished by a lipstick skythe kiss of angelsFAMARA BEACH Blonde streaked cheap...
New haiga by Stevie Strang
* 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 to write …not including grocery lists.
A haibun for January
Good Morning, rain is on its way. A funny weather pattern has taken shape on this last week of January. Temperatures above zero for a few days. Just like November. February will bring something else. The fourteen day outlook calls for temperatures...
Two tanka for a Friday by Spiros Zafiris
they effervescein cosmic cauldrons – to leapwith frightful legs,these pangs of lightningalready gone ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ it must have been a roseto send the death rattle'szigzag bolt backhad it traveled one more instant,through my lips, I was...
New haibun: his brain was lollygagging out
Brain Was Lollygagging OutIn her mind, the world exists for one reason: To be saved. “Eternal” is an intellectual concept with substance. She attaches it to two words: salvation or damnation. “Irrigation?” – her grandfather once asked after her attempt to “witness for...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
The Third Day of Christmas
Worship The pilgrims watch us as we go about our work in the temple of shine. It is not yet the appointed hour and so they must wait in the greying snow and biting wind and, for now, but look in upon our preparations. You may think that cruel, that we are...
The Second Day of Christmas
Christmas DayBlackbirds here again,hopping across the lawn,signal that this isa day like any otherand all is right with the world –despite water,coming through the ceiling,and grandma directing my wife and daughter with her stick, with boxes to catch the drips.Back...
The First Day of Christmas
Reunion ‘Let his path be covered all in red, so Justice can lead him back into his home’ Clytaemnestra I Welcome home, husband. At last. Observe, I spread this, a red carpet at your feet. Greet your pretty children. Walk with me and watch me work....
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
New podcast by Helen Pletts
Here's the first of our new podcast series. The poem is by regular IS&T contributor Helen Pletts and was recorded in the Czech Republic, where she now lives. So, well done Helen for not only coping with the recording technology – but managing it in Czech....
Alistair has a plan – and we're waiting to be impressed
More topical concrete poetry comment by Chris Major – this time of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (ie finance minister) Alistair Darling's emergency budget plans...
Some Days – a new Billy Collins animation
* Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem Some Days with animation by Julian Grey of Headgear.
New podcast by Simone Mansell Broome
Here's our latest poetry podcast recording, courtesy of PoetCasting.co.uk. The poem – Of English Lawns & Bright Piazzas – is by Simone Mansell Broome. Simone read English at Sussex University and is now based in West Wales, living on a farm and running a...
New podcast by Steve Tasane
Here's our latest poetry podcast recording, courtesy of PoetCasting.co.uk. The poem – Wonderdog – is by Steve Tasane, a performance poet with a wide ranging repetoire. He has performed at the Glastonbury Festival Jazz Stage and The Barbican. He has also been...
New podcast by Simon Perril
Here's our latest poetry podcast recording, courtesy of PoetCasting.co.uk. The poem – Amplifier Worship – is by Simon Perril, a poet and collagist and lives in Oakham, Rutland. Poetry publications include Hearing is Itself a Kind of Singing (Salt 2004), New Tonal...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
Co-Director of Unthank Books, Robin Jones answers Ten Questions for IS&T
This is part of a series called Ten Questions in which IS&T talks to small presses. Here, Co-Director of Unthank...
Director of Salt Publishing, Chris Hamilton-Emery answers Ten Questions for IS&T
This is the first in a new series called Ten Questions in which IS&T will be talking to small presses. Here,...
News update – the Amazon ban
Amazon has introduced a form of censorship in its book listings – according to a statement the company has just issued...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Mike Rose-Steel reviews ‘A Fright of Jays’ by Marc Woodward
Marc Woodward is a musician, which is...
Isabel Rogers reviews ‘The Department of Emotional Projections’ by NJ Hynes
NJ Hynes’...
Sally Evans reviews ‘Abiding Chemistry’ by Susan Castillo Street
Writers of reviews often know more about...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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