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.
Graham Clifford
Recognising Homo Erectus In the British Museum with skeletons you can’t get away from the memory of the family that all live in one room. Bunk beds and camp beds and the illness...
Stephen Lightbown
Wheel 1. I watch another sci-film. Deep space travel is a thing. The wheelchairs still look like they were bought in 1982. 2. We are all the same. The greatest lie ever sold. It...
Jason Monios
Tattooing Ourselves at School Do you remember the day we tattooed ourselves at school? We huddled within our homemade shelter, lidded desk unfolded before us. Our skin cut by my...
Gemma Harland
Possession You have stolen my ears and filled my mouth with ash. My hands and feet are your servants running errands through shifting labyrinths, according to your whim. On...
Vicky Sharples
Just Another Human-Interest Story So we were fucking, right? Or maybe we’d just finished draped about like Tristan and Isolde twisted sheets casual genitalia London’s...
Susie Wild
How Much Sickness Are We Talking, Exactly? For Ben For we’ve already had more than our fair share, fevered and sweaty in our whirlwind love, and are you sick of me yet, darling?...
Shaun Hill
raised in the wrong ways I’ve never been any good at fire-safety because I was raised to be a sacrifice by men who explode & the word belief by women who bleed one way or...
John Sweet
poem for the fine art of immortality spirits larger than the summer sun and how high were we flying when we got the news about cobain’s death? how fast were we driving trying to...
Sam Hickford
The Dulcimer-girls (for Coleridge) (Oh, and the Dulcimer-boys) they're the ones making the bloody noise banging on those lovely instruments on an Autumn night at 3 A.M and it's...
Alex Josephy
Therapy Take thistledown, hold it in the bowl of your palms. Feel it tingle like Spumante. No, it can’t mend your heart, but it will float you to the surface of your skin. A...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Bridget Khursheed
Standing on top of the National Museum of Scotland We find the roof garden. Its little patch of moorland, birches, heather so perfect it might hide grouse turd, quartz, even Tunnock wrappers. A mountain peak handkerchief picnic-pack pooled until...
Susan Richardson is the IS&T Pick of the Month poet for March 2018
At Ink Sweat & Tears we normally would be less than sanguine about 'Letches' receiving the honours but when this refers to Susan Richardson's 'powerful' 'vivid' 'amazing' poem which had such 'relevance' and has been voted by you as the IS&T Pick of the...
Brian China
Coral Mother She was hard and soft, beach and rock, kids passed through like subatomic particles channelling dolphins, whales, sharks, tiddlers, tropical colours, grey and sombre, skin cut and skin kept in trauma; hair and loneliness sucked into...
Belinda Rimmer
Orchard No more greenfinch, no more treecreeper, no more sparrow hawk; hedgerows slashed to make way for roads. Orchards torn up for houses – confused woodpeckers still seek dead-wood and bug. On a single patch of grass in the midst of brick and...
Marie-Françoise de Saint-Quirin
Wildlings My wildlings leave tokens of love scattered like breadcrumbs, then shriek and howl to scare away the birds. He offers me bouquets of broccoli - fistfuls of Brassica from a moss flecked giant. She wraps me in sapling limbs and sings me songs of answerless...
Karen Hodgson Pryce
Blind Eyelids still sewn, wild kitten rabbit dip-hopped across our path: where mum, what eat, who there. In the field, crow blew at a hankied beak, crossed its legs, cawed bone pretended to read the Gazette. We pondered...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
New haiga 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 http://ugateamunited.com/online/diflucan/ poetry. She has also started 'tweeting' an early morning haiku from her Twitter...
Jeff Winke is having a heart attack because
Micro Heart Attacks BecauseI’d gamble my last buck, he said, that she’s got afield guide stashed in that backpack. We couldn’t helpbut overhear her whiny monologue about hummingbirds.“They’re dropping from the sky, every last one of them– heart attacks.” Her...
Four haiku by Eileen Sullivan
Pleasuring Earth yields to fingersPenetrating to place aMorning glory seedUnfoldingPeonies thrust pinkAnd purple buds that throb fromSpringtime’s warm...
Jac's on the road again
Road trip through Utah Snow sketches the mountains, shading the Wasatch into monochrome, grey clouds crest the summits. Driving through valleys stretched between ranges, earth turns from dun to red tufted with yellow. A falcon soars. Rivers of...
New haiga by John Irvine
* John Irvine is a regular IS&T contributor – and the editor of the new Anomalous Appetites anthology mentioned earlier this week.
Mike Montreuil's been filing his tax returns
Money Well Spent Last night, I tried doing my tax return. I figured that since I was a pretty clever guy, I could manage the feat in a couple of hours. The first page was easy. I know my name, address and date of birth. Writing down what I made on some of the...
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
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Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Chris Major says "Just say no to drugs"
• Christopher Major is our favourite concrete poet.
Concrete comment by Chris Major
• Christopher Major is a regular contributor to IS&T
Easter – a concrete poem by Chris Major
• Chris Major is a regular contributor to IS&T.
Two new works by Deborah Gordon
The TigerThe Paper Clip MenSlightly bentAnd – spent aroundThe edgesThe paper clip menDance – wildly onThe ledges. • This is Deborah Gordon's second appearance on IS&T, she says "I began writing at the age of seven and since then have never really...
Two new concrete poems by Christopher Major
Regular IS&T contributor Chris Major starts off the week with two highly topical concrete poems...
P.A. Levy reads a Victorian novel
Victorian NovelI first saw you half way down ...
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
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Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
David Cooke reviews Maitreyabandhu ‘The Crumb Road’ and Terry Cree ‘Fruit’
The Crumb Road is a debut collection from Maitreyabandhu, a Buddhist priest who was born Ian Johnson in 1961. The...
Ira Lightman reviews ‘The Pustoy’ by Philippe Blenkiron
This is a...
Martin Noutch reviews Peter Daniels’ translation of Vladislav Khodasevich’s ‘Selected Poems’
The lover of poetry...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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