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...

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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...

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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...

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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?...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

Blogs and news

Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.

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Reviews

Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.

Interviews

Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.

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