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.

Gill McEvoy

      October Fourteen was the number of the bus that took me to St Cloud, the house at number fourteen in the square, a Georgian house turned into flats - fourteen occupants lived...

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Harriet Worrell

      Vulpes vulpes It began with an old shoe placed at my front door. A brown brogue, left, size 9. Scuffed at the toe, worn unevenly at the heel. I placed it on the wall at the...

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Roddy Williams

      Our back yard 1965-2011 I'd like a stop motion movie of this public statement of change One photo taken every day from the bus passing our back garden on its way to Relief...

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Pat Edwards

        Dance Perhaps it came after the unsteady standing, those first tottering steps into daddy’s arms; nursery tunes demanding a physical response, forcing me to shake and...

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Tom Kelly

      Rattling Memories For Margaret Henderson (Nee Cumisky) I went for you. You could never afford to go. Ireland was a dream of yours. In Galway’s Eyre Square, your voice became...

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Jane Lovell

      Shingle In time, he became shingle, spent his days shifting up the coast, piling quietly into the river mouth, buggering up the Harbour channel. Hulls of ships grated on...

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Sarah Wimbush

      Vixen I wait outside my daughter's boyfriend’s house. Ignition off. Radio low. I rarely feel my hackles rise at my desk, or in Tescos, but here, a flicker creeps into my...

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Poetry Picks

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

Deborah McClean

  Milk and Honey It's 22:37 and I look down and see you. You've had another hard day; I'm not surprised you look so sad. I'm sure you are thinking of the good old days; those days when you were idle; those days when you were framed in soft fabrics: lace and...


 Robert Ford

    Lobster tail Uncommon to find such a thing up here, beyond the exhausted seaweed, vacated mussel shells and limp trawlermen’s gloves in bleached out blue or yellow rubber, their fingers often present if somewhat perished; but there it was, cradled among...

Grant Tarbard

      Gingham Have you ever seen a scarecrow's babe? On a rough hessian teat nuzzling, mewling at the shadow of out-of-the-way crows, Death's hands in the sky, lunatics of dew’s drench. Poultices in the shape of water weep from the burdened old moon's...

Stephen Daniels

      cheap   this love was battered eventually it started naked with its scales shining and its eyes vacant now they are covered coated and ready   a flick of batter to test the temperature followed by a splash and disruption of fat to make...

Julie Irigaray

    Drunken Roses The curtains' psychedelic pattern is the only touch of sunshine in this flat. Beyond them, two artificial moons radiate tumours in the cemented garden and the city's carrot bricks are prison walls pinching the sky. Inside, heads drooping,...

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga

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

New haibun by Jeff Winke

The Leather Tassels on ThemGordon Johnson is an actuary. By day he plies hisconservative trade assessing and projecting financialrisks from natural catastrophes, mortality, andmorbidity. He wears the modern equivalent of the grayflannel suit: a blue blazer, cornflower...

New haiga by Rachel Green

* Regular IS&T contributor Rachel Green is a novel writer who will shortly become an novel author, but she starts every day with walking her dogs and writing poetry. Books of haiku available from www.leatherdyke.co.uk

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.

The Foxhole Manifesto by Jeffrey McDaniel

Time for another example of multimedia/e-poetry – this time The Foxhole Manifesto by the US poet Jeffrey McDaniel. The running time is just over 4 minutes and the animation is by Nick Fox-Greig.

Forgetfulness – an animated Billy Collins poem

When we set up IS&T, one of the genre we wanted to cover was e-poetry in its broadest sense including Flash animation. Check out this example - the poem is by the onetime US poet laureate Billy Collins and the animation by Julian Grey of Headgear - the piece runs...

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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