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.
Nick Carding
In this room You walk in here (if you can walk) and see the faces turning eyes sliding over yours slipping away assessments made a future told in indifferent glances. You walk...
Kenneth Pobo
Sixth Grade My first man teacher, first research paper. I used an encyclopedia. “Spain.” He blamed me for the 500% increase in juvenile crime— I said I’d rather study American...
Luke Kuzmish
fourth step “made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves” my first fourth step on the porch of the halfway house out in the country 40 men for four months smoking...
Neil Flatman
Ear Worm (2018 ABC) What keeps me awake at night: tumble-drying in the warm utility of the mind, rotating with the work shirts and her unforgiving thongs is not the crises of...
Glenn Hubbard
Tunnel The road runs below the river lengthwise, and it’s hard to get your head around as you drive along sub-aqua, going with the flow. No-one jumps when a frog flops onto the...
Mark Connors
Not again You haven’t left the house all week and blame the flu, but something else has kept you in, cocooned in tog of duck feather and down, books on your lap, a cat and dog...
Anna Saunders
Night Crawler What a smashed glass heavens for her glossy body to break out into. Her corrugate, limb slithers her head emerges from black like Orpheus, leaving her tail - like...
For World Poetry Day: Geoffrey Heptonstall
from Shakespeare Variations The Mistress of Cawdor Her determined hand feels the stones. Their strength is in the coldness, or so she has learned from life. She has sought the...
Steve Komarnyckyj
Spring is icumen in For JK I called your name And the goldfinches twirled ribbons Of song Scissoring the air A robe Of silk Of fire Emptying their hollow bones of music...
John Kay
Polling Day I watched the way you fogged up our front room, filling the ash trays and drinking dad’s whisky, (when it wasn’t even Christmas). I heard the way you wrote off the...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
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. ...
David Riley
Bit Parts I want to ask you, do you think we’re in a film? If we get our lines wrong will someone step out from the Golden Mile, put us back on track - though they haven’t done yet - the director’s a secretive sod. You smile. I like it when you...
Roddy Williams
Fish in the hospital the fish man told me secrets of life and catfish we watched malawis in a brief feeding battle while the catfish lazed nonchalant fin frond easing like giants through the desperate young crowd the catfish grow big from...
And our Pick of the Month for December is ‘the cumquats of christmas past’ by Ali Whitelock
All you want for December's Pick of the Month is 'the cumquats of christmas past'. This strong and beautiful poem by Ali Whitelock had a profound effect on the voters and, for many, left a powerful impression long after reading it. It was, quite simply, an...
Dan MacIsaac
Catbird Dumtella carolinensis Gray pretender samples beats from spring peepers and circus jays. Coy poacher salts its song with crow ratchets and blackbird rasps. Droll plagiarist cribs calls from silken oriole and...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
New haibun by Anne Brooke
The secret smell of lemonsThe road before us darkens. The shadow of your body next to mine as we walk together. Only the rustle of the leaves. The breeze whispering me to safety might be the sound of your voice. Between us lie all the words we cannot say, although now...
New haiga by Alexis Rotella
* Alexis Rotella is a regular contributor to IS&T.
New haibun by Jeff Winke
Enter a Jet-Black RoomMadness has no schedule. It can be standing at the busstop, but the bus either comes or it doesn’t. Madnessmay wear a trench coat – tan I think – with epauletsand that belt that no one knows quite what do with.But then again, it could be wearing...
Seen at the gym
This is based on a recent real-life observation at a gym – IS&T editor Charles Christian wrote the haiku and then asked concrete/calligram specialist Chris Major to come up with an illustration...
New haiga by Pris Campbell
* Pris Campbell has published her haiga and free verse in numerous online and print journals. She has three chapbooks out, the most recent is Hesitant Commitments (Lummox Press). She lives in the greater West Palm Beach, FL, with her husband and a cat who sits on her...
Two haibun for Christmas
Well I don't expect anyone else to be working today, so here are a couple of haibun for the Christmas holiday season that I finished recently...TWO HAIBUN FOR THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYSby Charles ChristianShimmering in gold, two little angels – halos askew – frolic on...
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.
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Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
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Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Fiona Sinclair reviews ‘To Mick Jagger, Other Gods, And All Women’ by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
The poems in this collection are densely packed with ideas and imagery. They are generally in a block form...
William Bedford reviews Andrew McMillan’s ‘protest of the physical’
I’ve woken up with protest of the physical running through my mind. McMillan has a voice which surprises you, and a...
James Naiden on Gill McEvoy
The Plucking Shed, 2010. Cinnamon Press. Rise, 2012....
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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