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.
Órla Fay
La Complainte de l'Oignon Every few years another layer lost and it makes me sad, peeled in the kitchen, to know I am losing this game of host, trailing myself in serial...
Cat Campbell
Dependence The tree didn’t plan its shape. Each shoot budded and grew separately toward the light. The flock never plots its form. Each bird takes off and flies equidistant from...
Word & Image by Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
The plane tree entertains the circus of doves Stripped of spindly epicormic shoots, the now-knuckle-tree jabs her skeletal arms over the snapped stale breaths of pale,...
Jane Hertenstein
Kickstarter Jenna woke up and smelled the bacon and eggs her roommate was ruining on the stove top and retched. Wow, that was a surprise! She wadded up her waitress outfit abandoned...
Indy Clark
Firefly You see it first; Iridescent against the house, A song of light beneath the roof As twilight falls. We watch the dance, The bioluminescent signal A spark of hope; I...
Sam Smith
[sub]urban sprawl: night storage for commuters sacred monsters, knaves and fools crowblack the night comes flapping Shock! have walked into something soft (a perfumed corpse?)...
Lawrence Wilson
WP02 TLN it feels rather strange to say that I no longer have a car. Farewell to Olaf ancient Polo, seventeen and not in best of health. To fix the oil leak repair speedometer,...
Stefan Mohamed
Attempt at Self Portrait syntax puddle half-hearted marathon runner with piano key mouth flea the other fleas would rather not suck blood with hastily customised avatar for...
Paul Ings
Out There The new veranda is unfinished and unwalled but various chairs and a paint-splattered table are placed out there in unfettered spaciousness by impatience to savour...
Joseph Anton
Lullaby It was always a comfort When the mournful train horn Gave way to the thunder of wheels The nightly roar from the hollow Birch trees craning in behind the house To watch...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Santino Prinzi
When Stranded on an Iceberg When stranded on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, do not squint while the sun screams at you. Remember that somewhere it is raining, that there’s a tempest swirling, a tsunami rising. Even though your clothes are wet, stand up...
Susan Castillo Street
Under the Volcano, 23 June 2016 In the distance, Mt. Etna rises, summit veiled in smoke and clouds. Below, fields ripple out, fold into deep blue valley. I sit at a café on the square. Passegiata crowds surge and swirl. Two men strum plaintive...
Ali Whitelock
the cumquats of christmas past you hailed your taxi tuesday the eight–– eenth of february 2014 at four twenty seven p.m. i watched it approach swerve to the kerb its back doors fly open––if this was death i saw it crouched behind the wheel & jaded as...
Joanne Key
Mrs Winter Comes Home A whisker above zero, she appears on Slaughter Lane. Glass-winged in the glow of fairy lights, she falls to Earth as a dark, silk slip of a thing, drifting in, soft as baby breath. Poor lamb. Her body pools on the floor outside the...
Alexandra Citron
Let Streetview take you home for the holidays Hitching a white arrow up Saffold Way the trees are all too tall. It’s garbage day. The blue door to the old house stands ajar but should be orange and the street wider where in summer small feet ran over...
Russell Jones
Salt ‘n’ Oats This could help you live forever: warm the water in a milk pan, add your oats, stir in salt, let it rest. Take breakfast in the woods: listen to the birds, find a house ridden with hair. Test the beds. Should you be woken, run. Don’t...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
Feeling awkward – two poems by Bernardine Freud
Awkward eating, taken out to lunch by someone I meetfor the first time,someone I know I’ll like,want to like me.Eating with my pudding spoon,chorizo, braised celery,and things I don’t look atlong enough to recognisebecause I’m staring at himas if he...
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
New haibun by Mike Montreuil
MEDICATIONI was a super spy last night, thwarting evil deeds from the seat of my Aston Martin. The night before, I was making love to the most beautiful woman in world; a person way too rich for my blood. Yes, I have vivid and unrealistic dreams when...
Three haiku for winter by Lynette Shoup
white winterbranded by new snowsnapping windfallen branchesglisten in the sunwinter wakesageless watersin the breath of winterwait for a chance* Lynette Shoup says "In the past, my poetry has been recognized by the Massachusetts State Poetry Society and I have been...
New haiga by Alexis Rotella
* Alexis Rotella lives in the US and is a regular contributor of haiga to Ink, Sweat & Tears
New haiga by Ed Baker
* Ed Baker's bio reads...born 1941here 2008everythingin between...boring!
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.
James Naiden Reviews ‘Odessa’ by Patricia Kirkpatrick
A Poet’s Journey of Abandonment,...
Fiona Sinclair reviews Bethany W Pope’s ‘Crown of Thorns’
‘Ordinary lives are not for...
James Naiden reviews ‘Broken Gates’ by Ken McCullough
This poet was born...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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