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.
Jean Atkin
Eliza Remembers Lordshill After Noon Snailbeach Eliza barefoot by the Chapel gate, and out of bounds and late. Her hand is on the warm iron finial. Ears full of the roar of bees on...
Sunil Sharma
Cages, urban, iron Deprived of the sky And the ground, Suspended in air A woman sits, in a Tiny balcony that doubles as a flower-bed In a high-rise, tenth floor, in the Vertical...
Ian Heffernan
Hunters in the Snow Pieter Breugel the Elder This is where the ground falls away And the hunters start their descent. Cold, tired and more-than-defeated They contemplate the...
Colin Pink
The White Rose (i.m. members of the White Rose German resistance movement 1942-1943) To think when thought is forbidden. To love when taught to hate. To resist the surge of the...
Maria Stadnicka
Landscapes with Buses On both sides of the frontline, people buy and sell goods, occupy central squares and the shops are open. Buses run on schedule. Business as usual....
John Grey
Urban Chaos Part 7 Over and over, problems take the political route. Politician on TV: yes there's urban chaos and we are seeing into it besides says another, it's not just...
Matt Duggan
Tenderness Drop a heart into a glass watch the glass start to expand place a lid or plate over its circular top; Hear the slowing beat pulsate allow oxygen to circulate. The...
DS Maolalai
Slim a ragged shirt and a chest like a broken toast rack. I am a tall man, well jawed, but skinny, not slim; there's a difference and I think it's a lot of in the way you carry...
Charlie Hill
On yoga and stuff The buff and mindful spend their time hefting dumbbells, honing Downward Dog. It is self-love of course, but also anti-human, a pitiful shot at spurning the lumpy...
Pete Green
Three tanka from Staithes This busy half-hour — a heron has come and gone, gauzy fog grown dense, rising tide of afternoon gained an inch against my boot * On the darkened beach,...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Freya Jackson
Cowardice & I did not even as she was screaming, 2 policemen between her holding her like the edge of a dam edging into her onto her but that’s not my business makes me think too much all the times I was - the woman on the wall was either...
Rizwan Akhtar
Birds for you They scrape and bill for answers I peck evenings for small words finches and robins temper tones They don’t flutter against my desires Or rise from foggy halos like sentences blurring intentions only stare my doubts with little eyes over ponds of...
Reuben Woolley
time songs 1. night is unstable sometimes it rolls over you in the dark & flattens a secret population this thing this incessancy is a traitor.it counts to twenty-four & starts again 2 there is no time counting i’m slowly becoming dead like all the others hung...
Tom Montag
Is Is what it is. This is not symbol. I am not moving ideas about these lines. The birds speak truth to the wind as plain as they can. It does not mean something else. It is what they say it is. Don't look for any- thing more. Tom...
Andrew Turner
The wolves were not invited but they came regardless their manners were dreadful never cleaning between their claws after meals or their teeth at bedtime but they displayed a certain charm when finally agreeing to leave placing a single golden...
And the Pick of the Month for June 2017 is Angelica Krikler’s ‘Nature’
Out of the mouths of babes. Angelica Krikler, who wrote and submitted her poem 'Nature' when she was 16, streaked ahead of her fellows on the shortlist and is IS&T's Pick of the Month for June 2017. Voters responded to the beauty of the poem and were engaged by...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
New haiga by Alexis Rotella
New haiga by Alexis Rotella
• Alexis Rotella is a regular contributor to IS&T. This photo was taken during her recent trip to Japan.
New haibun by Tish Davis
Champagne Music I slip the Lawrence Welk CD into the station and whisper, "Mom, our first sleep over." Black and whites change with the notes on his accordion, shadows across toes exposed at the bottom of the bed. The nurse now finished returns the blanket,...
New haiga
This haiga is a collaboration between Angelee Deodhar in India and regular IS&T contributor Pamela A. Babusci who composed the haiku.
Two haibun by John Irvine
Sheep or donkey?Sitting here at my PC at 5:48am, the sun yet to roll over the eastern hills, composing an obsequious email to the editor of some obscure online poetry magazine. Editors can be pernickety buggers given to flamboyant rejections, so pandering to their...
Two new pieces – one prose & one haibun – by Ken Head
Keeping Company With TimeStaring out of the photograph is the face of a ninety-one-year-old former railway worker who’s spent three decades caring for a clock. Not the family-heirloom, wedding-present kind that ticked away in pride of place on mantelpieces long before...
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.
Mandy Pannett reviews ‘The Bridge Selection’ by Nnorom Azuonye
These poems consider many themes, some light and tongue in cheek, others dark and grim. Underlying them,...
Maria C McCarthy Reviews ‘Petrol’ by Martina Evans
Imelda is caught in a thirteen-year-old’s world where sweets and a ‘vodka and Britvic’ are...
Ken Head reviews David Cooke’s ‘Workhorses’
In her editorial to Issue 163 of Envoi...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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