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.
Michael Estabrook
Mi Amigo We’re at the rental place at the beach. 3 AM I’m up reading waiting for the pain pills to kick in (back legs shoulders arms from fighting the waves and the woods) when...
Alok Kumar Satpute
Wisdom Once to receive blessings of wisdom to all from the God, a group prayer was organized by the people of all over the world. Being happy the God gave blessings of wisdom to...
Alice Willitts
Strategy i: surrender my heart is oily blue swallows, frantic to escape birds whose flight is a grace fall to earth one by one exhausted swift cockroaches carpet sorrow...
Jacob Parker
Day Trip It was in May, the weekend after we’d decided to separate, I took my girls to Weston-Super-Mare. To get them out of the house. It drizzled the whole day. We went on the...
Hélène Demetriades
Re-wilding The red beaded holly tree squats in mud blood fresh against bright Dartmoor blue eyeing me Wilderness is girthing her When I was born I lacked her stature I...
Dan A. Cardoza
A Wounded Hinge If it were simply a hinge a drop of oil would surely loosen any bind. Then an open shut or two more than likely would do. These brass patched places with worn pedicle...
Rebecca Gethin
Narrowing Fog inhabits the air so as I walk through cloud shadow I find another beside me, her breath condensing on my hair drawing me into the grey no-light that sprawls...
Beth McDonough
We observe this word, abscission turn fashionable, hang in air. Once botanists’ part-property, at least cased in scientific sights; now – in this most now of times – it’s ours....
Sue Spiers
Coupling with Jane Austen Even so. You would be surprised, although perhaps you had surmised, to hear how often I watched you, sometimes I was positive you knew how often I was on the...
Sandra Galton
Conjure There are no horses in the field opposite, only a pale stubble cut to the quick. No, there are no horses, but I can conjure them, their autumn coats, the brisk shiver of...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Anna-May Laugher
House Share Mice make themselves as thin as envelopes to fit under your doors. I am amused, until a mother mouse drags her deformed infant to the middle of the room. Bald, rosy, twitching on the floor. I stop next-door’s cat from hooking it away....
We’ve got ‘Your location’ by Jane Wilkinson as our Pick of the Month for May 2017
A definitive vote (unlike another significant, recent election) saw Jane Wilkinson's 'Your location' chosen as Pick of the Month for May 2017. Some of you fell a little in love with the poem, describing it as beautiful and evocative, enjoying its rhythm and...
Angelica Krikler
Nature Plants grow out of her eyes Because all she sees in him is the beauty of nature The chants she stops in her day to listen to The air she exhales And the mud she wipes from her feet But nature is a vicious cycle Two seas mix, the water...
Josh Ekroy
Theft is a winding but necessary route to the pinnacles of equality. To strip a flat bare is to fill it with light; objects usher in the dark. Few homes today are forgivable as the rank odour of my pervades them so burglary is purifying, an amicable...
Beth McDonough
Aegopodium podagraria, a Praise Song. Now, I’ll choose to love this bishop weed’s efficiency. I shall admire his knit-wire roots, tenacious crazing tangle- down to anybody’s Hades. I will hymn some centurion’s aromatic salad – grab that...
Anthony Lawrence
Difference The once-in-a-thousand-year-flood came and went. We listened as though blood were a tide our bedroom an ark. At dawn we understood the full extent of what had occurred: as there was no sun, we attended a critical mass in our...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
New taiga by Pamela Babusci
• Pamela Babusci is an American poet and artist and previous contributor to IS&T. She describes 'taiga' as made-up term for combining tanka with art, in the same way that a haiku + art becomes a haiga.
Two new poems by P-T Diep
TankaPine cones filled with snowlitter the feet of tall firspointing ever skyward,hairs on the back of the worlddraped with miniature starsFallingfalse weightlessness of F thrills, as branches breAk time stutters, turns, tumbLes ...
Two pieces for Remembrance Day
Yes, we are a day late but here are two pieces (one by Maureen Weldon and the second by IS&T editor Charles Christian) with a relevance to Remembrance Day on 11th November. Not so well known these days is that November 11th is also St Martin's Day (or...
New taiga by Pamela Babusci
• Pamela Babusci is an American poet and artist and previous contributor to IS&T. She describes 'taiga' as made-up term for combining tanka with art, in the same way that a haiku + art becomes a haiga.
New haiga from CarrieAnn Thunell
• CarrieAnn Thunell is a regular contributor of haiga to IS&T – she describes herself as "an ecology and peace activist, backpacker, nature photographer, artist, poet, and amateur landscape artist/gardener."
Three Sketch Haibun by Linda Papanicolaou
CHICAGO, SUMMER 2007: SKETCHES1.Trailing its long ribbon, a mylar balloon sails from a small park in front of the hospital, giddily dancing over the traffic lights and down the street, morning sun flashes on its lettering. No one chasing it. Did it get...
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.
Sarah Bower reviews ‘Killing Daniel’ by Sarah Dobbs
The first thing to be said about Sarah...
Beverly Ellis reviews ‘He Took a Cab’ by Mather Schneider
Cabby or Charon? The back-seat of a cab, anywhere in...
Sarah Bower reviews ‘Shi Cheng: Short Stories From Urban China’
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Our western image of Chinese...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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