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.
Abegail Morley
Accidental Yesterday I forgot you entirely ‒ well almost. I forgot how you died at least, and today I realise I might have, in error, sliced the roots of the rose you love, and...
Alex Eastlake
I'd Never Seen Her Like That Before The building was a place of shuffling: slippers, cards, and mortal coils. It was stiflingly hot in the day room, and the sun...
Ian Seed
Mauvaise Foi They instruct me to walk from the skyline to the centre of the city, just as I did years ago. The film they made of me then has faded to the point where it...
Mark Connors
In walks Randle He tells me his name is R P McMurphy. He has a pleasing air of dissidence but bears no resemblance to Jack Nicholson and Hollywood stars don’t have Leeds...
Stefano Bortolussi
Patio Writing Did I not see the old sign lurking in the novelty store of my mind? EPIPHANIES XING, it warned, or it could have been a promise — yet I paid it no heed, and kept...
Carolyn Oulton
Hop Picking Dickens sees bodies wet in the hedges, hop dust is believed to cure consumption. Eden Phillpotts, writing in 1916, starts with sunshine and deft fingered girls. By...
Jeremy Young
Return They used to hang bodies over the black-water creek; picked bodies of picked men, their entrails pulled by the birds in greedy jerks. The dead glass eyes watching over...
Amanda Oosthuizen
A Concert at the Doge’s Palace with Fans I’m chased by airbnb on facebook, instagram, twitter, Ebay, there is its fluttering gif, checking me out, even on booking.com, which...
Mike McNamara
Hinterland Man outside in the dark. She looked the same age as her mother. Spider in the sink. You remind me of no one. People who shouldn't be in prison. A phone call and the...
Miki Byrne
Yellow but Moreso How odd that flowers glow. Flash that acid-bright, lens-scratching flare that sears eyes, draws drivers to turn heads and me to stand and gaze. It’s too...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Martin Stannard
The Houseplant Advisor Following my own old advice I have put the first part of this, i.e. the part that came out first, at the end or, to be more precise, near the end. And it's not always first idea first place though often it can be if one is able later to...
Rose Scooler (translated by Sibyl Ruth)
Smugglers in memory of Frau L. This blanket of dark; perfect conditions for our latest trip to the siding together. A woman can’t see what’s next to her nose as we clamber down, clutching bags and each other by the elbow. Mind out, it can’t be far from here. Shush....
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
The Homewrecker and His Pun She has high hopes for her white sauce this Christmas. The roux glistens from the wash and slap of milk, as she lightens it a ladle at a time. Her veins grow taut on her forearm as she beats the buttery yellow mixture. Droplets hit her skin...
Stephen Daniels
Time of goodwill The elf on the shelf won’t stop staring we bought him from marks & sparks and he seems to turn a few degrees each evening I first noticed on the 5th December when his glare moved towards the newly constructed tree we got from b&q But lately he...
Rachael Smart
Waiting At Swanpool the sand is Demerara sugar a dark heart floats: cocoa on a cappuccino scurf. Out there, the horses break relentless, Shire hooves kicking up pasts. Fairy lights string the ships in, a bistro siren big on gratuities and gulfweed. The sea has...
Christian Wethered’s ‘Blade’ is our Pick of the Month for November
Maybe it was the sense of speed, the need to leave it all behind and yet remain 'weirdly still in the centre', but Christian Wethered's 'Blade' raced home to be Ink Sweat & Tears' Pick of the Month for November 2016. 'Blade' is one of IS&T's entries for...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
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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.
Emer Gillespie reviews Abegail Morley’s ‘The Snow Child’
There is a softness at work in Abegail...
Julia Webb reviews The Range-Finder’s Field Glasses by Graham High
Many of the poems in this collection, rather than looking outwards as the title implies, are a focusing inwards – a...
Ken Head reviews ‘Asterisk*’ by Paul Munden (Poems) & Marion Frith (Photographs)
Smith / Doorstop Books ISBN: 978-1-906613-47-1 (hbk) £12.95 69pp This delightful and beautifully produced...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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