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.

Search the archive

Prose and poetry

Poems and prose published on the website from start to finish.

Marc Janssen

        Cold Night So Far Below Disinterested Stars The indecisive rain Moved dirt around on the red car hood The way it marbled Your thoughts about me. It is a black satin...

read more

Eloise Hendy

      blood lemon your love smells like lemons mine like a fishing line i catch in the throat i get tangled and have to be thrown far out and into the water you clean out wounds and...

read more

Suzannah V. Evans

    Hatfuls of Brass and Gold   “So, that was it, there it was, that was what she gave me, when I asked something of her, when I asked for something that would be beautiful, or worth...

read more

Derek Brown

      Douglas Dunn's Elegies A cold night in Kirkcaldy, November, Winds from the Forth examining the town. An old college building near the water, Gusts analysing the windows where my...

read more

Zoe Broome

      Don’t Blame Eve   I know that a storm is due. Dance with me on a tin-roof while you wait for him to grab you, snatch you, toss you like so much skip-rag. No, you won’t wait...

read more

John Vickers

    Oberwolfach   Travelling on a local train, Not knowing a colleague’s name, Inside the guard room on metal benches. I dream of fatherhood, One whose body never changes The beneath of...

read more

Antony Owen

      Lidice   On June 10, 1942, the German government announced that it had destroyed the small village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, killing every adult male and some fifty-two...

read more

Cliff Forshaw

      404 404 is “page not found”, dead link, the way the world forgets the things you did; its chain got twisted up, got oddly kinked, and all you’ve done’s undone, your thoughts...

read more

Amy Kean

    I put make-up on for the Deliveroo driver   Pornography implies this a fruitful strategy for lonely women. Often their husbands are out of town, but you could be anywhere. I put...

read more

Poetry Picks

Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019

Sue Finch

      The Red Shoes Never danced with a boy. Wanted to. Couldn’t flirt and risk the invitation. No rhythm. No chance. I imagined the red shoes would do the trick. Too impatient to save (Twelve weeks an eternity to me) I distracted him; the Saturday boy...

Matt Black

getting to the gig car full of poets, babbling and quibbling, noone wearing seatbelts because of the metaphor, noone knows  where they’re going because of the metaphor, one has to be home by midnight because of the  spouse, the woman with the big scarf is saying I’ll...

Rebecca Gethin

    Not yet a ghost A light still operates inside the phone box with its red paint flaking off the grid of panes. A corona of moths searches for an entrance.  Inside, a shroud of cobwebs  embodies the space, like a sketch of someone stood waiting for an...

Christian Wethered

      Blade Sometimes you can ride it, like in Texas when you put your foot down and we flew, the screen and mirrors all enveloping, sucking and flapping the horizons in its corners, and then just for a few minutes we were the vanishing point as desert...

Louise Warren

  Re-stringing the Boy It takes hours. We move from socket to socket unknotting his spine, the droop in his shoulders, those loose dangling hands. The way he came on stage the other day, just slumped in, hardly lifting his head. I had to jerk the main string...

Brett Evans

      Sloth on Fine Dining Sloth’s favoured position for eating is legs above head – not his own legs, of course - and being the slothiest of sloths he’ll lunch at the laziest of leisure; a real underachiever. Accomplishing more than fool-sloths, whose...

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

12 Days of Christmas

All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Words & Images

Words with images previously published on the website.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Blogs and news

Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Reviews

Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.

Interviews

Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.