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.

Simon French

      Fire You brought us unimagined warmth, roasted our arrow kill into the earliest carvery. The cave as ideal home. Trapped you behind glass, hoisted high on coasts &...

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George Neame

      Why Wyoming I spend a lot of my working hours daydreaming of Wyoming. I’ve never been to Wyoming, but I know the marshland smells prehistoric, and the foothills of the mountains...

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Anthony Watts

      Interrogation at the Womb Door (with a nod to Ted Hughes) Who goes there?  Body and Soul. Anything else to declare? Before you pass through the eye of the needle, You can leave...

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Kayleigh Campbell

    Devil’s bridge Follow me, tie your tongue and leave the words at the car. I know you want to say them but I need you to fill your lungs with my apologies, just breathe them in slowly....

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Mark G Pennington

      Easy This bed is gentle, soft, rocking. I am in utero. I lay upon the white ship, the sheets lap at my beard, easy living in the morning, easy in the afternoon. The bed is tied...

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Sue Rose

      The Parch Desert moves in. The coarse grain of swaddling skin loses grip as tributaries of blood, bones and their porous underpinning appear. This slow reveal of armature is...

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Bert Molsom

      Going out We need to leave in about an hour. He wants to get ready now we are going out. The cap and the coat, for him, are vital, they have to be worn. If we are going out. He...

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Poetry Picks

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

Madelaine Culver

      Run through the flowers white, on the water’s edge the little boat will take you to a headless woman pale beneath the moonlight arms outstretched     Madelaine Culver is a freelance writer and proofreader with a background in arts...

Finola Scott

      Wake up call you haul me from dream drifting snug in your tangled bed I hear your early-rise kitchen clatter I'm a lay-a-bed, day waster, sloth you remark dark dressed in the doorway I want our mornings to release day's perfume not this peat,...

Aishwarya Raghu

      A Poem about Frost Swan resting on an empty lake: white but for the lake. Blue but for the swan. Winter will set in from the leftmost corner of the lake. Eagle swan. I can no longer tell bird from bird. When winter sets in, the swan will be...

Ashleigh Davies

      Apollo In the leaner times it was a bread and butter supper, slaked with milk, perhaps on the cusp of the turn, the tang fizzing on the tongue-tip. In the fatter times, beef and dripping, the latter glossy, chalk-white and viscous as tart...

Stephanie Limb

    Pearl You say, ‘Hold on to me, I don’t want to lose you in the night. I keep waking up on my own.’ You push your feet between my knees, cling to my neck. My body doesn’t know a different shape to sleep in. I fold around you. Grit in my shell – wrapped in...

Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga

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

Mick Kulp

    * The octopus flashed Calm blue and brown, teasing me Like a fan dancer. * Pulse pounding, sweating, I dig in my pocket for The engagement ring. * The ruffian wind Elbows through dogwoods leaving Drifts of white petals * The singer wails out Para bailar...

Ian Mullins

    * top and search - patrolling winds shake down trees * abstract oak - a chocolate spoon hot-melts in milk * asthmatic head cold - your sneezes gasp for breath * crow ascending - lung shadow spreads its wings       Ian Mullins bails out...

John Hawkhead

* riding a pale horse up the needle to a vein slipping through shadows * another mottle on the back of her hand the slow IV drip * threads of dark crimson coiling through liquid gold sunlit catheter     John Hawkhead is a writer of haiku and other short...

Anna Cates

* old farmhouse wet snow falls on the backs of pigs * sun-bleached cattle bones a dung beetle burrows in the midden * shady forests swallowed whole by fire one charred acorn * waning rose an ant bears my burden * arriving from the first world I am an alien * the sun...

Nick Carding

      in the dark it is night now and will be for some long time because a friend has come to live here and I must learn to see him in this light before the dawn can be allowed again       Nick Carding is an Englishman now living in...

Pat Tompkins

  First Practice Welcome to Beginning Meditation. After I explain a few basic principles, we’ll start with a three-minute meditation, a sort of trial run. By the end of the course, you’ll be making a 10-minute practice part of your daily routine. Ten minutes?...

12 Days of Christmas

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

Words & Images

Words with images previously published on the website.

Dot Cobley

  The Fernery   Scales of glass, a crest of frilled iron, his baby tucked deep in shrubbery   could stagger up on stiff metal limbs as pier crystal palace railway station, steam  oil  sweat on its green breath, mouth a cave.   Pure folly, this...

Daniel Lehan

   Three Book Cut Up (2) Daniel Lehan: Former paperboy, choirboy, shop assistant, ice cream seller, chip shop manager, petrol pump attendant, pub caterer, post office worker, theatre usher, cleaner, leaflet distributor, front of house manager, t-shirt designer,...

Dee Rivaz

                          Woman Cursing the Moon (After Miroslav Holub: Man Cursing the Sea)   Someone just climbed to the top of the hill and started cursing the moon:   stupid moon, stupid...

Kevin Reid

Photo By Peadar O’Donoghue           A Birthday Treat and a Last Bastion of Love   I do believe you shouldn’t throw stones. And I don’t see the point in killing birds. If anything I’ve tried to save them.   At the City Gallery our...

Blogs and news

Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.

Reviews

Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.

Interviews

Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.