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.
Carole Bromley
The Day his Father Left He had to write about yesterday. How could he, given what had happened? And how was it possible to write about anything else? His classmates’ pens were...
Niall M Oliver
Straight off the bat Straight off the bat, I reckon you know better words than me. Big juicy ones bathing in the pool of your tongue. Show- stoppers on each fingertip, pointing...
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 &...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
Miles Salter
Profuse I have nothing to say about what happened. It’s been dealtwith. I’ve issued my apologies. Things didn’t turn out like I wanted: it was an accident, of course it was;...
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...
July’s Pick of the Month is ‘He grows’ by Maxine Rose Munro
Voters loved the spareness - 'concise and succinct' - and 'the absolute enormity of restlessness conveyed' through the poem's structure as well as its language. So for these reasons, and more, the excellent 'He grows' by Maxine Rose Munro is the IS&T Pick of the...
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.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Laura Davies, Marc Woodward and Debbie Strange
Spinning tops in Bethlehem Pa was keen to be rid of me gave me the little boat just a board really told me to enjoy myself. Ma said I looked like a walnut all bundled up on half a shell. Me and the other kids out on the lake sliding on the ice spinning...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas we bring you Terry Quinn, Mick Corrigan and Maggie Butt
Resolution don’t fly don’t drive vacuum regularly concepts my dog can’t follow because, well, she’s a dog and I’m human, capable of reason even, especially, after three pints on New Years’ Eve though sometimes the harder the resolution the easier...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas we bring you Josephine Corcoran, Grant Tarbard and Rosie Miles
New Year’s Day Pantoum, 3am When the singing in the street has stopped I dream the year in fields Cowbells tip as baubles drop Each hoof returns me to a kissing gate I tramp through fields of years My footprints waiting in the mud Each thud...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas we bring you Tom Kelly, David Charles Gill and Sarah Watkinson
Deluge at the Angel of the North Rain petals the car windscreen, carnations appear near-translucent as if holding the world’s tears, takes them with dignity, asking for more as they fall on concrete and are lost like the past I meant to call. The air is...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas we bring you Bobbie Sparrow, Frances Browner and Mike Gallagher
Mistletoe There were men with fat wallets in our Christmas eve kitchen they sat with legs spread hands in pockets caressing car keys their laughter competing with Frank Sinatra on vinyl and the clink of ice in Gin they would see two roads on...
On the Seventh Day of Christmas we bring you Geraldine Clarkson, Alexandra Citron and Jay Whittaker
Through Sludge to Nirvana Let us go sludging then, the sledges put away, the snow a dirty sorbet over city streets and suburban hills. Let us sludge to our hearts’ discontent, Mr Frost tweaking our toes in spite. Let us manufacture brief heat as...
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Word & Image from Helen Pletts and Romit Berger
The winter-night-song of a Fenland home for Jack The chimney takes the note of sorrow Down a brick gullet, Tied at the...
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,...
Word & Image by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs and David Walsh
A sleep-trapped world could twist itself to other worlds we’d never want to meet; to worlds we’d run from if we met them; worlds in which we’d look at water fretted into gooseflesh by fine rain and ask what...
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.
And our Pick of the Month for April 2017 is David Subacchi’s ‘Cross Country’
More than 250 of you voted - a record for us - leading to a sprint finish that saw 'Cross Country' by David...
And the Pick of the Month for March 2017 is ‘Stranger’ by Jessica Mookherjee
Our poem for International Women's Day, Jessica Mookherjee's 'Stranger', has been voted as the IS&T Pick of the...
Pick your Pick for March 2017
Once again it is time to vote for our Pick of the Month so spare a few minutes away from deliberating over the...
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Amit Shankar Saha reviews ‘Love’s Autobiography: The Ends of Love’ by Duane Vorhees
Duane Vorhees’s Love’s Autobiography: The Ends of Love comprises of selections from The Many Loves of...
Pat Edwards reviews ‘The Healing Next Time’ by Roy McFarlane
Before I embarked upon writing this review, I had only read the words on the page. However, recently I...
Anna Saunders reviews ‘&’ by Amy Kinsman
Dylan Thomas believed that fine poetry is marked by words that ‘lift off the page’ and a...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
What makes writers tick – WN Herbert answers IS&T's questions
Seven QuestionsIn this series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process.1. Where do you...
What makes writers tick – Roddy Lumsden answers IS&T's questions
Nine QuestionsIn this series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process and craft.1. Where...
What makes writers tick – Novelist Ashley Stokes answers IS&T's questions
Nine QuestionsIn this series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process and...