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.
Joseph Carrigan
Scrappedbooks China fragments sank into the ceiling pond. Drifts of weaponised magazines rose from the grass. Ochre splashed with primary blocks, exclamation marks the outline sharp,...
Rachael Smart
200.salute There’s a Russian word for the nostalgia of gone love. A noun. Razbliuto. It has the bite of a Corona taken easy or mouths scarfed in the throat of the wind, but it doesn’t...
Lynn Valentine
Milvus milvus Your eye is a citrine flash, better than any drone, fishing in the wind for small things. There once was a myth you could hunt dogs and lambs. Take a child down...
Bridget Khursheed
Standing on top of the National Museum of Scotland We find the roof garden. Its little patch of moorland, birches, heather so perfect it might hide grouse turd, quartz, even...
Stefanie Bennett
Soul Sister I take it, the crust Of the moment, One word At a time: Move it Cross country Past the livery Stable, the train’s Box-cars, all ‘A hoot’ On the half hour Siding...
Brian China
Coral Mother She was hard and soft, beach and rock, kids passed through like subatomic particles channelling dolphins, whales, sharks, tiddlers, tropical colours, grey and...
Duncan Richardson
coupling glass sponge silica home for shrimps entering when young and slim seeking food as they swell the shrimps cannot escape a perfect gift for the newlyweds. ...
Sanjeev Sethi
For my *Grand-Nephew In anticipation of your stopover I am dressing my deftness at gamification. Even if I flounder in arresting your attention, my toothless one, slay me with...
Hélène Demetriades
This vast heart of space Life condensed In a speck of bumble bee is vast; she bats herself against a pane of glass. I catch this fireball in a drinking cup and like a bomber jet...
Belinda Rimmer
Orchard No more greenfinch, no more treecreeper, no more sparrow hawk; hedgerows slashed to make way for roads. Orchards torn up for houses – confused woodpeckers still seek...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
And the Pick of the Month for November 2015 is ‘groundwater’ by Marcelle Olivier
We are pleased to be able to announce that November's Pick of the Month is groundwater by Marcelle Olivier. Marcelle is a poet and archaeologist. Her translations of contemporary South African poetry appear in the recent edited collection In a burning sea (Protea,...
Andrew Turner
My father’s watch My father kept his pocket watch trapped in a round, carefully imagined tin; unscrewing the lid constantly to be amazed by the way time would crawl into the dark corners and disappear. Andrew Turner has just begun to try to write poetry...
Wendy Pratt
Undone Unwrapped and warm again, laid still, but sleeping still; pulled up through the bulbs and windmills and worms and wood. Us, warped open on the seam. Love thickening along the wound. Time pulled backwards; an unruly child of years and hours and minutes,...
Marcelle Olivier
groundwater i will never be as innocent as i was then. as ripe as this root, as sound as a lock of mistletoe to its tree. i will never be as thirsty. i will never again be as near to gods. when i walk back into my phantasies, shoes shed, my palms sweetly...
JD DeHart
Secondhand He lived a well-meaning secondhand life, pants and shirt and soul a hand-me-down, ideas and thoughts the spitting image of someone else's until that day when old wares are thrown away, the growing becomes hard, and lips part to say something...
Clare Marsh
Sibling I helped my mother pick ripe gooseberries loaded with their bitter seeds. She straightened up rested her hand on her vast belly - my sun was blotted out. I saw my mother rushed to hospital in a screaming ambulance. Days later she came home with a...
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.
Fiona Sinclair reviews 'Inside the Brightness of Red' by Mary MacRae
Inside the Brightness of Red. Mary MacRae. Second Light Publications, 2010. £8.95.This is a posthumous collection of...
Angela Topping reviews Penelope Shuttle's 'Sandgrain and Hourglass'
Sandgrain and Hourglass by Penelope Shuttle, Bloodaxe Books, £8.95 128ppWhat I love about this collection is that all...
Book review – Bev Ellis reviews Attention Deficit
Attention Deficitby Nigel Pickard(published by Weathervane Press, £7.99, ISBN 978-0-9562193-5-0)This novel is...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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