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.

Gregg Dotoli

      Gone i want a spaghetti plot of your thoughts i need a spaghetti plot of your thoughts I must see where I cooled in your brain and never forget that elevator drop feel heart...

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Dan Bowan

      Sartre in the park.   It is October and yet I left home without a jacket This warmth is nauseating The pale orange horizon brings memory of sickly sweet Summers Come and gone...

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Diarmuid Fitzgerald

  * upturned boat wind whipped sand wipes it clean * from the train window concrete, more concrete … finally cherry blossoms * windy day — cleaning the mountain of litter ripple in the ferns *...

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R. E Hengsterman

    Him I’ve been many things over the course of my life, some good, and some bad. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said. Told lies I shouldn’t have told and pretended to be someone I...

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Miranda Lynn Barnes

  Hollow Years What carves away the insides? Here, inside the apple tree, each trunk  is rotted out, hollowed through. The emptiness kept growing when we weren’t looking. Now everything hangs...

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Poetry Picks

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

David Calcutt

      Further extracts from The Old Man in the House of Bone     There’s someone else in the house of bone, someone moving in between the silences, slipping through and around them, stepping over them on tiptoe, trying not to wake them,...

Marion McCready

  The Un-Mother The clouds of a new dawn whisper around me – or are they nurses? The blue firmament is a light-rattled ceiling; the lighthouse of the doctor shines above me. My body is a reef – it is growing from me. I have octopus arms and legs; this bed cannot...

Matt West

        At Morrison’s He tells me this is how it feels to come back from the dead; a jolt, like tripping over the raised corner of a paving slab, tasting dirt and grit and finding how strong gravity is. I tell Jim I need specifics I need specifics....

Julia Stothard

      Galleries Walking into the intense heat of a gallery, over-coated and dripping, expecting canvass to speak without the commotion of words I will either be stunned or unimpressed but invariably silent, appraising shattered faces, elephant dung or...

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.

Interviews

Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.

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