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.
Julian Dobson
A Torteval greenhouse You’d hardly think this structure could stay up. A rabbit darts from bramble cover. There should be first buds now, sun catching hairs on shooting stems. A...
Sophia Nicholson
I didn’t really want you to touch me but I let you It seemed polite. Talk to me. All my longings are floating in front of your eyes. I want you to have laser surgery to tell my...
Joseph O’Callaghan
Departure This is the last voice singing my love has gone my love has gone to the great silence of the animals and trees Joseph O’Callaghan is a lawyer and poet,...
Brian Rihlmann
Brick by Brick how tough a wall you can build from bubbles they stack like bricks and solidify into something you couldn’t break with a sledgehammer when you pick up the phone...
Reuben Woolley
it’s cold outside & burning worlds fall you know see a sky a full collection i made & didn’t you sound a sad & bitter i said was there ever a further mile or other...
Helen Kay
NIMBY and the Supermoon 2018 The window by her pillow has the best job in the house: it sneaks in day to kiss her awake to a tail-thumping heart. Curtains slice a piece of...
Sue Birchenough
overnight to london footnote: this tool does not provide fight in a nail salon on youtube (sings) moon river, wider than a mile ledged on a window sill......yeah...
Setareh Ebrahimi
Galloping Horses We caught a moment of your underwater world. Galloping horses, the midwife said. In there there’s weird fishes and a submarine with a rotating light looking for...
Grant Tarbard
extracts from dog 4. Dog is an amateur astronomer, I feign interest, he dictates the curvature of the Earth....
Carolyn Oulton
A Moment to Tell You The last few ends of rain wear out on a window. A bird with no reason to stop rushes past wet leaves, the many colours of dust sagging. Even the grass is...
Poetry Picks
Our favourite poems and ‘best of’ chosen from each month between 2007 and 2019
Avril Joy
Aztec Love Song for Uprooted Flowers I carry them to your house on my back, uprooted flowers. I am bent double with the weight of them, of women torn from the soil, their roots mud stem and sepal crushed I carry them. I carry their scent, the...
And April 2019’s Pick of the Month is ‘Vital Signs’ by Emma Baines
Sometimes when there an abundance of excellent poetry to chose from, the IS&T Pick of the Month is the one that has the most power to move voters and so it is with 'Vital Signs' by Emma Baines. When you read comments such as 'the most beautiful, heart rending poem...
Tristan Moss
Origins She would not have the mini bag of Haribo, even though she loves them, because they had been handed out in her classroom for the birthday of a boy she did not like. She’s going to hold grudges which eventually will hurt her, or hold the...
Harriet Jae
Bid for Freedom If I could gain the freedom of my mind, my God! I’d map its streets out like a town and then explore those alleyways that wind that never could be charted or pinned down. I’d race full tilt to scale its highest towers then leaping...
Clementine E. Burnley
Because we have few means, of dealing with the night, a door crashes open. Closes. with a woman standing barefoot at the airport, in pajamas and handcuffs with isolated instances. Rogue police officers have never been isolated, or dealt with in...
Stephen Lightbown
Wheel 1. I watch another sci-film. Deep space travel is a thing. The wheelchairs still look like they were bought in 1982. 2. We are all the same. The greatest lie ever sold. It is funny how different being different can be. 3. It is estimated...
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga
Haibun, Tanka, Haiku, & Haiga reviously published on the website.
M. Kei
five tanka bomb threat at the Wal-mart— customers and associates shivering under the autumn sky kisses like bruises and the dark shadow of memory waking at my accustomed hour, a dream of rain still damp on the bark of...
A Haibun from Matthew Paul
The Great Storm So the three of us are sat there like Compo, Foggy and Clegg, on the trunk of a storm-wrenched oak between Gallows Pond and the sugar-maple plantation starting to turn; sharing a joint and genial nonsense. Mike relates what happened when...
Richard Thomas
Five Haiku summer air thickens two fruit bats make love under the streetlight numb about love the honeybee rejects its first flower first spider on the moon - he on my yellow bathroom wall Roman arch - an old...
Roberta Beary
bringing up baby again she falls. but nothing's broken and she seems okay. still i go a little crazy. i look around for a nurse. then grab my phone. the big screen is turned up super loud. as usual. she tells me to be quiet and points at the movie. an...
Haiku from Padrika Tarrant and Virginie Colline
* My hat can keep out evil and radio waves, silver foil and wool. Padrika Tarrant’s novel The Knife Drawer was shortlisted for the 2012 Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. Her second book of short stories The Fates of the Animals will be...
Leonid Storch
Haiku The sun’s a God’s button. Perhaps at some point He’ll come back to pick it up. * * * March. Birds are singing. I too would like to sit beside them and I’d sing But I’m afraid the branch would break. * * * At midnight when I left, it rained....
12 Days of Christmas
All the poems from our regular 12 days of Christmas feature.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Terry Quinn and Emma Simon
On January 3rd I will pause as I usually do before cracking the hard cover and checking whether my birthday falls on a weekend and then some random stuff like how many cubic centimetres equal a cubic inch or the currency in Sweden and so meander...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Neil Fulwood and Mick Corrigan
Smokeless Zone Without chimney pots the sooty mythology of Father Christmas would be written out and B&E escapades redefine Santa as cheap housebreaker. Milk and biscuits would be daubed with anti-theft paint and stark posters ask "have you...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, we bring you Julie Hogg and Ariel Dawn
Man in a Red Hat on a Promenade After Girl in a Red Hat on a Promenade by L.S. Lowry The Stray Café, on your year’s first day, is open for new business, it’s accepting accents and tolerating glyphs, this pop-up soiree consists of any plausible forte,...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas, we bring you Sarah James and Laura McKee
Unspilled Midnight strikes London’s moon face, the new year cheered in with a sip of sparkling wine, and time’s old friends. Forty years of Auld Lang Syne in our bones, we dance and laugh as our great-grandparents danced and laughed, as our children will...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas, we bring you Ruth Aylett and Susan Jordan
Visitation “And Lo! The Angel of the lord came upon them..” It wasn’t like that. Summer stars not winter, the stir and mutter of the flock, some grazing, some asleep. I lay in the warm night, breathing the bruised smell of cropped grass, the dry pepper...
The Seventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Carole Bromley and Joanne Key
Rendezvous after Dennis O’Driscoll I am in Stonegate expecting to meet you at 4 You are in The Shambles expecting to meet me at 4 I have shopping bags that lengthen my arms you have Jonathan on your shoulders It’s Christmas and I’m Dreaming blasts out...
Words & Images
Words with images previously published on the website.
Word & Image from Winston Plowes and Martin Waters
Flesh Tones A pilgrimage of phantom limbs in a jumble sale of sex. A lost jigsaw of pieces riddled by the waves. Your hip hook is cast through the shadow of my shoulder. Flotsam limbs, I’ll get to know...
Julianne Davis
Fifty Rounds of Radiation Julianne Davis is a self taught artist from the UK, She also writes poetry, and makes short films.
Ivor Murrell
Proximity - Malta, May 2nd 2012 The past chides indulgence on the tenth floor in the five- star comfort of the afternoon siesta the hot air is scratched by an unknown sound schrik - ...
Word & Image from Pletts and Berger
Whoopers' Greeting As the stifled windmills curve their stillness into the blank a crop of white necked swans spaced as boats in the churning green unify a rush of...
Word & Image by Andrea Porter and Tom de Freston
After When you go to the supermarket place my head in your wire basket as you wander...
Andy Bennett
Poet, comedian, visionary – these are just some of the words that Andy Bennett can spell. If Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty, Andy has an honest face and an ugly bio, and should never be trusted with valuables.
Blogs and news
Blogs and archived news from 2007 to 2020.
Voting is Open for the May 2016 Pick of the Month!
Another month, another superb shortlist. And we are always spoilt for choice. Vote now for your Pick of the...
And the Pick of the Month for April is…. ‘Palindrome Existence’ by Sarya Wu
We are very pleased to announce that the pick of the Month for April 2016 is Palindrome Existence from Sarya Wu. Sarya...
john sweet’s ‘…and the heart a broken bell’ is Pick of the Month for March 2016!
The Ink Sweat & Tears' Pick of the Month for March 2016 is '…and the heart a broken bell' by john sweet: b....
Reviews
Archived reviews from 2007 to 2020.
Sue Burge reviews ‘Bottle’ by Ramona Herdman
This beautifully judged pamphlet explores the complexities of a personal relationship with British...
Alan Price Reviews ‘In the Scullery with John Keats’ by Louise Warren
I’m fortunate to live in Camden and be very close to Keats house in Hampstead. This September I was on...
Editor Deborah Alma on the #MeToo Anthology, for International Women’s Day
#UsTogether I remember back in October, listening to some of those many conversations that started up...
Interviews
Archived interviews from 2007 to 2020.
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