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The archive is a separate site formed from all the posts from that original Ink Sweat & Tears website, it consists of everything we have published up to the end of 2019.
Recent posts
Word & Image from Helen Pletts and Romit Berger on Valentine’s Day
my mother is with the stars my mother is with the stars the missing buckle on Orion's belt holding my favourite constellation in check – the Universe will be organised against its will – my Earth in chaos, still Helen Pletts (www.helenpletts.com)...
Elaine Baker
Haberdasher After Pascale Petit I found out where my heart is that he’s cut out with his tiny scissors. He stitched it to a t-shirt with her name on. Back in New York they spend the weekend together, wandering down avenues that all look the same. She...
June Wentland
Migraine day Two charged wires, that shouldn’t meet, are touching and – deeply – a tenderness of bright red ulcer pulses. The sky is the colour of unrequited fights and love bites. The magpies are nervy. The weather – saw-toothed and pissed – is...
L Kiew
Glacier I overspill the high corries where the snow accumulates, breaks down, suffers ablation. Over the decades, the millennia, ice slows and fankles due to my weight. My skin extrudes nunataks, shears away to crevasses; I extend glassy gantries over...
James McDermott
TAMAGOTCHI the tamagotchi was a key chain sized egg shaped computer with screen three buttons the tamagotchis were small aliens like me who had put down an egg on Earth to see what life was like the player had to raise the...
Karishma Sangtani
In Memory of Bhau I have just woken up on a stern mattress in the living room again. I sit up, my hands pressing the night out of my body. There is that devoted din of a ceiling fan, blowing clumps of dust between the sofas. And spread across the walls,...
Leah Larwood
From under the wardrobe the naked bulb on the ceiling is an oddly lit glass balloon, bobbing riskily upside down in the winter sky. There’s an unfriendly quality in my shoulder; I’m packed like a fugitive’s suitcase, roughly. Buried under hanged clothes...
Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Looking Upwards These stones overhead, comets juggling omens... What’s the distance between nothing and no other thing? We eye the sky thinking of a science to replace it with. Has anybody flown to holiness from a language? To bliss from...
Fokkina McDonnel
what will you do now you’re alone in the sun ask your shadow to leave you for a while send your shadow to market where it can frighten chickens, the women selling red powder let your shadow enter the forest of tall trees stroke the snouts of grunting...
Annie Freud, Jane Burn, Anja Konig – Live Zoom Reading
Please join us on zoom for live readings from Annie Freud, Jane Burn and Anja Konig on Sunday 7th February at 4pm GMT This is part of our monthly ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their home (an old CoOp...
The Vultures of Prometheus by Ruth Aylett
The Vultures of Prometheus by Ruth Aylett Nobody asked us if we liked liver especially a man’s, especially a demi-god’s. Eyes are much tastier, but we aren’t allowed to blind, part of the punishment is to see us coming. And this diet is disgustingly monotonous,...
Cheryl Pearson
How To Write A Poem First, forget the moon. Forget your lover. I want you blind to weather. Stars. All kinds of water. Start with I, with you. With what you know. No reimaginings. No Salomes with milky thighs, serrated knives. No penitent Medusas....
Jill Abram
Did Philippe Petit come to Heptonstall? At the top of the mill chimney some hundred feet above the stream, level with my eyes and my open mouth is a man in a leotard. It is purple, gleaming neon against lichen on stones to which he clings, brighter even than...
Susan Castillo Street
Witches Brooms and Winter Roses This year is nearly over. We walk arm in arm, hear the sound of sirens incessant background dirge. On our street, three cases. One next door, one across the way. Another, three doors down. No dead so far. Stubborn...
Hilary Menos
Collation It’s Izabelle’s funeral collation so we’re driving into Gaillac wearing proper clothes. I’m driving, you are listening to some mad YouTuber who claims that water has memory because if you say nice things to one tub of water and nasty...
The Anatomy of an Art Student by Callum James
(click on each image to enlarge) Callum James is a book-dealer with a specialisation in queer literature. He grew up on an island and still lives near the sea. He writes about...
Sam Hickford
A Willow-Tree in Hiroshima Softly & impossibly, her roots still beckon growth. It is a slow hope she is drawing. Their ends were swift - echoes in the floorboards. I am reliving it, since I am solitary. A thrawning suffocation grabs the sky so...
Julian Dobson
Wave We have learned to wave distantly through glowing windows glimpsing a well-placed bookcase or houseplant imagining the corners of a room their piled-up flotsam we have learned not to ask what happens at the watershed we observe flows ...
Emma Storr reviews ‘The Peregrine Falcons of York Minster’ by Carole Bromley
Carole Bromley’s fourth collection contains poignant and reflective poems that demonstrate her skills of close observation, humour and pathos. She is also admirable in her bravery and lack of self-pity. In Meditation on Death, the last poem...
Sue Spiers
The Glow I recognise the tingle at my nape my face melts, oxters darken, make-up slides, instantly wet through layers meant to cope. Tissues, useless until the wave subsides, my bright red fan announces to the place the hormone flush that’s difficult to...