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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
Stewart Carswell
Earthworks West Kennett I migrate back to this farmland where the level of the corn field has been distorted by the earthen mound facade of a house that swallows the dead and has for centuries. On a ledge inside the entrance, in the human-summoned...
Our first Pick of the Month for 2020. Choose January’s Now!
The ordinary becomes extraordinary in the shortlisted works for our first Pick of the Month for 2020 and the decade. Seemingly familiar warning signs in Rob Stuart's Word & Image are, in fact, 'Poetry Hazards'. Melanie Branton's 'Going South to Morden' is...
Maurice Devitt
Some things never change Before I went to school one day I hid it under the bed, forgot about it for years. Then, when I met you, something triggered so I dusted it off, placed it in the centre of the kitchen table. You hardly noticed – just...
Peter Bickerton
Charge Sleeping in doorways, they huddle against the cold; plunge the needle tip. Searching for a vein, while others crave a socket; plug-in heroin. Waiting for a plane, they hug the corridors; hooked to the drip. Peter Bickerton is...
Sarah Passingham
The Machinist (Put Something of Yourself into Your Work) The hum and buzz of faster machines buoy her. Decides brightness should be her default. She unwraps a blood-red cuff from her wrist, smoothes it onto the metal bed of her Jones Imperial....
Rebecca Gethin
Rocks without names I watch the silence out there through the hurly gush of Atlantic and tide swashing at everything I mean, if I could find words. I keep hearing it say nothing to me. The moon shining on white flecks of rock in the cliff face...
Ben Banyard
Neutropenic I enter through the airlock, wearing a blue paper gown, hands still damp. There’s a low window which gapes incredulously at concrete slabs with weeds oozing between them, a bare tree, an after-thought of grass. Beside the window, an...
John Vickers
* The syringe should never vacate The arm it pierces Growing into white blossom, tied around A finger, it displays its own idleness A presentiment Pulling up a fruity plasma Of the unhomely John Vickers has published over 60 poems in...
Clare Marsh
Bed Blocker ~ 8/7 An early morning call summons me north to your death-bed. Delayed by London’s chaos after yesterday’s bombs I arrive too late. Mary has kept vigil through the night, soothed and reassured you, arranged for Mum, also in-patient,...
Robert Boucheron
John At the Food Lion south of town, at the express checkout, the clerk’s name pin reads “John.” In his thirties, thin, in black pants and a blue polo shirt, the store uniform, John has a shaved head and a scar that runs from his left ear up over...
Sue Spiers
When I become a Rhino I’ll fill out twenty-fold, grow solid as an anvil. The horizon of me will cross the far savannah, My mouth will grow wyd, keratin thicken upward. I’ll develop rough-bark, tarmac dermal armour to deflect the sharpest barbs,...
Calvin Holder
Kandinsky called me from an opalescent sky I’ve cracked the space he said so you can read it like a poem or the transcript of a lie. Calvin Holder lives in Gloucestershire where he is much affected by...
Gerry Sarnat
Last Thursday in November Together Since 1957 Four newest mangy old dogs, done being punished for yesterday’s quasi-traditional jockeying to grab what they may have thought of as their fair share, one of several home-grown free range cooked...
Chin Li
The Crossing Isn’t it too late? I couldn’t help asking myself time and again. It was too late: the sun was gone, my chance had left; there was only one way, and I’d have no say. I washed my hands in the stream and warmed them with my breath; I saw...
Paul Stephenson
January January’s a recent graduate: cheap suit, polyester or nylon, some shiny fabric. New to the team. Golden handshake. Keen to get its teeth into something. Loads of ideas how to improve things, make the place run more smoothly. Has an eye on...
Antony Owen on Holocaust Memorial Day
Song for a yellow star belt In the square they are beating men to classical music last year they danced in this spot, the same children watched. In the square a local orchestra kneels before its composer he is made to throttle the defiant celloist...
Gareth Writer-Davies
It’s the way the garden clouds over of a sudden clouds returning confuse the situation picking petals off the roses breezing turning a sunny day mute as birds get sleepy fade from thinking slim like a silver birch sapling thin light of petunias...
Roddy Williams
Excerpt from a free Amazon murder mystery Her violet eyes flashed like shocked blown bulbs as the truth hit her like an intangible sock. The dinnerplate of her delusions had been shattered by the weight of a big helping of realisation. How could...
Robert Garnham
Even better than the real thing You invited me to your flat. You looked ever so pleased with yourself. Your flat was a part of an older building near the park which had a beautiful lake in the middle of it, you wouldn't think that we were in the...
Paul Attwell
Chablis in Pyjamas Order placed, we counted from four weeks ‘til the eve before. Excited, we planned our seven-day lay in. Then it came. Memory foam and micro pockets plus the base. Bliss! We dressed it in white Egyptian cotton And placed padded...