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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
Sue Proffitt
Sue Proffitt lives by the coast in South Devon, UK. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and competitions. She has two poetry collections published: Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and The Lock-Picker...
Daniel Rye
Fuglafjørður I This curved town exhales fishy breath gusted in tons from berthed trawlers gashing the quay the north hauled to land groceries shopped into cars with studded tyres grinding their knuckles home lit by Christmas lights rigging a...
Anna Ruddock
Let it be okay that it took me a while to get here If not better then equally fine to be the goldfinch who took weeks to even notice the weirdly suckered perspex shape. A phase of hover and flee then shy balance on the lip, choosing hollow still...
Laura Fyfe
Mountain Rescue How do we pull ourselves back when we’ve nothing to hold on to? Find a way clear or stay? Wait. Song will arrive again from scrub, from burn, from leaf. We feel the weight of hope, are shocked to life by the rawness of...
Julian Dobson
https://youtu.be/Q-OLbGHVWtY 17 small acts of ending an ambulance stuck in traffic the picturesque potential of fallen barns library books scattered to charity shops a footpath stopped up or overgrown widening gaps between starlings a vodka bottle dumped in...
David Belcher
How to not exist Allow yourself to be elbowed aside become a non-person an avoider of lingering looks Ask how can I best be ignored? foster a gnawing sorrow howling complaints to imaginary friends In portraits your eyes should be nebulous stare at...
Simon Williams
I Want to Become a weasel, in a sleeky, twisty body, all eyes and teeth like a deadly zip. I would have become a badger in preference, but they have been having a bad time around here, through no fault of their own, shot for being badgers. So...
Zoe Davis
Secret Society I joined a secret society advertised in the back pages of a magazine. I forget which, but I found it nestled in 8pt font and fancy border between time share apartments in Lanzarote and the commemorative plates. Yours for just three...
Callan Waldron-Hall
dance dance revolution long weekend ← or ← perhaps ↑ summer holiday → from the back of someone’s car boot ↑ the strange → sweated plastic all pink and blue and folded → arrows stacked and pointing towards themselves↓ like meeting for the first...
Amy King
Ripe We’re drinking wine in your kitchen, months before the hot oil of my concern begins to spit. I’m telling a story with both hands while you chop garlic, drain another glass. Over dinner we make up theories for the new pint glass squatting in...
Jenny Robb
Skin deep You notice the crepe of your neck and belly first. This skin you bake in the sun. At least your stomach hides it’s nudity most of the time. You start using factor fifty face cream and tell yourself you don’t mind the deep crease between...
Colin Harrington In Praise of… ‘Knock-knock’ by Owen Lewis.
The epigraph to Owen Lewis’s new work of poetry, Knock-knock (Dos Madres Press, 2024), makes reference to a quote from the Porter in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which many see as a very welcome break from all the madness and murder taking place in the play, meant...
Pat Edwards
Watching the ‘Strictly’ Results Show on a Sunday night Knowing what we know about the pain of the world, who wins and who loses might feel like a betrayal. Too many sequins, too much glitter, a vacuous distraction and yet ...
Rebecca Gethin
Wind Come my love with me alone to inhabit those years again Sean Hewitt, Night Ballad Oh walk with me up the slippery lane when the frost has turned to ice. The wren in the hedge may catch our eye as if flits from twig to twig as it follows us....
Jean Atkin
Finding the hill again Wear a coat, you’ll pass through light rain at the wood-edge under Helmeth. Sing loudly, so the snakes can hear you. There’ll be birdcall, leaf-mould, path-fall to the brook. You’ll splash the ford and settle to the slope....
Caleb Parkin
Nature Is Healing “If humans are the virus, pandemic is the cure.” I think capitalism is the virus. We humans are still here. - Naomi Klein It constructs membranes between its most powerful organs, filters pathogens hidden in boats. It despatches...
Sue Butler
When I read my poem about stretch marks you said it was a funny thing to write about. I felt a flare, low down, an orange hazed ember you’d have to blow into life. Because they’re not very nice to look at you said. The flame caught, scorched...
Susan Darlington
Promised a Hedgehog, We Wait in Your Garden Our bodies hinge into smallness, my back pressed into the shelter. Street voices fade, radios are muted, we count house lights twinkle out one by one. On the edge of sleep it comes snuffling through leaf...
Dechen Shaw
Blown Away The Victorian spinning wheel at the top of the stairs was carved in South Wales around the time this house was built. Somewhere in the carpenter’s breath was a flicker of the blue I chose for the walls when I stripped them to go with...
Andrew Cannon
Abreast Wait, I'm talking. It's my turn. Be patient. It takes me a while. I have to work it out. I will keep it short. You see I've lived a while, learnt a few things, for example clichés are true but not always. Listen to your friends, to your...