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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
Anya Reeve
Walnut Stubborn, we closed our fists To better ward away the brume From inner life, our threads of blood. The cold an outward skin to glove A sacred, futured inwardness. Year’s end will scuff and scrape. Grey ice, slush. Men worry The postal; fish...
John Grey
Your Town stuck between no place and nowhere it’s more of a gathering than a town and if there’s beer aplenty so much the better – back-slapping piss-taking bonhomie by the breath-full – all are good anything is possible everybody’s stuck here –...
Lesley Curwen
Valentia Light There are storms on the way. Look, look upwind. How we crave light. The southwesterly seethes. It is coming in, the fierce ocean. There is no defence against the rock’s teeth, only light. And the waves, a cross-hatched expanse whose white...
Antony Dunn
Plainsong Have you heard the one about how I’m hoping to bow out – playing guitar for the Cure on a wide stage – the riff pure as wind-bells in the twilight, the crowd stretching beyond sight into the dark and the rain – smiling, not ageing, not...
Alex Scarborough
Hiking I measure distance in Spotify playlists so I can’t be trusted with maps. How long until this becomes exhausting? You pace out the metres and minutes, you take three steps ahead as I want to ask if the ridges in your face would soften...
Myra Schneider
Cloud Forget the invisible network of servers which stores and manages or mismanages data in the unending sky far above our heads, and ignore the shroud-grey layers louring today – they seem to have sucked all the colour out of this world which...
Sef
Sef is an artist and writer searching for poetics of transformation in the everyday. https://substack.com/@seaandfog instagram: @seaandfog
Wayne F. Burke
seagull flying over NO VACANCY beach motel * faces on a school bus: petals of flowers unopened * golden finches rise & fall like notes of a symphony before my bicycle Wayne F. Burke's haiku, and associated forms, have been widely...
Jon Miller
Moving In The upper floor of the old byre a darkness made of owl-stare— its blink drinks you in. A scythe hung under the last gasp of a rafter. An armchair sprouts the beards of men who died in it. The skylight a cataract woven by funnel-spiders;...
Zain Rishi on Meredith MacLeod Davidson
In Praise of transpiration by Meredith MacLeod Davidson From the opening poem of Meredith MacLeod Davidson’s transpiration, we find ourselves in a landscape haunted by cycles of loss. ‘Anchorless / a boat bangs against sea-weathered pylons,' and this...
Salvatore Difalco
Eek, Eyck No green swell this evening will detach me from my hat. No hand held out gingerly will bend my frozen elbow. Next door, the goldfinch on the box turns and chirps. Hounds outside hunt fox or men who play God. My face is not as pale as...
Annah Atane
Bloody September Boko Haram fighters staged gun and suicide bomb attacks on a military camp outside the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state ~ TheDefensePost That night, the stars had slept. The wind silent as something...
Jake Roberts
onwards hamlet asked it to the dark night sea where do waters end and i begin where the moonlight shimmers on a cragged rock to which i tie my errant being hard against the night solid against the wind it still erodes but just more slowly it...
Miguel Cullen
In Remembrance of Stars Past The pelican is so dovey, with her funny crème anglaise feathers with pink and her split-ended crest and mouth. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and see Pavarotti singing Lacrimozart by Salieri. In the park you...
T N Kennedy
Forever Spring inside the apiary it is always spring human beings and honey bees cohabiting pursuing life everlasting for our species which is the universe opening its eyes 50 per cent humidity 21 degrees celsius simulated sunlight cold and bone...
Kate Vanhinsbergh
We Should Probably Get Up Now but, outside, the world has paused: the wind has put down its loneliness, its fear of never being seen, or known, and next door's kids have stopped screaming through the wall. The cats are curled up around our ankles,...
Bel Wallace
Interior My dear, I washed you out of my sheets. And now I sleep softly in them. My dreams are sweet and free. I opened the windows to air out your smoke. I liked it for a while, how it held the past in its wispy fingers. I emptied your cigarette...
Debbie Strange
midnight sun Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet and haiga artist whose work has been widely published internationally. Her haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks (Snapshot Press 2024), received 3rd Place in the Haiku Society of America’s...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Rachel Burns, Lauren Middleton, Hedy Hume
New Year I start the day early with a cup of tea. A new diary asks I make an affirmation, while cleaning my teeth. I have nothing to offer – Where did this despair come from? Yesterday I took my son to Casualty, for an X-ray on his fractured...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas we bring you Mary Mulholland, Edward Heathman, Edward Alport
Christmas scents No Nordmann firs in Bethlehem. No holly or ivy. But pomegranate, almond, fig and olive trees to anoint with signs of blessing and peace. And houses don't smell of Balsam pine but of frankincense that can remain potent for two...