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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
Dawn Sands
Prevention Science Walking home from the lecture on Frankenstein through the November mizzle, small breaths of exhaust sighing in the twilight headlights, particles of wet air commingling. When I look into the branches of the evergreens I can...
Sipke Shaughnessy
Morning mis-en-scène Silence draped across the furniture like fine webbing to catch intruders. Toys left mid-performance, before bedtime’s siren, you marching upstairs. Night made an exhibit of you, a collection of imprints in the mess. I give...
Ken Evans
Octopus I am one Like short of being beautiful. Five hundred more Followers, I’m away to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals are ok, there’s simmering wastelands to make out of vague, but someone sent a shroom...
Sally Denning
Before It Had a Name Nothing was wrong yet. That’s the easiest lie to remember. It was just a shift— sleep a little lighter, thoughts a little louder, a need for something I couldn’t quite name. I still showed up. Still laughed at the right...
Mary Mulholland
This poem is a secret after Elma Mitchell It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself in my head where no one can reach it, laugh, tear it to shreds, or call it a waste of space, a disgrace. A poem is grace, a prayer, my longing for more than I am....
Afolabi Ezra
The Day Nothing Happened It was a quiet day— no bad news, no sudden loss, no reason to hold my breath. I didn’t notice it at first, how rare that is. The sky stayed where it was, the ground didn’t give way, my phone remained silent in the best...
Karina Jutzi
Lot’s Wife I think today of the boy in choir class who closed his eyes when we sang about Jesus. Who swayed, as if the Lord himself was in the room. I sat in the back row and braided my girlfriend’s hair. Men are allowed to worship each other. To...
Isabelle Thompson
‘Attention, after all is prayer’ (Jo Bell) We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby, compact, fierce, not a sinew out of place, alert and...
Roger Robinson
Pipeline We walk from cane fields, cotton in our nightshirts, sweet sugar on our teeth. My peoples chant strong magic. My peoples beatbox in jail. Roger Robinson won the T.S. Eliot Prize (2019), the RSL Ondaatje Prize (2020), the...
Amirah Al Wassif
The Double My double sits before me now. I stare deep into her, as I do every day after midnight. When I raise my hands, she raises hers. When I wink with my right eye, she winks back. My childish braid sticks its tongue out at us both. "Good...
Sophie Lankarani
Dear Iran after Sholeh Wolpé Even though I only once traced your streets with my own feet, you wandered into my dreams anyway sliding in through my grandmother’s stories, drifting out of the steam of her afternoon tea searching for a place to...
Mark A. Hill
Marseilles Road -She calls him up- She wills his brush in colour, and chalking, fierce hued flaws, which fall flat on the canvas, She uses a dark outline and replaces his image with cholic fumes. -He doesn’t pick up- He wants to place her in two...
Andrea Holland Reviews ‘Salt & Snow’ by Naomi Foyle
An opening poem often acts as an overture for a collection and Naomi Foyle’s prelude poem (and title poem) ‘Salt & Snow’ is no exception; it appears as a kind of broken sonnet that illustrates the rupture that the poem’s speaker feels at the death of...
Rebecca Wheatley
Muscle memory He thought his heart was broken yet the day began again. He couldn’t marvel in the shine of sunsets rising and falling and yet he rose and fell in turn. His hands resigned themselves to tea making and his legs carried him much the...
Katie Beswick
Can I Kiss You? We were on my pink love seat skin touching skin I was drunk but longing circled me, like stars from a cartoon head wound I nodded you moved towards me and as I parted my lips little hesitations flew as daggers out my mouth,...
Kate Hendry
Burning the Years Lay down the worst ones – raze them like swathes of heather on the moor. So what if there’s a dead patch. Remember the havoc unfettered fire makes – flames twirl along the ridge, tumble down the gorge. Unbreathable heat and ash....
Claire Simpson
Nobody’s daddy If I’d known it was him I wouldn’t have smiled so warmly. But he looked like any other middle-aged man taking a Sunday stroll. It’s funny what time can erase. The passing years had stripped away the parts of him that had once made...
Christtie Jay
Petition For The Woman Formerly Known As My Mother My Lord, let the record show she remembered everyone else before this. If you must, take her in teaspoons. Temper justice with mercy. Let her forget the wrong men, sharp belts, winters with no oil...
‘Buried’ by Tamara Salih is March 2026 Pick of the Month on IS&T. Read & Hear It Read Here!
It captures the silence and stillness of childhood snow and all it can mask and hide beautifully It was a poem of two halves. Some voters were drawn to the joy of playing in the snow. It had a 'vivid wintry feels', it reminded them of their childhood, with friends....
May Grier
That Three-Tusked Beast I wasn’t to know that it was a three-tusked beast; that there was not one, not two, but three that grew the seed of me. Back then, who’d ever heard of that unlikely jungle lore? In school there was room for two, no more: a...