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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
David Redfield
Losing It after Yehuda Amichai If we think we are right the sun may never set; if we know we are right then beasts could take our place; if we say we are right the towers will always fall; and if, after all after all we've thought, known, said and...
Read and hear April 2024’s Pick of the Month: ‘Limbo’ by Anna Mindel Crawford
'Deft, dark, brilliantly written' This poem appealed on so many layers: A remembered experience of children’s parties, with either fondness or dismay. Childhood memories and an unsettling sense of being in limbo. A limbo that we all are unnerved by, a ‘what happens...
Helen Evans
Things I did then that I hadn’t done before Asked the neighbours if they wanted anything in my online weekly shop and Bought yeast, flour, long-life milk and 70-per-cent-alcohol hand sanitiser and Cut my own hair, even the bits round the back I...
Ilias Tsagas
https://youtu.be/1wCeTnPjtao Free A yellow patch against the cement of the yard his beautiful song the surprise visit of an escaped bird. Ilias Tsagas is a Greek poet writing in English as a second language. His poems have appeared in journals...
Noel King
The Queen of Limerick City In the photo-booth Eva gets self conscious, blinking when the flash pops. “It’s not me,” she screams out loud as the photo pops out. It isn’t; is a picture of an older woman with dark, not blond hair. Eva starts to...
George Vincent
The Boy and the Beach The boy was lost and he went to the beach on his own. He walked along the beach and he was scared of everything: of himself, of the sand and the sun and sea. He walked with his head down. As an even younger boy he came to the...
Kirsty Crawford
Quiet, Elizabeth Elizabeth is hiding in the cupboard under the sink Small enough to fold between cream cleaner and floor polish Too big to keep elbows away from wire wool Knees away from the slick puddle of the U bend Nose away from the liquitab...
Sophie Thompson
Dragons get their smoke from the poke man There are few sounds sadder than the plinky-plonk of Greensleeves from a passing ice cream van. Mickey Mouse’s face plastered on its arse, rainwater rivulets streaking down his grimy cheeks. Processing...
Katie Beswick
Acts of Repair Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? (Tupac Shakur) You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew — Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks....
Sally St Clair
The Scorpion and the Egg I'd asked for this not to be recorded; this failure on my part, to be a good parent; this failure over the egg, my handing him a scorpion instead, my thoughtlessness. How can I explain that my mind was elsewhere? That I...
Olivier Faivre
Monkey Mathematics A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut there, and two more over there. He counts them with care. One two three four nuts —what a bounty! He rubs his belly, opens the nutshells deli- cately and eats the seeds oh-so- slowly: four...
HLR
Self-Portrait at 30 - VIII. Be reasonable I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me. I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job, the one I always wanted — editing books,...
Angela Howarth Martinot
Consulting the Doctor What seems to be the problem ? He asks in that slightly condescending tone. Seems, I think, Seems. It seems, I say, that I have a problem with my inner fish, or my inner fish has a problem with me. My Eustachian...
Bianca Pina
Consistency My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite, which I took to be an induction to the truth. Lately though, I think the things I love in you I love because they’re grossly inconsistent. Your signature smell is rose, your delicate petal...
Ian Badcoe
Everything We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on —I drink my whisky, her Merlot grows warm— until, sudden-smiling, she holds out a paper: a simple equation with nothing crossed out; laid out...
Sim Pereira-Madder
The Rules of Spacetime in Dimensions Above Three Tom Giles once asked me if I had tools and at that time I didn’t because I was fifteen maybe sixteen but he was Adam’s big brother with a new flat so he was old and he knew things. He told us we...
Molly Knox
Molly Knox is an MA Music study at Durham University. She is a poet and theatre-maker. Some of their recent work can be read in Magma, The Braag, The Gentian, and Stone of Madness.
Ervin Brown for Day three of our Invisible and Visible Disabilities feature and for the last day of Autism Acceptance month
Surfing Light If the third grade taught any ideology, it’s that fighting back is futile. A boy, curiously named Majestic, had just finished shrieking in my ear, removing the grasp on my face from his sticky fingers. The noise bellowed like a saw to my...
Pascal Vine and – – – ajae – – – for our Invisible and Visible Disabilities Feature
Play Dead Chronic fuck slug Chronic floor sleeping Chronic fist seething Chronic food swallowing Chronic feuding skin Chronic foreseen surrender Chronic failure synonym Chronic sel(f)-inlictednes(s) Chronic found inner-piece(s) Chronic...
Ellie Spirrett and Erin Coppin for our invisible and visible disabilities feature
How Much For This? Your body hangs like a dartboard. Clothes snake the slippery floor ready to bite. A curtain holds you back imperfectly as a Tetris block. This is the first time you have been out in three weeks. Today sits like a joker between...