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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
Theo Stone
Into the Hills He found himself in the mountains because he had no intention of being near the beach. It was summer and he was dry. With friends, he had seen the sea, water, the Thames, so many times over the past weeks that he had driven himself...
Alexandra Corrin
Six weeks after diagnosis I stayed away out of respect for your daughters. You followed the hearse with your father and the girls. He couldn’t stay within the boundaries of himself. Her friend Angie broke down reading, the celebrant had to help....
John Barron
Thought Experiment The clock has lost all its numbers. I wake inside an Einstein thought experiment, where my bones defy gravity and get sucked what some call “up.” I’ve only time to grab from beside the bed where we’re sleeping our copy of Rovelli’s...
Mick Corrigan
My List Poem of the All-Important Trish, Kindness, A small family of wildflowers announcing themselves in an abandoned pot, Morning sun warming barley fields at Castletown House Estate, A grounded fledgling glaring defiance as I gently inquire of...
Mike Jenkins
Not a found poem But a purchased one - To find Ewrop on a single cup Despite the English on top - Re use duce cycle Birziklatu Genbruge Endurvinna And then the more familiar - Recycle Recycler Recycleren Recyceln Till there Sharing the plastic...
Heidi Beck
Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue bird seed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this...
Catherine Godlewsky
Winter Commute I. I have not known how to shape This poem— I found it, drowsy, Quarter-to-six in winter In the cold of an unfinished floor And the cold of the tap And the cold of my pale extremities Exposed on all these fronts I found it in the...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Elizabeth Gibson and Roma Havers
Weighing yourself in the dark at Christmas in your parents’ house You do not know how to weigh yourself at Christmas in your parents’ house, now it is no longer yours. You are used to standing naked each day in your flat with closed blinds. The...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Alle Bloom and Mariam Saidan
Knots When I remember the white paint of the door frame it's not my tiny 8-year-old hands that grip it, steadying the spinning top of my chest. It's not with those hands I feel the squeak of paint under fingertips, not with that thumb I brush the...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas we bring you Jean O’Brien, Paul Stephenson, Ruth Aylett, Sarah Mnatzaganian
Left Over Christmas Trees Paper never refuses ink, no matter how hard the words it just absorbs. In the same way the eye never refuses the blue of sky, the fish water, the bird never spurns air. In the wind leaves of eucalyptus show their silver...
Debbie Strange
Lightfall lightfall so, too snow Debbie Strange (Canada) is a chronically ill short-form poet and visual artist whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world and to herself. Thousands of her poems and...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas we bring you Scott Elder, Lynn Valentine, Sue Finch
The Ninth Day It could have been any day—you in the doorway one hand in your pocket one still on the wheel the road: a fluster of birds your daughter: at one end lick- ing her wounds you at the other Lord of the Doorway—but it...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas we bring you D.A. Prince, Frances Boyle, Maggie Mackay
Redbreast hawk-bait fool of a bird, top-branch, easy pick-off; careless busker; lonely crowd-pleaser, air-ruffled; one long itch and riff of song; leafless pitcher, head-turner, tuned in to tree-top maps of competitors; Mr Tomato-Soup-On-A-Stick,...
On the Seventh Day of Christmas we bring you Pam Thompson, Mary Mulholland, Oliver Comins
Advice To One Who Is Single A Golden Shovel ‘True love. Is it normal? Is it serious? Is it practical? What does the world get, Warrior? Two people who exist in a world of their own.’ From The Celtic Book of Days The last night in...
Kayleigh Jayshree
https://youtu.be/NMUDokIFlcw The Moth Poem She sees the little lost one everywhere, eyes on the dead moths curled on her windowsill. I see what was: rosy maple moths like Battenbergs on her fingertips, A weaver’s wave moth in the countryside the day she broke...
On the Sixth Day of Christmas we bring you Alison Binney, Kathy Pimlot, Elaine Westnott-O’Brien
Muscle Memory Three weeks earlier I’d said My dad has Alzheimer’s to the sashed woman in the porch who swept me past the kiosk through the transept to the vestry. The first time I’d said it aloud: I sounded older, as if I knew just what you...
Debbie Strange
The soft click the soft click of a reindeer's hooves... northern lights Debbie Strange (Canada) is a chronically ill short-form poet and visual artist whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world and to herself. Thousands of her poems and...
On the Fifth Day of Christmas we bring you Helen Grant, Lydia Kennaway, Kath Mckay
Nest of Christmas The lane flows with the light of Christmas morning that feels like a yolk breaking, maybe because we are breaking the world’s shell. It lights up single spider webs like silver silk and my dog leads the way through frosty mud. My...
On the Fourth Day of Christmas we bring you Rob Walton, Abigail Ottley, Ian Parks
It’s the most Raymond’s kids loved going round the neighbours with all the fancy lights. In November Raymond’s kids started to ask questions, drop hints. He put a Wanted on the local Stuff For Nothing Facebook page and got loads of odds and sods...
On the Third Day of Christmas we bring you Anne Symons, Lydia Macpherson, Sue Butler
Time of year Mistletoe hung by the front door and you had to kiss whoever was standing under it. That was one of the Christmas rules like watching the Queen at 3 o’clock. It was the uncles with wet mouths that she didn’t like. How did they do it?...