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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
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?...
Tim Kiely reviews ‘We Saw It All Happen’ by Julian Bishop
Review of We Saw It All Happen by Julian Bishop Writing successful ecopoetry is harder than it looks. Precise definitions of ‘ecopoetry’ (as opposed to nature poetry more broadly) vary. In general this is a poetics which will propose or attempt to navigate a...
On the Second Day of Christmas we bring you Julie Maclean, Gill Connors, Ankit Raj Ojha
A Post-Colonial Cool Yule to y’All Australia detained asylum seekers on Christmas Island until 2018. It was named in 1643 after William Mynors of the East India Company sighted it on Christmas Day. Have you seen the red crab women of Christmas...
Mark Czanik
Embrace after an Elmwood sculpture by Richard Lawrence His hands hook her waist as if pulling her from a flower. She closes her eyes in the little cave she finds under his chin. Let this blizzard bury them together, fill the footprints they won’t leave, his...
Marc Woodward
https://youtu.be/m6EidDaC79A When Joe Went Out Late to shut away the poultry after weeks of rain he knew where the pony was by the sound of its hooves sucking in the mud.Foxes still kill in downpours. Maybe they keep closer to the bones of the hedge or...
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Davies, Sophia Argyris , Iris Anne Lewis
Not my partridge not my pear tree I Google tells me the partridge is Christ, ready for the wound. The temporary pluckers are digging for lead in the flesh. The urban dictionary says I’ll never be that cool. Ii And I read, because you were reading...
Aoife Mclellan
Winter afternoon Charcoal darkness shades late afternoon, at the narrow edges of a chalk white snowfall. Beams slide from our single lamp through the pane onto soft-heaped mounds and frozen branches, turn what they touch to gold. Butter yellow. Crocus. Silence curls...
Tim Kiely
I Have Memorised a Series of Statistics About Drowning after Benjamin Gucciardi When the bus hits the tunnel and the sun disappears I remember how the greatest risk-factor for drowning is being near water; then being near it drunk; then being near it young or male...
Claire Berlyn
I really don’t care about butterflies after Kim Addonizio (with a line from Nabokov) I don't really care about butterflies, especially when they land in poems except when a Red Admiral gets lost in the great grey fields of the...
Aidan Semmens
The ash tree A superb winter sunrise backlights edges of cloud tinting sky above and bay below the palest blue, hints of gold glistening on the water. Beneath a faint sliver of rainbow a young ash, bold denier of dieback pushing through a broken wall wears a light...
Gail Webb
How To Remain Human This Year We give a throwaway kiss to strangers, to see New Year in. We plant the seed with hope it will grow, form fruit, to feed us. We put a pound in the tin or a direct debit for life. We dispense sympathy,...
Valentine Jones
CANNIBALISE THE CORRUPTION, I GUESS Ok? Everyone's dying. You're not special. You've a Tree in your stomach, Splitting the roof of your mouth, Leaves curled around teeth, and your skull Cracking like an ancient castle? Nothing I haven't seen before. Had three people...