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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
Christopher Collier
Floodgate The first sight was a sound from a high valley it didn’t know itself it curled around corners a tree swayed gently and the water touched the low branches first a gentle flow then faster a double wave but no crest no breaking surf it passed...
Steven Waling
Tree of Jesse for Durgesh Born here that street with the hole in the middle was it I or you digging finds on a bombsite on my knees hands buried in roots Surrounded by grave goods suppress in yourself the idea of merit head of the great warrior in...
Read and Hear ‘The Sorry Letter’ by Michelle Diaz, the October 2023 Pick of the Month!
'It's so straightforward, so devastating.' It was the extraordinary child in 'The Sorry Letter' that got your votes. Michelle Diaz's 'delicate, poignant and compelling' poem was relatable and familiar to some. Others found it visceral; some saw some vague hints of...
Kitty Donnelly
Manual For Bereavement Clearances There’ll be Bibles. Multiple Bibles. Mementoes of a porcelain era: plates and china, knives and forks in Sheffield-stickered boxes. Decide if the dead are at rest. Talk to them, the previous inhabitants, justify...
Ruth Fry
Stocktaking In Scots law, the foreshore is defined as the area between the high and low water marks of ordinary spring tides… and is presumed to be owned by ancient right by the Crown. - Fifth Report of the Scottish Affairs Committee, 2014 Head...
Marie Little
The Picture A bird made a sound like a fist on our window. Mum tiptoed towards it as if it was sleeping then cupped it in her hand. Just a baby warm and silent. She stroked it talked to it wandered around with it still in her hand – still, in her...
Chris Kinsey
Chris Kinsey grew up in rural Herefordshire but always wanted to head for the hills in Shropshire and Wales. After a degree in Yorkshire, she settled in Mid-Wales. She’s had five collections of poetry published. Her most recent: From Rowan Ridge was...
Gareth Writer Davies
Gilestone Standing Stone the map tells me not much (there are so many megaliths hereabouts) on the point of giving up there it is three metres tall girthy like a pollarded oak its reason now lost in depopulation maybe it was erected here for its...
B. Anne Adriaens
A child’s coat There’s tiny me on a strip of concrete. There’s the tiny coat I’m wearing, fluffy white: the brightest spot in the image, this coat my mother says she loved, this coat my mother says was so well made, a gift from someone who had...
Pat Edwards
Speaking in code I once heard a man speak in tongues, just sounds like words, but not words. He told us he was filled with the spirit. I once heard remuterations in the air, cirvivulating on the breeze, uncanny in their lisonulance; breathless...
Sophie Diver
Ghost, Moth They want you out of this House of forgotten tea in which you are floating Like a calcium slip This house in which you yield As a sweep of onion skin In old dishwater Disgusted by yourself hollowed out In the flesh of an armchair An...
Oliver Comins
On the Hill No-one has seen me outside the bungalow. I am a rumour behind windows that reflect the sky and reveal nothing of an indoor life. I could pretend there is an extensive lawn in front of me, leading down a gentle slope to a pleached hedge...
Welcome Kayleigh Jayshree, our new Editing Intern
Jam Gentle tufts pulled rough at the stem, unwind in my left palm. Hands swing into bell petals, velvet afternoon air. Butter the sunset in snatches, clouds fold, rain dusted glass. A cowbell rings low. Past lives ripen: echo. Kayleigh...
Emma Jones
Autumn A sea of firecrackers on spindly fingertips. The wind sails through harmonious foundations. A thunderclap, a secondment of wings, embossed leaves fall like burning fossils. It's the hour for nightingales. Emma Jones is a...
From the Archives: Chaucer Cameron on Halloween
Cellar Stories: Ash & Elder Sunday afternoon there’s always roast dinner. Then mum and dad go to church. The twins stay and wash dishes. Elder-twin picks up a plastic bag with unused Brussels sprouts inside. The cellar door is open. Elder-twin...
Jane Ayres
muted tethered i let her touch me without touching me (tears before bedtime) but (listening to the deep ache keeping the things that hurt close closed making space for kinder smotherings) i could never tell you friendship isn’t a consolation prize...
JP Seabright
Do you remember how we danced in the dark, the sky was still, the earth was breathing. After the guests left, after the wake, you stayed, and we stood close but not quite touching, until you took my arms and we swayed in time with the music of the...
Corinna Board
Pond life Take this pond, for example. Goldfish blow ellipses… you pause, breathe. The pond counts the beats: in for four, hold for seven. Lily pads float like Pac-men in a plant-based alternative to the game you wasted hours on as a kid. The pond...
John G. Hall
Thrift In the shadow of Drumadoon the pink bobble headed Thrift stitch the bones of basalt scree summer's wreath for the cold stone that once rose angry red hot columns pastry cut pressed into the science of my camera. John G. Hall...
Sue Finch
A PELICAN IS DANCING ON THE PATIO And there is a disco very deep in the woods. The pelican is tapping out its rhythm and no one can quite name the tune even though it is right there on the tip of tongues. And the people that know about the disco...