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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
Debbie Strange
midnight sun Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet and haiga artist whose work has been widely published internationally. Her haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks (Snapshot Press 2024), received 3rd Place in the Haiku Society of America’s...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Rachel Burns, Lauren Middleton, Hedy Hume
New Year I start the day early with a cup of tea. A new diary asks I make an affirmation, while cleaning my teeth. I have nothing to offer – Where did this despair come from? Yesterday I took my son to Casualty, for an X-ray on his fractured...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas we bring you Mary Mulholland, Edward Heathman, Edward Alport
Christmas scents No Nordmann firs in Bethlehem. No holly or ivy. But pomegranate, almond, fig and olive trees to anoint with signs of blessing and peace. And houses don't smell of Balsam pine but of frankincense that can remain potent for two...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas we bring you Rupert Loydell, Ruth Aylett, Eithne Cullen
List Poem Between Christmas And New Year The grey parrot has still not been found. A perfect green square lies in the dust. I slept way too long, woke up far too late. The tops of the new buildings are in mist. I like the idea of a balcony above...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas we bring you Mark Connors, Michelle Diaz, Sue Finch
Little voice Oh, Robin. Our encounters are so singularly memorable. You landed on our left wing mirror in the National Trust car park in Hawkshead, so close I could see each little breath you took, so bold just perching there and yet way too close...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas we bring you Anna Brook, Katherine Forbes Riley, Abigail Ottley
neither smoking nor dancing the temporary fence was already claimed woven with some quick growing weed and a silver socket graced the floor purposeless I am always kneeling to face you to meet your smallness to match your presence know the world...
On the Seventh Day of Christmas we bring you Penny Blackburn, Fiona Larkin, Ruth Higgins
What the Woodcutter Knows About Midwinter The night is filled with frost, the start of a snowfall. The wind is hag-ridden through the forest, keening between the branches. In the darkness he sets his axe at the base of the tree, notches the trunk...
On the Sixth Day of Christmas we bring you Maggie Harris, Keith J. Powell, Geraldine Stoneham
A Berbice Christmas, 1962 Christmas bring back the good ole times - Guyana masqueraders running through the town, dancing with bugle and drum, down the streets up the doorstep, Mother Sally big face rotating through bedroom windows frightening...
Eleanor Holmes
cw: flickering images Melon Moon for Idris, my light One winter I remember he looked up and said: ‘the moon is a melon.’ We’d made a telescope out of used loo roll to look for Father Christmas. The Oak Moon on that longest night hung high over Green Horse...
Debbie Strange
the first holiday Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet and haiga artist whose work has been widely published internationally. Her haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks (Snapshot Press 2024), received 3rd Place in the Haiku Society of America’s...
Christmas & New Year’s Message from IS&T
There is no Christmas without peace and yet war and genocide continue and these are ignored or even supported by the so-called 'developed' world, by the global north and beyond. The powers that be in Israel and its army continue to decimate Gaza and make illegal...
On the Fifth Day of Christmas we bring you John Greening, Finola Scott, Philip Dunkerley
Parable For thirty years, O Lord, we have lived in a house without foundations. And now it is Christmas again, we drape lights from the living apple tree to the dead one, haul o come o come from the piano, set the innumerable specials, the host of...
On the Fourth Day of Christmas we bring you Adam Strickson, Rebecca Johnson Bista, Pat Edwards
Madonna del Parto A fresco by Piero della Francesca, c.1460 Piero painted her in a week, after his mother died, her azure gown split open like a ripe plum, her posh girl fingers resting on the mystery, all swollen belly and haloed radiance. She...
On the Third Day of Christmas we bring you Oliver Comins, D.A.Prince, Beliz McKenzie
Interference This tree, unlike others we have used, is shorter than we are and grows in a glazed ceramic pot. What we might choose to call branches, in truth are no more than twigs. Still, we festoon them with coloured lights and glittery...
On the Second Day of Christmas we bring you Lucy A Kulwieć, Adam Elms, Maurice Devitt
Mother of Pearl It was when your hair fell like snow I found it again. No longer moon blonde, time had coppered the hair auburn. The garage is where your roots grow. I found the plait of hair in a small blue suitcase with silvered clasps, two feet...
Sarah Raybould
When it used to snow wild and bottomless dad would take us sledging on the hills behind our house, we’d ride the sleeping-slopes of / round-back / giants, flushed with fever-thrill and when he capsized we / lurched / collided with a crunch. One year we...
Molly Knox
Ferns There was a cold winding music a frozen answer. I knelt under time’s branches. The year the ferns sang. The year the ferns sang heard the lungs of every hillside dream my breath held the unfamiliar pedalled notes. I listened to violet reliance oh how the ferns...
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Mnatzaganian, Rebecca Gethin, Jenni Thorne
Ten weeks to Christmas Store leaf fire in your eyes against the dark. Steep the brightness of berries in syrup and wine. Trade green for gold, steadily, like the silver birch. Look across the valley to the other side where March waves to you....
Martin Fisher
Old Empress Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold. Forgotten service–obsolete. Salt-coin neglect. The money flowed inland, Moored on an hourglass choke. No one told the sea. Orange hull still bright, Empress her name- cracked white...
Craig Dobson
Down the Dank Way Out of morning a misted light, glowing fire in the air. Bare trees, frozen. A paling sky. The ground’s hoary pelt. Dark river, whisps of vapour on its surface, like wights stalking the remains of night. Craig has had poetry,...