Hello
you have found your way here from an old link.
You can search here to find things or browse by category or post.
You can also visit the IS&T archive
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
Dennis Tomlinson
A Life Where are the aunts of yesteryear? Where are the moles under Granny’s lawn? Where are the pickled frogs and locusts? Where are the lizards, where the kiss on the banks of the Moselle? Where is the Wall behind the Brandenburg Gate? Where is...
Tim Kiely reviews ‘Improvised Explosive Device’ by Arji Manuelpillai
Improvised Explosive Device by Arji Manuelpillai Penned in the Margins (106 pages of poetry) The first time I heard a poem by Arji Manuelpillai, he was reading from this collection on BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’. The poem was called ‘Ways of Being Heard’, and I...
Phoebe T
Canary Wharf Outside, in the plaza, men march forward. Women change from trainers to work heels. Gardeners rip out rows of wilting flowers. The news scrolls like a river round the Reuters building. No Police...
Uprising & Resistance: Keith Jarrett, Remi Graves, Courtney Conrad, malakaï sargeant
UPRISING & RESISTANCE IS OUR NEW TITLE PRODUCED IN CONJUNCTION WITH SPREAD THE WORD AND BLACK BEYOND DATA'S MELLON FOUNDATION FUNDED UNDERWRITING SOULS PROJECT. These poems from featured poets Keith Jarrett, Remi Graves, Courtney Conrad and malakaï sargeant...
Uprising & Resistance: Jess Nash
This is one of Jess Nash's images from our anthology Uprising & Resistance, produced in conjunction with Spread the Word and the Black Beyond Data Mellon Foundation funded project, Underwriting Souls. These works respond to historical archives and objects from the...
Uprising & Resistance: Levi Naidu-Mitchell
This image, the central canvas or Canvas Two from Levi Naidu-Mitchell's triptych, takes place metaphorically in the Middle Passage, displaying the Mangrove tree: 'A concrete yet unruly and powerful plant, able to adapt in the worst of conditions, it acts here as a...
Patrick Wright
SEVERANCE After Aisha Khalid I hear it’s rather like a firewall that was Swedenborg & here is the womb where Mozart can’t...
VJ René
SELECT BODIES We didn’t say it coming. Preoccupied By interchangeable analogies (the jasmine Blossom burdening the Avenues, plus several other factors) We walked to the library, anxiously Equipped. The afternoon Swung on its tender,...
Caroline Prosser
Time to Go 5.03AM: Our Health starts to go at late middle age. Doctors hazard a guess at what’s wrong in the grey haze under the skin, but at some point they stop bothering. Whatever is slowing us down is left alone; the broken cogs don’t need...
Laura Gibbs
Daffodils Smarmy cunts. Hiding from me, in chattering spheres, year-round spectres of a season delayed. Budding in a darkness unknown - I will remember numbness. A yellow that melts, butter upon frost, their smooth openings jar in the aisles of...
Rachel Bruce
Snowdrops I remember you from my crayon days. Clung about the tree like children to a maypole, you held green secrets close, the magic of the changing seasons folded in your petals. In the months before my mother died I anticipated you with...
Catherine Redford
Death’s Head Moth The effect is to produce the most superstitious feelings among the uneducated, by whom it is always regarded with feelings of awe and terror. ‘The Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth’, in Edward Newman’s An Illustrated Natural History of...
Jessa Brown
Wulf and Eadwacer’s Daughter Make Meatballs after the Old English poem Jessa Brown, a UEA creative writing MA student, has been an Acumen Young Poet. Her work has been published in the Brixton Review of Books, The Mays, and Young Writers,...
Vasiliki Albedo
Our Country Our house was a country my parents founded but none of us were citizens. Nights, the corridor’s iron gate was a border, locking us in our rooms. My mother was both state and warden. I wrapped a hair around my diary before leaving for...
Joanna Wright
Joanna Wright lives in the Scottish highlands. Her poems have been published in Northwords Now and Spelt Magazine.
Jenny Hockey
Bonding I carried you home as if you were an extra bag I might have required while taking my time over shopping — both of us newly hatched on the sun-filled hospital ward. By the time I arrived in the kitchen, the men had already begun on the...
‘Sometimes, a Man Could Cry’ by Matthew M.C. Smith is the IS&T Pick of the Month for May 2023. Read and Hear it Here.
Fantastic rugged imagery, metal and manacles, capturing essences of both masculinity and heart. It showed vulnerability, It was beautiful, spare, imagist. It was a reflection of men's suppressed emotions. It was powerful, poignant, moving, beautiful to read aloud. For...
From the IS&T Archive for Father’s Day: Caleb Femi
This poem was first published on IS&T on 15th July 2018. Rose of Jericho I am waiting for water; do not blame my Father though he made me a curling spine of dried roots. In a home not built for foliage he did his fatherly duty to pass on only what is necessary to...
Ann Grant
Confessions to a neurologist When it started, I’d tip my chin down to my chest, loving the sensation of my body buzzing. I’d wake, fall to the wall, panic crawl to the loo, ask my wife if my palms were really burning hot I choke on nothing but...
Margaret Poynor
Sugar Daddy The week before Christmas, my friend arranged a blind date for me. In retrospect, she wanted to replace herself with me. Oysters, lobster thermidor, sherry trifle with silky custard in the Savoy Grill. He flattered, flirted, cupped me...