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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

Simon Maddrell

      Bringing Pilates to Attention Four years in Knockaloe was a living inspiration for inventor Joseph Pilates. His self-contained exercise in mental- physical health spawned a method which he called Contrology — corrective drills grown within the...

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Tom Kelly

      Save Me   At thirteen I am competing with James Joyce, encouraging pain, at the very least discomfort. See me fervently praying, waiting to receive the Communion host. My knees more than ache, then burn, I bless the wooden pew causing this...

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Nick McGaughey

      Slow Worm And here you are slid from the rain under my door, “s” -ing along the cool checks in the hallway. I’ve had slugs silvering the skirting, a hissing squirrel cornered by the stove, even a mouse that made his den next to the cat food… but...

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Cath Holland

    THE DAY WE GOT THE NEWS Let’s say we have that afternoon again. Itchy for autumn. Me in pale orange lipstick and you your best tweed with leather buttons, facts mouthed at us in a room with no room to move. We hold onto thin plastic see-through cups of...

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Jade Prince

Jade Prince hails from Essex but currently resides in Leeds. She has been published in PEN Transmissions and Poetry & Audience amongst many others, and currently holds a place with The Writing Squad.

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Esha Volvoikar

      Ripening The earth cracks and we are left with the same shared moon. She peers through my lattice window and hides behind your city’s smoke. Have you ever caught her covertly climbing the ladder, the hoards below are distracted watching the...

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Violeta Zlatareva

    Money for Candles The neighbor is a devout woman. She bakes bread and lights candles, scolds the noisy children of others, and dresses in modest clothes. Everyone in the building fears her. They believe she can see through skin. Let someone lie or even...

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Robin Vaughan-Williams

      Does anybody want any money? I've got all this money lying around. Have you got anything you can do with it? I asked Josie but she doesn't want it. Klio says the extension is already paid for. Geoff has a job and wants to pay his way. Craig says...

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Rizwan Akhtar

    Love What fell between an abrupt shower and a sky’s attitude was your memory. In the small presence of wind under a tree, I stopped renovating your image, after the silence ploughed over, the days we spent in front of each other, agreeing that the...

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Jeff Gallagher

      Ramadan Colleagues munching bap and burger thought Ramadan was that juicy winger, his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City. Giving stuff up, they say, is murder - and two weeks into Lent they bring a secret snack to work through sheer...

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Sue Moules

      BLACKBIRD IN THE EARLY MORNING   Sings at the top of the bare-branched tree an aubade to morning welcomes the light, early spring, season of nest-making. This melody is not for me but to attract a mate. I walk the dog under the dulcet notes and...

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Andrew Tucker Leavis

      Poseidon at the Spill as the tanker tore its throat against the shallow spine, as the village unravelled when the sea took fire; in a hi-vis flower of diesel light, he rose. finding his tongue tang-stained with oil he yanked his ankle-chain to its...

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Patricia Minson

      Wood Anemone   Between the trees dust shifts, light fractures like a prism. A cathedral silence greens the air. The soil smells of damp books. I see them — paper-thin, spreading on the dark floor of the wood. Still as a shut door. Nothing...

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In Praise of … Mat Riches on Robin Houghton

Given how much she does for the poetry community—the Planet Podcast series with Peter Kenny, her monthly submissions newsletter, her blog posts, her books on getting published, launching a publisher with other folks, etc.,  it’s heartwarming to see the attention being...

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B. Anne Adriaens

      Fancy etymology for a vacant lot The French term terrain vague enfolds a plot of land I thought at first was vague, undefined and malleable. As a noun, this vague echoes on the edge of its meaning: perhaps a patch of earth evoking a wave, capable...

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John Bartlett

      sclerenchyma mornings I wake wary of abundance wondering why I’m still here and then I recall all the green leaves with their hiding birds and the slow triumph of ripening pods here lily stalks move like living things for this is what they are...

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Maya Little

      Longing golden shovel after Czesław Miłosz I’m trying to stop thinking about what I want to not // be. Sometimes I have looked into my heart and found that // everything’s packed up. The space so unassuming that I // catch myself thinking, where...

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Liz Byrne

      I want to be two-tongued again To go back to the time when I slipped from one language to another with ease, when I knew the contours of my Irish home. To stand with Dad by the window, chat in the room of our own tongue about my day, my dreams. I...

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Matthew Thorpe-Coles

      Revisited Trees after Harold Monro from Trees: lingering their period of decay in transitory forms. I One summer afternoon, you find yourself needing respite from the light and glossy sepia, from sweat and the rosacea. You retreat back to your...

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