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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
For National Poetry Day: The Environment – Karen Lloyd, Penelope Shuttle, Kerry Darbishire
Anthropophony I’m tuning in to territories like we’d tune in to stations on the radiogram. The shortwave chiff-chaff with the dial stuck, the maudlin willow warbler, the blackcap trying and failing to be a nightingale. And this is work. In the...
For National Poetry Day: The Environment – Helen Pletts & Romit Berger from the IS&T Archive
The musician speaks of the Pacific We are the something of sirens this, our urgent-sound: laughter deepening an acreage of littered whisperings; eyelash sea-greens. Steady me. In this breeze, moments come free. Place your hands on my shoulders and I’ll...
For National Poetry Day: The Environment – Kathryn Alderman Interviews Ecopoets Helen Moore and Craig Santos Perez
This questionnaire comprised part of my Masters' independent research project on ecopoetry. Our climate emergency is evidenced in increasingly devastating weather events and yet, there is still resistance to altering our behaviours, to challenge the destructive...
For National Poetry Day: The Environment – Penny Sharman
The habit of hanging artworks on my garden fence The giant Buddha sits crossed legged meditating on Time with his back to me. He’s taller than the black maple tree and the pagoda on the horizon. The image is reflected in the waters...
Michał Choiński
The Interior We gather around the machine, looking down at the fallen trunk, with little hope of being able to put it all back together. The grandfather had the tools, and the skills, but he bequeathed none to us. The sand under our feet is orange...
Catherine O’Brien
A Mawkish Ode to Murder She was night at its blackest heart It’d be stupid not to, right? It began with slaying metaphors, that gifted an initial rush like blood orange splatter in the opening frames of a thriller. They were in birth removed from...
Antoinette Moses
Gold A shower of gold? Old Zeus? That’s the village gossip except I saw her legs wide to the sun. Well, we’ve all been there, haven’t we, girls? And if a passing goatherd happened to linger in a jangle of leaping bells what do you expect? It was...
Stuart Charlesworth
Hello, I’ve crafted myself a god from the kind of modelling clay you fire in your kitchen oven. I can lift my god with my hands, carry god around. Look, my god has fourteen heads, each one mounted on its own elegant neck — fourteen necks rising...
Welcome Welcome Welcome Chloe Elliott, our newest Editing Intern
LEOTARD I am a small parcel a small peach in a brown paper bag a tightly cornered hot-crossed bun I tremble in a tin I love Victorian buildings I fall asleep in a red Renault Cleo am so kind am so tired go for the bread at...
Anna Blasiak translates Robert Kania
I saw I saw American night in broad daylight I saw houses worth millions of dollars and houses without windows on the outskirts Detroit I saw my ancestors’ American dream several Mexicans cleaning in a hotel where I danced YMCA at a wedding...
Zannah Kearns, in praise of ‘The Plumb Line’ by Hélène Demetriades
Hélène Demetriades’ debut collection, The Plumb Line, charts a life in three sections. The act of ordering gives rise to measured reflection. Complicated experiences are held up to the light and this considered examination perhaps allows certain chapters...
Graham Clifford
Revivifying Bees in the PRU* (*Pupil Referral Unit) A tennis racquet leaves a waffle imprint on the forehead of the boys that get too close. The Jackson 5 at full blast at 08:45 bounces off the Georgian townhouses that surround the PRU. This...
Louise Devismes
fish! that year, the summer was nosebleeds and candy apples. none of our clothes fit us anymore — our bellies burst with fruit and sugar and all the sun we could swallow. we scratched mosquito bites the size of grapes until yellow scabs peeled off, our...
Millie Godwin
Tendril Tongues Why do I keep trying to rekindle old flames when I’ve told her time and time again that a relit cigarette just doesn’t taste the same Willow Becomes Butterfly Our love flows heavy then lingers like tired...
S. F. Wright
RAWSON, ARGENTINA Donald’s father was a plumber, his mother a homemaker. As a child, Donald considered his mother’s existence—cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of Donald and his younger brother—empty. He didn’t think much of his...
Louella Lester
Marking Your Territory It was a pack I’d never seen in my neighbourhood before. A panting bulldog and a big-eyed mutt, with a handsome guy in tow. We were all waiting to cross the street, them on one corner, me on the other, when the guy,...
Alice Neal
Helen (Mother) My mother was alone when she gave birth, save for the flocks of anonymous doctors who removed me from her bloodied womb with spears and forceps, whilst my father marked her agony with stains on the bar. When I arrived late, pink,...
Jessica Mayhew
Clippers We took turns on the wooden chair, feet bare-soled on the kitchen tiles, head bent forward as if in prayer, the old towel around your shoulders. As the clippers purred, nape to crown, I folded each of your ears in turn, while outside, beyond our...
L Kiew
You who stand in the red dust know that frogs no longer croak for rain. Bare ground cracks across remains of drains, windows in the taman-taman gape-broken and houses semi-detach, uprooting terraces. Absence is only flaking paint. Blown away are...
Charlie Baylis
finally i’m annoyed enough to write a poem i sit & eat in the vietnamese restaurant long enough to feel annoyed a man is stroking a cat in the doorway i order the number 4 and watch katie cook the chicken on the grill finally i’m annoyed...