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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
Gareth Writer-Davies
Kenwood Chef I blow dust (an epidermis of powdered sugar) from the plastic body and think of what Mother conjured from spatula whip and grinder (each task with its own attachment) never tiring helping hands that saved time for the hundred and one...
D. Parker
D. Parker spends most of her days surrounded by books both at work and at home. In her free time she reads and occasionally lets words form on paper.
Lydia Harris
weather forecast for the funeral there is a chance of deer grazing of mica rising in stone of knee deep sphagnum of two blank pages there is a chance of roses of lips being sealed of starling clouds yielding of a gurgle in the ditch of snipe...
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
The state of war For Ukraine Storm. Broken spruces like matches In the Estonian forest. Spruces or pines? Broken our souls, Those, who did pass across, will not understand… Those, who did not pass across, will not understand As well ...
Sam J Grudgings
The birds are spies, they report to the trees The birds don’t grant the day without sacrifice. We feed them gold bullion in place of corn. We are starving. We gift them an audience to our momentary. Tomorrow has gone, so we offer air burials as...
Congratulations to Hiram Larew whose poem ‘Hardly’ is the Pick of the Month for March 2022. Read and Hear It Here
It is spare, subtle and profound. These words that really do sum up Hiram Larew’s superb poem ‘Hardly’ and are an illustration of why it has been voted as the Pick of the Month for March 2022. Voters read his poem again and again to gauge the meaning behind his subtle...
Ilse Pedler
Jed of the Dodgems My brother said you can’t make a mountain out of a sow’s arse and at sixteen he ran away to join the fair; changed his name from Gordon to Jed of the Dodgems, grew his hair, slicked it back with Brylcreem perfected the art of...
Janice Dempsey reviews ‘Performance Rites’ by Barry Smith
Barry Smith’s debut poetry collection is a cornucopia of his rich life and artistic experiences. These poems draw on his life as an educator, theatre director, music lover; Smith directs the South Down Poetry Festival, co- ordinates Chichester’s summer...
Melanie Branton
my brilliant boyfriend told me you’re not very intelligent, you only got good grades because you’re a conformist that’s the text we had to learn, boys are vowels girls are consonants, boundaries, sheepdogs, only there to hold the vowels together,...
Kate Rigby
Hyperhidrosis ephemeral tides of a faulty sweat-tap bits of rubbish wastepaper with lives of their own to form a gallery accidental sculptures accidental shapes escape plop and drop to land celebrating moisture drop from crevices or...
Kenneth Pobo
Mrs. Panterluck says she doesn’t know why she keeps dis- appearing. One minute she’s in a mall walking over to a perfume kiosk and the next she’s gone. It’s like she misplaces her skin. Wherever she is, she retains a brain, though Mr....
Ruth Aylett
Graphic Designs He arrives in a pixellated taxi so low-res he could be any of the men who’d tried to resize her round the axis of their doubts. Her fractal word within a word within a word, too small for her own resolution, plinks into the glass...
Caleb Parkin
Queertopia (Working Title) i dreamt it once but i dream a lot of things not all of them printable but this was some kind of culty shit well no the good bits of a cult if you can say cults have redeeming features i...
Philip Dunkerley
Good Neighbour Irecê, Brazil An entrepreneur, he ran a butcher’s stall in the market. So you could see the meat he’d waft the flies away with his hand. We rented a house from him; he showed us the covered tank in the yard - that’s where the truck...
Poets for Ukraine: Live fundraising zoom reading with George Szirtes, Moniza Alvi and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Please join us on zoom for live readings from George Szirtes, Moniza Alvi and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese This is part of our monthly award-winning ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their home (an old CoOp butcher’s...
Steve Griffiths
Your artificial light gave out Your garden has no security, just the electronic sensor that whispers in husky unpredictable clicks that accompany the moths feeding in the darkness. To your mind, to my mind the world of the moths will be...
David Punter
Neighbourhood News Hi, I’m Bill. I’ve just moved in to that little house on New Street (you know the one, it’s been covered in graffiti for God knows how long). I’ve got six dogs and a dead rabbit which I keep in the fridge as well as lots of...
Gurpreet Bharya
Imagining myself as a bitter, old woman Here I am as old as you said I would grow altogether alone drinking tea curled up with a gossip of stars and the milky thaw of the moon – the thrum of the air still thrums in me as the flowers fold in...
Louise Mather
Afflictions I swallow the seams of the moon – they have always riddled me, if I lay on a stage of feathers I would still feel the underneath of dark atoms, afflictions you pull from the bridge only when god has given you to the water....
Jon Miller
Shadows night blinds the forest tracks pins itself to pine needles antennae frisk its long coat and small foxes learn their trade each leaf sleeps ponds close their one eye woods are busy in their dark diaries as all the shadows unbuckle slip...