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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.
a new year how long before I stop missing you Haiku originally published in #FemkuMag 9, 2019. Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet whose work has been widely published internationally. Her book, The Language of Loss: Haiku & Tanka...
On the Eleventh day of Christmas we bring you Alex Mepham and Adriano Noble
To the Salmon I Ate at Christmas I honestly thought it would be fine. I’d eaten other salmon—years ago—and thought I could eat you too. The tin was pink and fit snug in my palm as I carried you home. I admired your sleek vessel as you sat on my shelf...
On the Tenth day of Christmas we bring you Jennifer A. McGowan, Tina Cole, Lucy Dixcart
The Singing Ice Some stories tell the truth. Some stories lie. Make sure you can tell the difference. When the youngest sister killed the eldest for daring to be the one to inherit and court the man who should by rights have married the youngest...
On the Ninth day of Christmas we bring you Oliver Comins, Terry Quinn, Simon Williams
A Star with a Star on Top This year’s tree has some kind of Viking heritage – you can smell sea on its breath and smoke in its hair. We managed to disarm it upon entering the house, after discovering three broad swords and a hammer hidden among...
More Word & Image from Helen Pletts & Romit Berger for our 12 days of Christmas feature
love symbols spoken in a chinese winter I am grown tall in the telling of the yellow that the dance leaves a signal for, finishing the ridge in a luminous squall, wanting your white elk-breath and the hoof-pound at my door. I am the first blade turned black in winter...
On the Eighth day of Christmas we bring you Patrick Slevin, Bethany W Pope, Georgina Jeronymides-Norie
Christmas 1978 We didn’t ask him to play dead. His record was three days. But we kicked each other over like he’d told us then cleared the battlefield. We spied his advance, inch by inch, the big shoe dragging, polished beneath a sharp crease....
On the Seventh Day of Christmas we bring you Ellora Sutton, Sue Burge, Catherine Naisby
The Angel Gabriel Visits Mary in Bedlam (Ecce Ancilla Domini!) After Dante Gabriel Rossetti look at the dove so wide a suicide against the wall wrap it up in the blue cloth I’ve been keeping it unwrinkled for such a purpose long blue...
On the Sixth Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Salway, Sharon Phillips, Pat Edwards
Christmas is the end of the world It took some adjusting but we’re looking forward to it now. Next door have hung the bunting out, lines and lines of LOVE and PEACE which would have cost the earth until we realised there was no point in money any...
On the Fifth day of Christmas we bring you Beth McDonough, Sarah L Dixon, Liz Lefroy
Decorate our tree in ASD From Here to Epiphany I must wear four scarves, touch-whispery in tinsel, to wrap – no – not quite tight enough to cover the trunk in shine. Let me leave the room for my staccato happenings, test flickerings of white wee...
For our 12 days of Christmas feature we bring you Word & Image from Debbie Strange.
sudden flurries the Christmas star inside every persimmon Haiku written originally for Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2020 Holiday Celebration Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet whose work has been widely published internationally. Her book, The Language...
On the Fourth day of Christmas we bring you Louise Taylor, Diana Cant, Helen Kay
Noel After Sasha Dugdale Christmas is coming. December is amber with last month’s leaves and fairy lights flutter in the high street. The fir tree beside the Buttercross is naked, fenced-off by railings anyone could topple – and, look, here they...
On the Third Day of Christmas we bring you D.A. Prince, Tanya Parker, Maggie Mackay
Advent Why wait? the supermarket asks (you know which one) when puddings ooze expense and calendars for Advent spill indulgence. Down the street festive lights jitter and twitch. Each day is inching shorter. Wood pigeons strip the hedgerow holly...
On the Second Day of Christmas we bring you Lindy Barbour, Michelle Diaz, Hannah Stone
Christmas at the Poundland Plaza Under a concrete sky heavy with snow a zig-zag disabled access path leads from the car park to the mall across the Poundland Plaza. Hot air escaping through the sliding doors spirals a drift of balance statements...
For our 12 days of Christmas feature we bring you Word & Image from Helen Pletts & Romit Berger.
my father wears a yellow mask my father wears a yellow mask leans into the wooden staff —a farmer’s gift from Dartmoor— years before. His legs unsteady, my legs unsteady, perhaps autumn already knows our quest for apples, led us here to this shelf lined with...
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Rebecca Gethin, Alicia Byrne Keane, Daniel Hinds
Solstice This is the shortest light we have to live with and in every minute we feel the life left in its stem and the slow pulse of its fluids keeping the plant of the day just enough alive. Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry...
Helen Scadding
Minority Listen with owl ears. Can you hear the worn words? we stand for the law abiding majority We forgot they kept them stored in loops on broken cassettes the mob needs to be stopped now they unfurl themselves opening like unwelcome flags we will keep putting them...
Ankit Raj Ojha In Praise Of ‘Strokes of Solace’ by Sanjeev Sethi
The title of Sanjeev Sethi’s sixth book of poetry, Strokes of Solace, proclaims a promise. And Sethi delivers, singing the universal human comedy from a personal vantage point while sprinkling seasoned balms along the way. The collection is a quest for healing,...
Poet Brwn Girl in the Ring
woodland creature cool breeze soft damp air meander inspect each leaf specks of sunshine every wrinkle in the bark mushroom cups squashed together wedged and piled high bumpy cosy textures sprout from the sinking green moss the under crunch...
Armando Allan
Untitled (1977). Oil on canvas, 19 x 16 inches. After Luchita Hurtado You’ve heard it said that sun ate into the black hills, cut the landscape into rag-cloth and tied the scraps together till all was light and skin. But there’s still the question of your wound,...