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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
On the First Day of Christmas, we bring you Eithar Almosibeah, Numan Awan and Casey Brennan
Christmas gatherings I've lost my manners this quarantine. My ability to keep the curtains of my mouth stretched open for a smile suffered. My social skills, a turned off faucet in those months of longing for connection. Words refused to stream...
Janet Harper
bee I am all hum and thrum whirr sibilate vibrate zip zoom and swoop purr murmur hover manoeuvre bombilate and susurrate pulse race oscillate escalate and dive reverberate I am all bee Janet Harper’s...
JLM Morton
More Facts About Blue If I were to ask you to guess the world’s most wanted colour Not a chest of it reached England without the stain of human Darkened as if by bruising. In the womb of the vat there is life Gnosis at temporal frequency in...
Rose Lennard
Entwined Like honeysuckle tendrils she leans in to him and he to her young pliant bodies long smooth fingers interlaced heads together, murmuring like a small stream over rounded pebbles. She touches lips to his forehead and when they shift...
Julian Bishop
The Last Days Of The Giraffe She stared down from her beige towerblock onto an alien plain: zig-zag of roofs, wingless cranes, zebra crossings and a sea of litter - the new neighbours behaved like bushpigs. Once she used to hoof it down the Thames...
The Air We Held Between Us by T.S. IDIOT
WARNING: FLICKERING IMAGES https://youtu.be/lVcLgpabYY4 The Air We Held Between Us last time i was here, you were too and that used to hurt this hope for something solid, slowly disappearing. but i'm ok, now and i hope you are too. i really hope you're...
Tom Kelly
When they go they will still text you give an unexpected call keeping it brief, before a meeting but the phone is dead and it is the first time I have used that word. You will still shout up the stairs ring the bell there is no-one there key...
Ra Sh reviews Sanjeev Sethi’s Wee Book ‘Bleb’
In just 31 wee poems of 10 lines each, Sanjeev Sethi, an Indian poet, creates a monumental work of grace from raw feelings. The themes are all too familiar, but the little chambers they reside in are unique. Heavy furniture goes out of the window as rooms are...
Hiba Heba
Cloudage I see you. Like me, you’re misshapen; a swamp in a dwelling. We merge; a suture quivers through us, the way nightmares take long strides on still waters. We’re camping under the mellow lilts of our alibi; the breath checks out. ...
Listen to Subitha Baghirathan’s ‘Sari shop, Easton’ our the IS&T November Pick of the Month.
Beautiful, evocative and hits all my senses The words ‘evocative’ and ‘beautiful’ were used over and over again to describe Subitha Baghirathan's ‘Sari shop, Easton’ and it is for this reason and the poem’s sense of place that this vibrant work is the IS&T...
Jessica Mookherjee
Hungry Ghost In Hinduism a Hungry Ghost (or Preta) is fed rice so it can reincarnate. Write prayers for the dead today, feed them rice balls, they see only three children, say there is another one somewhere, knocking on the outline of a womb,...
Mims Sully
Clubbersize At ten am, kids safely dropped off at school, we swarm to the club, slurp into neon Lycra, elbow our torsos through womb-tight tops, fold tums and pull bums into leggings that squish like a grope in the dark. As studio lights dim, we...
Salma Abdulatif
Affirmations I am healing. I am the cumin seeds. I am loving again. I am cardamom. I am breaking generational curses. I am black pepper. I am prosperous. I am salt. I am wealthy. I am the simsim seeds. I am beautiful. I am sugar. I am reclaiming myself. I am...
Marcia Hindson
Bite Marks I had that dream again, the one where we gnaw holes into the skin of all the people we have to love. And it got me thinking, what would happen if we had to wear our feelings through our fingers, and every last tip of them had to grow as a...
Emily Jo Scalzo
camera obscura peels back layers of fossil a quest for answers * tree buds blossom fragrance permeates the air wash away the gray * the blowhards posture hiding behind platitudes spewing vitriol * sole crime: running yet the punishment was death...
Zoom launch of our annual 12 Days of Christmas, Live from the Butchery
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 shop), and IS&T publisher Kate Birch. Please join us on zoom to celebrate Ink...
Luke Lewin Davies
Stefan We did foster care. We took in this kid. He was eight and his name was Stefan. His dad had recently died, his mum had severe mental health issues. There was a step-dad, we were told. But he belonged to us, for now. We met Stefan a couple of...
Abigail Flint
Self portrait as Blackpool I am towering tall enough to ride The Wild Mouse. A cockle-hearted donkey named for a flower that doesn’t grow in sand. My bridle is so pretty, red with tin bells but my sea is impossible always out of reach or crashing...
Jill Jones
Being Changed I am sap breathtake sound of another day a little door swinging with breezes looking for a superpower in this implacable taxed body like all our devices sending signals emojilike to impossible objects thinking we shall be changed in...
Kerry Anderson
Hong Kong, China. September 2018 “Well, where did you see it last?” asks Zoo without looking up. He crushes the tiny ants that surge from behind our toaster. “The wedding,” I say. The wedding table dangles upside down outside our apartment’s...