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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
Susie Wild
The Liminal Hours A chase of messages illuminates my screen through the small hours. Did I just see you? I’m sure I glimpsed you dancing, that green dress, the way you tilt your head to admire the view. These banshee hauntings my poor abandoned...
Myriam San Marco
The Cure I knew what my poison was I drank to more than enough I drank like drinking would give answers to questions I haven’t asked yet I built a cage out of the pieces of my bad self binding steel plate to hollow bones fusing old scars to fresh...
Listen to Julie Stevens’ Poem ‘Insomnia’ our IS&T October 2021 Pick of the Month
Speaks directly and painfully, sharp images ‘Insomnia’ by Julie Stevens spoke to many voters, whether it was an anguish experienced only occasionally or bound up and endemic to a chronic condition; and, for this reason, this ‘compelling’, ‘visceral’ poem is the...
Jennie Byrne
Mute like attracts want – want ignites desire I wake up and my entire life has passed - I’m old and frail, limbs rigid, my breath appears in small puffs they’ve already chosen my gravestone, a chunk of fieldstone – small but quaint except it bore...
Kat Holmes
“GOTHS AREN’T BLACK” BUT YOU’D STARE ANYWAY, AND I CAN SMOKE TREE BOP ON THE CORNER TO BLACK METAL OR BASHMENT, IN PLATFORM BOOTS OR NIKE BLAZERS BECAUSE I AM STILL THE ONLY SPECTACLE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. IT IS BRAIDS KNOTTED INTO NOOSES,...
Tré Ventour
Man-Made For the victims and survivors of male violence and the system that enables it. CW: rape, sexual violence, police brutality, genocide, racism. Raised by West Indian matriarchs I was taught by Black women about whiteness and patriarchy where women...
Madelyn Burnhope
Blessing at Arms' Length a setting-down ritual I can’t begin to speak a blessing any more than I can reach a coat hanger from my chair. I only know how to say come in, welcome, dear Brigantia, into the home of my hand, my heart, my hesitation....
Rose Knapp
Commodity Fetishization Buy buy buy consume consume consume Faster faster faster harder harder harder Deeper deeper deeper devour devour devour Rose Knapp (she/they) is a poet and electronic producer. She has publications in...
David Hay
Jobcentre Blues The nights are full of broken sky sirens– of 2,000 stabbings and sexless promises– of hot dog food-banks, and either coffee or tea or pasta or rice. Do you have a cooker or a microwave sir? No, I sold it in that withering...
Rakaya Fetuga
Winter Blossom Does your laughter feel like winter blossom? A fog of petals in your lungs, forcing joy a season too soon. I don't know the taste of your grief. Maybe it is a damaged earth, the world offbeat and threatening. But in this spring...
Eljae
and we sing 'this place ain't for you anymore, anymore even air moves different from before, from before' *humming* my work aunt once told me about this crowd that arrived. took homes and changed streets left people; moved people. she...
Lalah-Simone Springer
Apex Black woman, apex Thighs and mind of thunder Grounded, solid Catches me in her stratospheric eyeline in the future sight of higher love. The mountainous everything of her So bright I can barely behold. I hide in the shade of her lashes...
Jamal Hassan
Martin Luther King Jr's on tour in the UK to repeat the same speech, you've heard but never remembered word for word. And why should you? I have a dream is painted onto enough t-shirts and baseball caps for you to get the gist. School timetables...
Runaways London
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSG5IkAWgFs&t=8s History, storytelling and escape from slavery in 17th and 18th Century London Between the 1650s and 1780s many hundreds of enslaved people were brought to London. Most were African although a...
Jemilea Wisdom-Baako
It didn’t make me a woman darkened school skirt pleats the pungent smell of loss this initiation a twelve year olds guide to becoming ashamed it didn’t make me weak they...
Runaways London
Whilst many people view the trade in enslaved people as something which took place along the so-called ‘Middle Passage’ between Africa and the Americas, between the 1650s and 1780s many hundreds of enslaved people were brought to London. Most were African although a...
Ira Lightman
Family Tree Health Plan Blossomy buds circulate, fervid. Scarlet inertia steams past panacea from saps as unction. Closure was mental on a cliff's slope. Twig held to lost hope. Defensive surgery of bark heeds smoky premonition. Forced admission's...
Angela France reviews Everlove by Maggie Butt
Everlove is a title to live up to but the poems in Maggie Butt’s sixth collection are everloving in that they demonstrate her enduring and empathetic concern with the human condition. The collection is arranged in three sections, the first of which ‘Torn’ is...
Zelda Cahill-Patten
Street-preacher She looks at me with that fearsome oil-sheen in her eyes, the weighty conviction of milk-heavy gaze and breasts, telling me (the spittle-flecked words like Words made flesh) of her Father, how he is unseen, felt unstirring in the...
Maeve McKenna
Dream State Covers tight as clingfilm. Tell them you fell headfirst, steadied yourself, sucked out what was left in your throat, coughed that creamy polyethylene onto the pillow. Eyeballs infused with miniature blue irises plunge into the well....