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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.
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Untitled (Bible cut-up) by Dave Hubble
The locusts have no king they wandered about in sheepskins speckled and spotted among the goats They were stoned hills melted like wax mountains skipped like rams And the pots, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the spoons they gathered the quails quails...
Antonela Pallini-Zemin
Mix & Match but what if we mixed the smoke of my incense sticks & the smoke of your rolled-up happiness in a room only suitable for two? what if we mixed & matched your hundred fingers with my four fingerprints? what if we let my kundalini...
Cleo Madeleine
do not eat you dry out my tongue, dry off, dry off, wither in my mouth like the ripe white leg of a lamb breach-born, caught dangling between guts and dew, fingers of mist still laid in the valley biscuits in a long cardboard tube sticky with crumbs, the...
Helen May Williams
Winter solstice 2020 13/12/2020 dream haiku small hours of Sunday morning family’s little strength guarded for mourning 17/12/2020 still growing on old apple tree— mistletoe 21/12/2020 the peanut feeder disappears — flap of crows...
Katherine Collins
The unsheltered places The unsheltered in their places might remark if asked, that a pavement at close quarters is like the surface of the moon just before the sun disturbs itself to snuff out, one by one each florescent streetlight’s fizz that crowds...
Charlotte Knight
HELL IS REAL Travelling southbound on Interstate 71, motorists pass a sign which reads HELL IS REAL. It stands in a plowed field and serves as a reminder to all God-fearing farmhands that they must indeed fear God. I am not so easily influenced, I could...
Hilary Hares
The Film-maker and the Poet after ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946) The film-maker begins at the rim of space where he hurls constellations through Shakespeare and war; from a place where he condemns a man to unrequited death. His screen fills...
Charlie Baylis
daphne & moonlight daphne on the bonnet of the car her father stole off with your head daphne in a black lake moonlight plays inside me in the wrong register in the rearview my legs below her legs above the moon is white i slice peaches with magic...
Kevin Higgins
Towards A Dennis O’Driscoll Re-write of A Cesare Pavese Poem Stupid takes after you, its smirk the one you wear while confidently doing whatever it is you do worst. You wouldn’t recognise stupid if it superglued your eyes open, threw a bucket of...
Kashiana Singh’s ‘Origami’ Haiku Series is the IS&T Pick of the Month for December 2020
Beauty and an underlying sadness is what ultimately saw Kashiana Singh’s ‘Origami’ being voted as the Pick of the Month for December 2020 and marks the first time that a haiku sequence has achieved this accolade since IS&T established Pick of the Month in the...
Natascha Graham
Summer in the 1990s Sunset. Mid-July with a cloudless blue sky electric pink and flared with gold The window frame of the caravan digs into my elbows I lean out further My best friend squashed against me Side by side Watching our dads sitting in...
Paul McDonald
Mother and Daughter (after the 2013 photograph by Gregory Crewdson) When your mother walks barefoot to your house, you welcome her, the February morning, pine-scented freeze that follows like a phantom through the door. A single set of tracks print snow into...
Sharon Larkin
Post-operative It would be a while before he touched alcohol or felt in any way frisky, he said. The stitches were too new. She understood. He asked her to look under the dressing. There was a little oozing from his new zip. It was bloodless....
Harry Wilding
DIY with Biscuits The sound of the drill was not enough to completely drown out his voice. ‘Sure that’s in the right place?’ Gerry asked. I focussed on the screw disappearing into the wall. ‘Mary? You hear me? You sure that’s not too low?’ ‘Yes, Gerry.’...
Rizwan Akhtar
Aposiopesis I see you waving from behind the fence I am trying it hurts clouds wait and move over fields swallows distracted by the burr of an aero plane resting elbows the wrinkled hands of the mower blather into action the company though assorted shows care...
Melanie Branton
White Goods As I came down the stairs, the kitchen came upon me, buzzed through my teeth and elbows. The twin tub having a seizure, a St Vitus’ thrumming twist and shout. The shepherd’s crook of the hose clipped to the side of the sink snake-thrashed in...
Tom Kelly
Singing With Elvis The Rediffusion is playing Elvis. I am sitting in our dining-room, not sure if we ever called it that. There is a yearning in the young Elvis hitting me like a wet clout. We bond, he is a long-lost brother, singing, ‘Are You...
Sean O’Brien, Joelle Taylor and Memoona Zahid – live zoom reading
Please join us on zoom for live readings from Sean O'Brien, Joelle Taylor and our first IS&T intern Memoona Zahid, on Sunday 3rd January at 4pm GMT This is part of our monthly ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Helen Boden, Sarah L Dixon and Penny Ayers
Empties First of Jan, affluent suburb. Stockbridge, but it could be anywhere across the island, in Ely, Richmond, Beauly. In place of regretting they put their empties out, arranged by colour, size, acoustic property. Scores of bottles, neatened...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Gareth Writer-Davies, Josie Moon, Sue Finch and Sam Garvan
Twelfth Night the weather through the draped window dreich the fire spits and greetings cards make a merry flame as I the audient listen to the sermon of the grate that a living room is empty unless you let in a little light Gareth...