Ink Sweat & Tears is a UK based webzine which publishes and reviews poetry, prose, prose-poetry, word & image pieces and everything in between. Our tastes are eclectic and magpie-like and we aim to publish something new every day.
We try to keep waiting-time short, but because of increased submissions, the current waiting time between submission and publication is around twelve weeks.
If you have come here looking for more information on our ‘Uprising & Resistance’ Project in conjunction with Spread the Word and Black Beyond Data, please go here.
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Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
Previously featured
Kweku Abimbola
My father walks backwards
better than most walk forward—
so whenever he sewed his steps into the living
room carpet, I rushed to mirror my moon-
walking, until he froze,
froze like he’d been caught
by the beat.
Paul Bavister
We found our eyes first,
as they swirled through fragments
of black jumper, dark pine trees
and an orange sunset sky
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
News
‘Abertawe’ by Andy Breckenridge is the IS&T Pick of the Month for August 2024. Read and hear it here.
‘flowing beautiful lines of emotion’
Word & Image
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
//There is a new star in the eastern sky tonight, spilling fourteen prongs of light. I feel the first flutter in my belly.
Filmpoems
Archive Feature: Bhumika Billa
Portraits of Cambridge
Girls here can
dream
dare
do
before they disappear into the
blue plaques of cam-boys-clubs
by the Eagle Pub.
Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
News

‘Abertawe’ by Andy Breckenridge is the IS&T Pick of the Month for August 2024. Read and hear it here.
‘flowing beautiful lines of emotion’
Word & Image

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
//There is a new star in the eastern sky tonight, spilling fourteen prongs of light. I feel the first flutter in my belly.
Filmpoems

Archive Feature: Bhumika Billa
Portraits of Cambridge
Girls here can
dream
dare
do
before they disappear into the
blue plaques of cam-boys-clubs
by the Eagle Pub.
Previously featured
Kweku Abimbola
My father walks backwards
better than most walk forward—
so whenever he sewed his steps into the living
room carpet, I rushed to mirror my moon-
walking, until he froze,
froze like he’d been caught
by the beat.
Paul Bavister
We found our eyes first,
as they swirled through fragments
of black jumper, dark pine trees
and an orange sunset sky
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
Picks of the Month
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....
Listen to Fizza Abbas read ‘How Inferiority Complex Talks to A Writer Whose Mother Tongue is Urdu’, February 2022’s Pick of the Month
It almost feels like my life has been sort of summed up in verse. We are always in awe of those who speak more than one language fluently, even more so when a poet writes in...
Listen to Manon Ceridwen James read the Pick of the Month poem for January 2022
… it’s so real. The movement of the poem without breath evokes exactly the situation it describes The wonderfully titled 'A Parishioner Complains at a Parish Church Council When We...
Reviews
Helen Moore reviews ‘an/other pastoral’ by Tjawangwa Dema with illustrations by Tebogo Cranwell
“For the leadwood trees of Mmadikola. Ya matswere a Mmadikola” is the dedication that award-winning New Generation African poet TJ Dema offers at the start of this excellent chapbook...
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...
Tessa Strickland reviews ‘Light Makes it Easy’ by Rosie Jackson
Award-winning poet Rosie Jackson is in her element with her latest pamphlet, Light Makes it Easy. Richly informed by literary and spiritual antecedents, these poems are also completely...