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

Ananya S Guha

      Halting Dreams The leaves are growing out of a harangue of loneliness palms cupped I listen to silences of winter or summers and unmask faces caught in tangle of storm, the history of what was not written or recorded in books, time’s erasure in moments fraught with changing paths or charge with turbulence of rains; A vast momentary haul of a ship’s load or a vessel’s yachting, it is fun to remember and demonise time in these hills where a cloudburst thumps the heart, pounds on it like merciless beating of bird’s wings, or like the beak of a crow steals thunder, I walk and then a reservoir pumps blood into the hiatus of living the dead. Or, the dead living. Shadows typically torment, lengthen or shorten to spin yarns in these dead blue hills where a rosary does not match prayer, but the bluish hue carps on dreams and a thicket of grass stumbles in front of you. I wash pains momentarily as a rising quicksand halts my dreams.     Ananya S Guha lives in...

Peter Leight

Instead of Dying I’m Taking a Trip

to Kansas
where the light appears
as if walking through a gate
in the air

Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki

Its timber frame held together by the waste
of its own decay
The rot a kind of glue undisturbed
Cracked panes of glass hold their fractures

Robert A. Cozzi

How’s “James Dean” doing? I had a feeling our little stunt would work. I knew the second he saw us kiss, he’d come running back to you (you’re welcome, by the way). It’s kind of sweet how much effort he puts into that rebel-without-a-cause look.

Rosie Jackson

I Am Trying to Love Frank O’Hara More
I really am! I am trying not to see his exclamation marks as cheap melodrama and his endless conjunctions as some kind of separation anxiety or fear of mortality for what do full stops signify except dying

Previously featured

Ken Evans

    Octopus I am one Like short of being beautiful. Five hundred more Followers, I’m away to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals are ok, there’s simmering wastelands to make out of vague, but someone sent a shroom...

read more

Recent Prose

Robert A. Cozzi

How’s “James Dean” doing? I had a feeling our little stunt would work. I knew the second he saw us kiss, he’d come running back to you (you’re welcome, by the way). It’s kind of sweet how much effort he puts into that rebel-without-a-cause look.

Cath Holland

The entry fee for the jumble sale at the homeless mission costs 20 pence or a pair of men’s jeans. I don’t have a pair of jeans with me would you believe. My quiet piece of silver plinks into the plastic bucket, and I reflect what you can’t get for 20 pence these days.

Layla Sabourian

We were happy people once. Not naïve, just animated, social, alive. We gathered constantly. We danced at weddings, at birthdays, at no occasion at all.

Joel Shelley

Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life.

Surmaya Talyarkhan

I first heard of aphantasia in a writing workshop – a poet told us she didn’t see visual images in her head. I had always thought everyone didn’t.

Recent Haiku

Roger Robinson

We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet

Wayne F. Burke

faces on a school bus:
petals of flowers
unopened

Debbie Strange

midnight sun
a polar bear’s breath
catches fire

Debbie Strange

winterberry
the first holiday
alone

On the Fifth Day of Christmas we bring you John Greening, Finola Scott, Philip Dunkerley

today, Christmas Eve,
my granddaughter visiting
her bright eyes – her faith

News

Word & Image

Filmpoems

Tamsyn Challenger

Tamsyn Challenger

Fret

Soft droplets form on protrusions
Floating legs in front
A saline nest laps around
flesh traps underneath

read more

Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day

Ananya S Guha

      Halting Dreams The leaves are growing out of a harangue of loneliness palms cupped I listen to silences of winter or summers and unmask faces caught in tangle of storm, the history of what was not written or recorded in books, time’s erasure in moments fraught with changing paths or charge with turbulence of rains; A vast momentary haul of a ship’s load or a vessel’s yachting, it is fun to remember and demonise time in these hills where a cloudburst thumps the heart, pounds on it like merciless beating of bird’s wings, or like the beak of a crow steals thunder, I walk and then a reservoir pumps blood into the hiatus of living the dead. Or, the dead living. Shadows typically torment, lengthen or shorten to spin yarns in these dead blue hills where a rosary does not match prayer, but the bluish hue carps on dreams and a thicket of grass stumbles in front of you. I wash pains momentarily as a rising quicksand halts my dreams.     Ananya S Guha lives in...

Peter Leight

Instead of Dying I’m Taking a Trip

to Kansas
where the light appears
as if walking through a gate
in the air

Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki

Its timber frame held together by the waste
of its own decay
The rot a kind of glue undisturbed
Cracked panes of glass hold their fractures

Robert A. Cozzi

How’s “James Dean” doing? I had a feeling our little stunt would work. I knew the second he saw us kiss, he’d come running back to you (you’re welcome, by the way). It’s kind of sweet how much effort he puts into that rebel-without-a-cause look.

Rosie Jackson

I Am Trying to Love Frank O’Hara More
I really am! I am trying not to see his exclamation marks as cheap melodrama and his endless conjunctions as some kind of separation anxiety or fear of mortality for what do full stops signify except dying

News

Word & Image

Filmpoems

Tamsyn Challenger

Tamsyn Challenger

Fret

Soft droplets form on protrusions
Floating legs in front
A saline nest laps around
flesh traps underneath

read more

Previously featured

Ken Evans

    Octopus I am one Like short of being beautiful. Five hundred more Followers, I’m away to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals are ok, there’s simmering wastelands to make out of vague, but someone sent a shroom...

read more

Recent Prose

Robert A. Cozzi

How’s “James Dean” doing? I had a feeling our little stunt would work. I knew the second he saw us kiss, he’d come running back to you (you’re welcome, by the way). It’s kind of sweet how much effort he puts into that rebel-without-a-cause look.

Cath Holland

The entry fee for the jumble sale at the homeless mission costs 20 pence or a pair of men’s jeans. I don’t have a pair of jeans with me would you believe. My quiet piece of silver plinks into the plastic bucket, and I reflect what you can’t get for 20 pence these days.

Layla Sabourian

We were happy people once. Not naïve, just animated, social, alive. We gathered constantly. We danced at weddings, at birthdays, at no occasion at all.

Joel Shelley

Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life.

Surmaya Talyarkhan

I first heard of aphantasia in a writing workshop – a poet told us she didn’t see visual images in her head. I had always thought everyone didn’t.

Recent Haiku

Roger Robinson

We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet

Wayne F. Burke

faces on a school bus:
petals of flowers
unopened

Debbie Strange

midnight sun
a polar bear’s breath
catches fire

Debbie Strange

winterberry
the first holiday
alone

On the Fifth Day of Christmas we bring you John Greening, Finola Scott, Philip Dunkerley

today, Christmas Eve,
my granddaughter visiting
her bright eyes – her faith

Picks of the Month

Reviews