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
Sarah Nathan
The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,
Anna Bowles
Akademichna Street
is bombed-out flats, is
the hot-pink Sweet Bakery Café, is
straggly new-planted trees, is
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
News
‘Beginner’s Italian’ by James Mason is the IS&T Pick of the Month for July 2026. Read and Hear it Now!
‘Personal, clear, relatable, precise, human. Poetry.’
‘I love it. It so accurately demonstrates the painfulness of those early days when your language competency is so limited that your personality feels suppressed!’
Word & Image
Helen Pletts and Romit Berger, Translated by Ma Yongbo
I placed my cold, white, thin fingers in the warm folds of catskin and hair but the cat spat and spoke dicer’s oaths, projecting catspittle through a small red toothless space,
Filmpoems
Zakia Carpenter-Hall
It had been such a long time… I was surprised by how gently my mother made my hair, asking if she should split the rows, my locs beginning to intertwine. She gently, as if using a miniature rake of a Japanese garden attends to the grove of my hair – so softly that it barely registers as touch.
I couldn’t imagine that she was doing it right, what with the absence of pain and discomfort, but she did, ordering and reordering, twisting my roots so they wouldn’t come loose and fastening them next to each other with silver clips for added strength, so they could dry.
Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
News
‘Beginner’s Italian’ by James Mason is the IS&T Pick of the Month for July 2026. Read and Hear it Now!
‘Personal, clear, relatable, precise, human. Poetry.’
‘I love it. It so accurately demonstrates the painfulness of those early days when your language competency is so limited that your personality feels suppressed!’
Word & Image
Helen Pletts and Romit Berger, Translated by Ma Yongbo
I placed my cold, white, thin fingers in the warm folds of catskin and hair but the cat spat and spoke dicer’s oaths, projecting catspittle through a small red toothless space,
Filmpoems
Zakia Carpenter-Hall
It had been such a long time… I was surprised by how gently my mother made my hair, asking if she should split the rows, my locs beginning to intertwine. She gently, as if using a miniature rake of a Japanese garden attends to the grove of my hair – so softly that it barely registers as touch.
I couldn’t imagine that she was doing it right, what with the absence of pain and discomfort, but she did, ordering and reordering, twisting my roots so they wouldn’t come loose and fastening them next to each other with silver clips for added strength, so they could dry.
Previously featured
Sarah Nathan
The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,
Anna Bowles
Akademichna Street
is bombed-out flats, is
the hot-pink Sweet Bakery Café, is
straggly new-planted trees, is
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
Picks of the Month
‘Dear Iran’ from Sophie Lankarani is the IS&T April 2026 Pick of the Month!
‘An artful description of the feeling by simultaneous belonging and separation of second-generation immigrant from their ancestral homeland’
‘Beautiful imagery and gorgeous melancholy longing’
‘Buried’ by Tamara Salih is March 2026 Pick of the Month on IS&T. Read & Hear It Read Here!
‘It captures the silence and stillness of childhood snow and all it can mask and hide beautifully’
NB: (In above image, central photo of a snow tunnel/cave – looking up – is by Alexandros Giannakakis via unsplash.com.)
‘At the Barbers’ by Stephen Chappell is the IS&T Pick of the Month for February 2026. Read and Hear It Here!
‘succinct, modest, affecting portrait of a good but constrained life’
‘simple but believable and moving, without being sentimental’
Reviews
Jean Atkin Reviews ‘The Dreaming of Hinkley Point’ by Graeme Ryan & artist Georgina King
‘This is such a generous book – the very first things the reader notices are its large square size, and its glowing colours.’
Sairah Ashan Reviews ‘Unsafe’ by Karen McCarthy Woolf
Her words are thoughtfully presented. Her lyrics are philosophically dense. Most pages make liberal use of white space, providing pause to digest.
Emma Lee In Praise Of… Jeremy Dixon’s ‘The Beat The Pulse The Wave’
‘a lyrical collection that can be read either by watching the sunlight dance on the waves or diving below the surface to more serious messages and topics beneath’