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.
IS&T Shop
Buy Ink Sweat & Tears Publishing books and pamphlets here.
Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
Previously featured
Isabelle Thompson
We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle
of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping
her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby,
Roger Robinson
We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
News
The IS&T Nominations for the 2026 Forward Prize Best Single Poem (Written)
John Bartlett
Rachael Clyne
Mariam Saidan
Word & Image
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
I am born of the folk of the tropical coasts,
salt-rimmed hands my inheritance. I trace
the vestiges of webs between my fingers—
folds printed with the pearlescent stripes
Filmpoems
Erin Coppin and Dr Jo Scott
British Columbia, Canada, 2021: We are surviving the vagaries of climate change
1. Heat dome: I’ve had to water my plants two times a day so they don’t die.
2. Five hundred and ninety-five people died as a direct result of extreme heat.
Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
News
The IS&T Nominations for the 2026 Forward Prize Best Single Poem (Written)
John Bartlett
Rachael Clyne
Mariam Saidan
Word & Image
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
I am born of the folk of the tropical coasts,
salt-rimmed hands my inheritance. I trace
the vestiges of webs between my fingers—
folds printed with the pearlescent stripes
Filmpoems
Erin Coppin and Dr Jo Scott
British Columbia, Canada, 2021: We are surviving the vagaries of climate change
1. Heat dome: I’ve had to water my plants two times a day so they don’t die.
2. Five hundred and ninety-five people died as a direct result of extreme heat.
Previously featured
Isabelle Thompson
We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle
of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping
her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby,
Roger Robinson
We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
Picks of the Month
‘Love Song for Snow’ By Michelle Diaz is the IS&T Pick of the Month for December 2025. With Audio!
I love the whimsical way this develops like a slowly falling snowflake
The snow is always real, tangible, down to the pleasure of making a snow angel and the numbness of hands; the sense of personal loss runs like a watermark through it; and the grief we are beginning to feel for a planet we are overheating haunts us with its presence too.
‘A Cry’ by Mariam Saidan is the IS&T Pick of the Month for November 2025. Read and Hear It Here!
‘I have lived this. I believe every woman from Iran who reads her words will feel every line of the poems she writes.’
‘A cry that defies repression and a spirit that refuses to be silenced.’
‘Pivotal’ by Tadhg Carey is the October 2025 Pick of the Month. Congratulations! Revisit the Poem and Hear it Read Here.
‘Beautiful, subtle merging of that moment of sporting destiny and the creative process’
‘This poem captures the momentum of sport, the exhilaration and tension, whilst also almost imperceptibly focuses our attention on the mechanics of writing poetry.’
Reviews
Zain Rishi on Meredith MacLeod Davidson
From the opening poem of Meredith MacLeod Davidson’s transpiration, we find ourselves in a landscape haunted by cycles of loss. ‘Anchorless / a boat bangs against sea-weathered pylons,’ and this same lack of purpose and the inevitably of decay is infused throughout the imagery of “Deltaville”.
Shannon Clinton-Copeland on Lewis Buxton
“Every poem in Mate Arias is a supporting column in the architecture of a tenderly rendered pantheon to friendship and the myriad forms of platonic love, particularly between men. The pamphlet is made up of twenty-three sonnets, each a vignette of affection, contemplation and memory.”
Chris Hardy on Quentin Cowdry
The poems are carefully structured in regular stanzas, with well-paced, rhythmical lines and deft use of enjambment. The various subjects and themes, which differentiate and unite the work, are built on close observation of the world, of nature and human experience, and how we relate to and respond to it.