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
Louella Lester
When Mom flew off with the Canada geese you made me promise that we would never leave one another.
Tim Brookes
In the charity shop I try on a coat
flocked with fake shearling,
shaved-soft almost: fibres
fired onto plastic to fool the wrist.
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
News
‘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.
Word & Image
Debbie Strange
midnight sun
a polar bear’s breath
catches fire
Filmpoems
Brian Johnstone and Steve Smart on Holocaust Memorial Day
Place of Graves
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a Jewish actress returns to her ancestral shtetl in Eastern Europe to seek evidence of her family’s former life.
Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day
News
‘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.
Word & Image
Debbie Strange
midnight sun
a polar bear’s breath
catches fire
Filmpoems
Brian Johnstone and Steve Smart on Holocaust Memorial Day
Place of Graves
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a Jewish actress returns to her ancestral shtetl in Eastern Europe to seek evidence of her family’s former life.
Previously featured
Louella Lester
When Mom flew off with the Canada geese you made me promise that we would never leave one another.
Tim Brookes
In the charity shop I try on a coat
flocked with fake shearling,
shaved-soft almost: fibres
fired onto plastic to fool the wrist.
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
Picks of the Month
‘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.’
Read and Hear it Here: Clara-Læïla Laudette’s ‘The purpose’ is our Pick of the Month for September 2025. Huge Congratulations!
‘Quietly devasting poem’
‘Fresh, alive, original, funny’
Read, and Hear, ‘sclerenchyma’ by John Bartlett – the IS&T Pick of the Month for August 2025!
‘Evocative, descriptive, challenging and uplifting’
‘The eloquence of phrase and sentiment and timing is brilliant.’
Reviews
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.
In Praise of … Mat Riches on Robin Houghton
Given how much she does for the poetry community—the Planet Podcast series with Peter Kenny, her monthly submissions newsletter, her blog posts, her books on getting published, launching a publisher with other folks, etc., it’s heartwarming to see the attention being placed back on Robin’s writing.
In Praise of… : Arup K. Chatterjee reviews ‘A Different Story’ by Amlanjyoti Goswami
A Different Story conjures a subject that resists acts of dumping trauma, instead alchemizing them into dry humor and decorous irreverence, sans complacency or arrogance