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

Catherine Shonack

when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.

Pippa Little

a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning

Abiodun Salako

a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.

                                                                                                                                       i am building him a morgue
                                                                                                                                                       for Thanksgiving.

Patrick Wright

It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.

Previously featured

Chris Emery

and if we walk to the same sea later
we’ll see something heaving up beside us:
caskets of grey, white-capped, barren and loose,
the way memories are.

read more

T. N. Kennedy

so you collect those poems which reveal
life at its most intense and solitary
turning them on when you most need to feel

read more

Recent Prose

Stephanie Aspin on ‘Why Words Help’ for Mental Health Awareness Week

Writing is both a way of making life more liveable and of making ourselves more whole. Words have a being-ness: when we write poetry, we tap into a network of resonances.

Cheryl Snell

I am all hair, glittering with diamond-glass. A forehead streaked with blood, rubies and roses crisscrossing the tangerine flaps of a ripped collar.

Sarah Thorne

The darkening sky skids past at sixty miles an hour. My eyes are keeping a vigil over the dead fringes of tarmac either side of the road as I drive . . .

Arlene Jackson

Hello Tamara, it’s lovely to hear your voice stretching out across the Atlantic, from your eco pod of wellness into my quiet space, where things are not so well today. But it is today. New and fresh.

Recent Haiku

Chen-ou Liu on International Haiku Poetry Day

end-of-day catch
our wicker basket full
of salmon sunset

Deborah Karl-Brandt

With every book I sell, with every piece of clothing I give away . . .

Clare Bryden

how do I begin?

R.C. Thomas

The Universe dreamed I’d come to its restaurant. I needed to pass the time before my train home.

Anthony Lusardi

the highway asphalt. reeks of exhaust and burnt rubber. the cars and trucks go by. the sun boiling and you rotting.

News

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Feature

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Feature

‘I used to have a romantic notion that my best material had to be handwritten, but with the demands of life, in reality I edit most of my poetry on my phone’

– Holly Winter-Hughes

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Logo credit: Jon Tarrant

read more

Word & Image

J.I. Kleinberg

J.I. Kleinberg

Here,
the rain
collaged
The first
mud
allegory.
The
uncertain
fields
the
gravel

read more

Filmpoems

Kayleigh Jayshree

Kayleigh Jayshree

The Moth Poem

She sees the little lost one everywhere,
eyes on the dead moths curled on her windowsill…

read more

Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day

Catherine Shonack

when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.

Pippa Little

a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning

Abiodun Salako

a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.

                                                                                                                                       i am building him a morgue
                                                                                                                                                       for Thanksgiving.

Patrick Wright

It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.

News

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Feature

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Feature

‘I used to have a romantic notion that my best material had to be handwritten, but with the demands of life, in reality I edit most of my poetry on my phone’

– Holly Winter-Hughes

Cheltenham Poetry Festival Logo credit: Jon Tarrant

read more

Word & Image

J.I. Kleinberg

J.I. Kleinberg

Here,
the rain
collaged
The first
mud
allegory.
The
uncertain
fields
the
gravel

read more

Filmpoems

Kayleigh Jayshree

Kayleigh Jayshree

The Moth Poem

She sees the little lost one everywhere,
eyes on the dead moths curled on her windowsill…

read more

Previously featured

Chris Emery

and if we walk to the same sea later
we’ll see something heaving up beside us:
caskets of grey, white-capped, barren and loose,
the way memories are.

read more

T. N. Kennedy

so you collect those poems which reveal
life at its most intense and solitary
turning them on when you most need to feel

read more

Recent Prose

Stephanie Aspin on ‘Why Words Help’ for Mental Health Awareness Week

Writing is both a way of making life more liveable and of making ourselves more whole. Words have a being-ness: when we write poetry, we tap into a network of resonances.

Cheryl Snell

I am all hair, glittering with diamond-glass. A forehead streaked with blood, rubies and roses crisscrossing the tangerine flaps of a ripped collar.

Sarah Thorne

The darkening sky skids past at sixty miles an hour. My eyes are keeping a vigil over the dead fringes of tarmac either side of the road as I drive . . .

Arlene Jackson

Hello Tamara, it’s lovely to hear your voice stretching out across the Atlantic, from your eco pod of wellness into my quiet space, where things are not so well today. But it is today. New and fresh.

Recent Haiku

Chen-ou Liu on International Haiku Poetry Day

end-of-day catch
our wicker basket full
of salmon sunset

Deborah Karl-Brandt

With every book I sell, with every piece of clothing I give away . . .

Clare Bryden

how do I begin?

R.C. Thomas

The Universe dreamed I’d come to its restaurant. I needed to pass the time before my train home.

Anthony Lusardi

the highway asphalt. reeks of exhaust and burnt rubber. the cars and trucks go by. the sun boiling and you rotting.

Picks of the Month

Reviews