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

Susana Arrieta

Tempting death with every cobblestoned step
his face was a collection of broken records

Peter Leight

There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation . . .

John Grey

there are some lives
lived poolside
 
and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –

Diane Webster

lightning flashes
everyone stands
still

Adam Flint

All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.

Previously featured

Joseph Blythe

I swear I felt the swirly patterned paper
rip from the walls of my childhood bedroom.
It was the same stained cream shade as my skin –
pockmarked, cut and scabbed, dry and peeling…..

read more

Denise Bundred

Shadowed boats bereft of sail
absorb the surge and slap
constrained by a blue-grey chink
of mooring chains.

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

Diane Webster

lightning flashes
everyone stands
still

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.

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

Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange (Canada) is a chronically ill short-form poet and visual artist whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world and to herself. Thousands of her poems and artworks have been published internationally.

read more

Filmpoems

Featured Poetry/Prose of the Day

Susana Arrieta

Tempting death with every cobblestoned step
his face was a collection of broken records

Peter Leight

There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation . . .

John Grey

there are some lives
lived poolside
 
and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –

Diane Webster

lightning flashes
everyone stands
still

Adam Flint

All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.

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

Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange (Canada) is a chronically ill short-form poet and visual artist whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world and to herself. Thousands of her poems and artworks have been published internationally.

read more

Filmpoems

Previously featured

Joseph Blythe

I swear I felt the swirly patterned paper
rip from the walls of my childhood bedroom.
It was the same stained cream shade as my skin –
pockmarked, cut and scabbed, dry and peeling…..

read more

Denise Bundred

Shadowed boats bereft of sail
absorb the surge and slap
constrained by a blue-grey chink
of mooring chains.

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

Diane Webster

lightning flashes
everyone stands
still

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.

Picks of the Month

Reviews