Ink Sweat & Tears Press

In 2013, Ink Sweat & Tears started print publishing, with the launch of our anthology TWELVE: Slanted Poems for Christmas. Since then we have taken over the publication of the winning pamphlets for the Café Writers Pamphlet Commission which expanded to the whole of the UK in 2014 and saw two very talented poets share the honours. One of the resulting pamphlets, Jay Bernard’s The Red and Yellow Nothing was shortlisted for the Poetry Society’s 2016 Ted Hughes Award.

In November 2019 we launched the resulting pamphlets from our 2017 Commission Competition winners, Firing Pins by Jo Young and Fothermather by Gail McConnell, at Café Writers in Norwich on the 11th following the appearance of both poets on a discussion panel at Poetry in Aldeburgh the previous weekend.

The Red and Yellow Nothing was shortlisted for the 2016 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, Firing Pins for the 2020 Saboteur Award for Best Pamphlet and Fothermather, the 2020 Michael Marks award.

On 26th November 2019 we published our Voices of London anthology, edited by Jerwood Poetry Fellow Yomi Ṣode and IS&T’s Kate Birch. This featured poems from the young people at OnSide Future Youth Zone in Barking & Dagenham following a poetry project that had been established there by Yomi under the umbrella of Poetry School. Five of the young people were featured at the Voices of London event on that evening at Mansion House in the City of London.

Two anthologies followed produced in conjunction with London writers organisation, Spread the Word. The first, Runaways London (October 2021), was the response of young Black and South Asian poets and artists to advertisements for enslaved freedom seekers in 17th and 18th Century London newspapers. This was co-produced with Professor Simon P Newman and Dr Peggy Brunache of the University of Glasgow in cooperation with its Runaway Slaves In Great Britain database.

The second work, Uprising & Resistance (July 2023), saw Black poets and artists respond to evidence from the archives of Lloyd’s insurance market, of insurrection on the ships of the Middle Passage of the trade in enslaved people. Co-partners on this were Dr Alexandre White and Pyar Seth of Johns Hopkins University and the US organisation Black Beyond Data. The anthology, and the Underwriting Souls digital exhibit that it was part of, were funded entirely by the Mellon Foundation.

PLEASE NOTE: HIGH POSTAL COSTS MEAN THAT WE NO LONGER SELL OUTSIDE OF THE UK VIA THE ‘BUY NOW’ LINKS BELOW.

IF YOU WANT TO ORDER ANY OF OUR BOOKS TO SHIP TO THE EU OR REST OF THE WORLD, PLEASE EMAIL KATE AT ENQUIRIES@INKSWEATANDTEARS.CO.UK AND SHE WILL CALCULATE DELIVERY FEES AND ARRANGE PAYMENT AND SHIPMENT.

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