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
Jeff Phelps reviews ‘Unsung’ by Emma Purshouse
Emma Purshouse’s third full collection of poetry is a tribute to the distinctive places and voices of the Black Country of the West Midlands. It opens with a series of personal, sideways perspectives on specific landmarks and events, such as Little Nell’s fictional grave at nearby Tong or a 1922 tragedy in an explosives factory that killed nineteen girls and young women. These poems are wry, often deadly serious.
Nigel King
My compass – its needle set with a sliver of blue stone – spins and spins. Breath mists my snow
goggles. I wipe them endlessly. Even in these thick seal-skin mitts my hands are frozen. I have been
no place as still as this.
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
News
‘Unexploded Bombs’ by Samantha Carr is the IS&T Pick of the Month for January 2026.
‘A very striking and thought provoking piece of work.’
‘I enjoyed how this reflected Plymouth’s landmarks (I’m from Plymouth) but also medical anxiety (which is a common theme in my life). Unsettling.’
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
‘Unexploded Bombs’ by Samantha Carr is the IS&T Pick of the Month for January 2026.
‘A very striking and thought provoking piece of work.’
‘I enjoyed how this reflected Plymouth’s landmarks (I’m from Plymouth) but also medical anxiety (which is a common theme in my life). Unsettling.’
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
Jeff Phelps reviews ‘Unsung’ by Emma Purshouse
Emma Purshouse’s third full collection of poetry is a tribute to the distinctive places and voices of the Black Country of the West Midlands. It opens with a series of personal, sideways perspectives on specific landmarks and events, such as Little Nell’s fictional grave at nearby Tong or a 1922 tragedy in an explosives factory that killed nineteen girls and young women. These poems are wry, often deadly serious.
Nigel King
My compass – its needle set with a sliver of blue stone – spins and spins. Breath mists my snow
goggles. I wipe them endlessly. Even in these thick seal-skin mitts my hands are frozen. I have been
no place as still as this.
Recent Prose
Recent Haiku
Picks of the Month
‘Unexploded Bombs’ by Samantha Carr is the IS&T Pick of the Month for January 2026.
‘A very striking and thought provoking piece of work.’
‘I enjoyed how this reflected Plymouth’s landmarks (I’m from Plymouth) but also medical anxiety (which is a common theme in my life). Unsettling.’
‘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.’
Reviews
Jeff Phelps reviews ‘Unsung’ by Emma Purshouse
Emma Purshouse’s third full collection of poetry is a tribute to the distinctive places and voices of the Black Country of the West Midlands. It opens with a series of personal, sideways perspectives on specific landmarks and events, such as Little Nell’s fictional grave at nearby Tong or a 1922 tragedy in an explosives factory that killed nineteen girls and young women. These poems are wry, often deadly serious.
Jessica Mookherjee reviews ‘Grey Time’ by Julia Webb
Julia Webb’s Grey Time, her fourth collection with Nine Arches Press, insists on the full weather of grief.
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”.