Ink Sweat & Tears is a new webzine that explores the borderline between poetry and prose in the digital age. In otherwords that point in creative writing where prose poetry (or free verse) meets poetic prose.

Good examples include the works of Anne Michaels, Jim Crace, Michael Ondaatje and Ian Marchant (see his 2006 book The Longest Crawl). However IS&T's brief also includes modern haibun (and haiku sequences) - and by this we mean the American influenced approach to semi-autobiographical haibun pioneered by Gary Snyder and even nontraditional fiction, such as Jack Kerouac's Trip Trap. We are also interested in reportage and vignettes - gonzo journalism if you prefer - altho given the limitations of the medium (large slabs of text are difficicult to read online) we do need prose contributions to be relatively short - 750 words max, which is flash fiction/faction length. And we will also consider 'traditional' poetry formats (the apostrophes are meant to be ironic) however it had better be something more exciting than doggerel about macaroons, typhoons and balloons.

And there's more. Because this is the digital age, we also want to publish more experimental poetry that exploits the technology - so if you are working in multimedia, hypertext, Flash or other forms of e-poetry, we want to hear from you.

Finally, we are going to break with tradition and try to give both readers and contributors a better deal than they get from many poetry magazines today. For readers this means not taking up your valuable reading time by subjecting you to self-indulgent whinges from the editor or 'learned' articles that are only of interest to the author and his mother. Instead we hope to be able to publish new prose and poetry content at least once a week. As for contributors, we aim to provide a prompt reply to your submissions - even if it is "thanks but no thanks" - and to publish material accepted for publication equally promptly. And yes we do appreciate this may come as a bit of shock to those of you who are used to waiting months for a reply and, in some instances, years to get into print. Enjoy.