About the Project
The Garbage Poems is a series of found(ish) poems built out of text from garbage collected at some of my favourite swimming holes over the course of eight years, paired with watercolour and gouache portraits of the original pieces of garbage by award-winning artist April White. It will be published as an illustrated poetry collection by Brick Books in September 2025. Brick has agreed to print April’s illustrations in full-colour, and we could not be more thrilled. To help support the extra costs of colour printing, they’re running a pre-order fundraising campaign here. If you can, please support the project and our amazing publisher.
This series of poems began during a writing retreat in Flatrock, NL, where I walked to a popular swimming hole each morning. Disturbed by the amount of garbage there, I started carrying home a bag full of litter after each swim. I wrote poems about my experience at the swimming hole using text transcribed from this garbage, allowing my writing to be shaped by the limited vocabulary of beer cans, fast food, candy wrappers, and other trash. Every word in this series of poems, with the exception of the titles, was found on a piece of garbage. Words were repeated or combined, but not shortened.
The poems focus on the experience of swimming outdoors, which is one of the things that has brought me joy throughout years of chronic illness. Many people I’ve been swimming with have talked about how swimming is one of the few times they feel at ease in their bodies. Especially when those bodies are sick or queer or in some way non-conforming. There’s something about wild swimming, a kind of exuberant embodiment, that can be transformative. This has been what I refer to as “survival joy”—an experience of body-based joy that I seek out when I am struggling to feel pleasure or happiness in everyday life. Near St. John’s, this kind of swimming is spectacular and limited to a few months of the year. I write these poems for the same reasons I pick berries and make jam—this is my survival joy and I’m going to need it to get through the winter.
When I thought about illustrations for this project, I immediately thought of April White and their watercolour paintings of everyday objects. I had a brochure from their A Day In The Life Of exhibition at The Rooms on my fridge—a watercolour painting of a milk carton and other food on a kitchen table. I’m not sure if I came up with the idea of illustrating the poems and then thought of April’s work, or whether looking at April’s work every day seeded the idea for illustrating the series. Once I’d imagined beer cans and chip bags painted by April, I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Matthew Hollett (writer, artist, web designer) first imagined an interactive website and has done the web design for this project. He brought to life my request for a tool that would allow other people to try their hand at making poems out of garbage, or to use any found text as a source for poetry.
Poems from the Garbage Poems series were shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, won an NL Arts and Letters Award, were chosen as Editor’s Choice for the Arc Poem of the Year, appear in Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, and have been published in various other journals.
Read More Garbage Poems Online
- The Goose: A Journal of Arts Environment and Culture in Canada: How Long Until No Longer This? Notes on Incomplete Research into How Long it Will Take These Mylar Balloons in the Shape of a 5 and a 3 to Decompose Entirely (with illustrations by April White)
- Sparks Literary Festival Poetry competition (video): I am writing a spell for your nervous system
- Voices From the FOLD (Festival of Literary Diversity Program 2022): In which skinny dipping temporarily fixes a voice
- Canthius Pleasures Project: Blessing for the swim selfie + Every so often you love your body
- Tinderbox: Writing the Same Poem Over & Over
- Arc Poetry: Maybe a Body
- Bracken Magazine: Four Poems (from the Garbage Poems)
- Juniper Journal: Night Swimming, Fall Equinox
- Arc Poem of the Year shortlist: Middle Pool
- Plenitude Magazine: Everything We Broke
- CBC Poetry Prize Shortlist (2015): From the Garbage Poems (No longer online, but these are the same poems featured on this website)
Articles & Interviews about the Garbage Poems
- Newfoundland Quarterly: The Garbage Poems and the Transformative Joy of Pond Swimming (Eva Crocker)
- Fiddlehead: An Interview with Anna Swanson (w/Melissa Spohr Weiss)
- Fiddlehead: An Interview with April White (w/Douglas Walbourne-Gough)
- Crocker, Eva. “Scavenging a Future.” Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador, edited by Mireille Eagan, Goose Lane Editions, 2021. (With illustrations by April White)
Garbage Poems in Anthologies
- “In Which Skinny Dipping Temporarily Fixes a Life.” Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, edited by by E. D. Morin and Jane Cawthorne, University of Alberta Press, 2021. [Essay about the writing process]
- “For the Boys Cliff-Jumping by the Memorial Stone.” In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry, 2nd Edition, edited by Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve. Caitlin Press, 2016. [Poem]
- “I Am Writing A Spell for Your Nervous System.” Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, Edited by Kathryn Mockler, Coach House Books, 2020. [Poem]
