About the Project

The Garbage Poems book

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

Articles & Interviews about the Garbage Poems

Garbage Poems in Anthologies

About the Contributors

Anna Swanson


Anna Swanson

Anna Swanson (she/her) is a queer writer and librarian. Her first book of poetry, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books, 2010), won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her second collection, The Garbage Poems, is forthcoming from Brick Books in 2025. Her writing has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry, Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, and Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis. She is based in St. John’s (on the island of Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland), but is currently finishing an MFA at the University of Guelph. She works as a poetry editor for Riddle Fence Magazine, and special interests include collective liberation and wild swimming in all seasons.

Anna’s Website


April White


April White

April White (they/them) makes art for tired people who struggle to exist in neoliberal capitalist society. April typically works with print media, watercolour, drawing, textiles, and performance. They hold a BFA from Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (2012) and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2023). April is an award-winning artist whose work has exhibited extensively in the east coast of Canada. April loves tacos, cats, and wild swimming.

April’s Website


Matthew Hollett


Matthew Hollett

Matthew Hollett (he/him) is a writer, photographer and web designer in St. John’s, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). His work explores landscape and memory through photography, writing and walking. Optic Nerve, a collection of poems about photography and visual perception, was published by Brick Books in 2023. Matthew won the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. He is a graduate of the MFA program at NSCAD University.

Matthew’s Website