Now a full-colour book featuring April White’s paintings, published by Brick Books!

• Order the book from Brick Books here (or at any bookstore)
• Visit the interactive Garbage Poems Website

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. Find out more at the interactive website for the project, The Garbage Poems, which features a few of the early poems from the project, with each word is linked to the specific item of garbage on which it was found. The website was designed by Matthew Hollett, with watercolour illustrations by April White.

PS – Try your hand at making  your own Garbage Poem on the project website!

Reviews

• Quill & Quire: The Garbage Poems by Anna Swanson & April White
• The Tyee: Come, Let Us Adore The Tyee’s 2025 Holiday Reads
• The Woodlot: Review by Rob McLennan for The Woodlot
• Whistler Writers Festival Blog: “These poems make reviewer want to scream for joy” By Anna Mrozik

Read some Garbage Poems Online

• The Garbage Poems (interactive website): The Garbage Poems
• Send My Love to Anyone: Three poems + Illustrations from The Garbage Poems
• 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

Articles/Interviews about the Garbage Poems

• The Woodlot: Review of 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)

Awards & Nominations

• Pat Lowther Award, Longlist, 2026
• Raymond Souster Award, Longlist, 2026
• Lambda Literary Award, Finalist, 2026
• Winterset Award, Longlist, 2026
• Sparks Literary Festival Poetry Competition, Winner, 2020 (for “I am Writing a Spell for your Nervous system”)
• Newfoundland and Labrador Arts & Letters Award for Poetry, 2018 (for “In Which Skinny Dipping Restores a Voice”)
• CBC Poetry Prize, Shortlist, 2015 (Five poems from The Garbage Poems)
• Arc Poem of the Year, Shortlist & Editor’s Choice, 2015 (for “In Which We Submerge Three Times like the Mikveh”)

Garbage Poems in Anthologies/Book Chapters

• “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]