The garbage poems / Anna Swanson ; illustrations by April White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Swanson, Anna, 1974- author.

Contributor:

White, April (April Mary Lynn), illustrator.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chronic diseases--Poetry.

Chronic diseases.

Swimming--Poetry.

Swimming.

Climatic changes--Poetry.

Climatic changes.

Canadian poetry--21st century.

Canadian poetry.

Genre:

Found poetry.

Ecopoetry.

Physical Description:

129 pages : colour illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Kingston, ON : Brick Books, [2025]

Summary:

"Poems that repurpose the language of beer cans and fast-food wrappers to explore everything from chronic illness to climate crisis to the joy of wild swimming. Created entirely out of words found on trash collected at local swimming holes, Anna Swanson's garbage poems reclaim hyperbolic corporate marketing-speak for the expression of physical pleasure, queerness, and vulnerability. Written in the years following a head injury, this book traces the connections experienced in the fiercely embodied act of swimming with a chronically ill body. Paired with tender watercolour illustrations of the source garbage by award-winning artist April White, these poems refuse to conform to an illness-and-cure narrative and instead become a vibrant archive of the process of piecing together a voice back together from fragments, an urgent study of the deeply political nature of joy" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

I am writing a spell for your nervous system

Some definitions

Flatrock. For the boys cliff-jumping by the memorial stone

For the two girls in the lower pool, kissing

In which skinny-dipping temporarily fixes a life

In which we replace garbage with love

A few words about the idea of litter

Gesture goods

Mikveh: Blessing for immersion in living waters

Mikveh: In which we submerge three times in the middle pool

Punch bowl. Some rules—

Portals

We break the ice with a garden shovel for the first swim of spring

Can we talk about pleasure?

Skinny-dipping in the rain

Night swimming, fall equinox

In which it takes a long time to recover

In which skinny-dipping retores a voice

Nothing is wong, I tell myself

Big punch bowl. Twist this lifted lexicon

In which it is hard to talk about what brings us here

Body image I

I take my concussion for a swim

Body image II

Pond as Venn diagram

Body image III

Writing the same poem over & over

Body image V

Maybe a body

Roblin Lake. 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

Cape Broyle. Cold shock response

mammalian dive reflex

Blessing for the swim selfie

After we undress quietly in the Sun

Cold swimming with larches, Cape Broyle, late October

Beachy Cove. Your discarded grocery receipt as an archeology of joy

Every so often you love your body

Bonfire

Song of early May ocean swimming

April and I take the underwater camera swimming on the last weekend of summer

Some definitions.

Other Format:

Online version: Swanson, Anna, 1974- Garbage poems.

ISBN:

9781771316613

1771316616

OCLC:

1506165500