Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Blessing for the Swim Selfie” by Anna Swanson, from The Garbage Poems (Brick Books 2025), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

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Blessing for the Swim Selfie

By Anna Swanson

From The Garbage Poems

Layer by layer, let us onion

open into the sun. Let us swing,

pantsless as tolling bells,

into the green-gold water.

We are spilling from sugar

cones. We are mouthfuls.

We are sick & whole. Mages,

building boats of popsicle sticks

& emotions. Our hands are constellations

of Dorito dust, diving. We are

mathematics. Please, we are facts,

with faces & cameras as proof.

Note: All words except title transcribed from garbage collected at the swimming hole in Cape Broyle, NL.

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Copyright © Anna Swanson

From The Garbage Poems (Brick Books 2025), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

Anna Swanson is a queer writer, librarian, and poetry editor with Riddle Fence. She is the author of The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, 2025), which was longlisted for a Winterset Award and is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her first book, The Nights Also (Tightrope, 2010), won a Lambda Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. Her writing also appears in various anthologies including On Occasion, 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 recently completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland. Her special interests include collective liberation and wild swimming in all seasons. https://annaswanson.ca/

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