“Before my dad died in 2008, he generously gave me permission to write about him. He knew I was asking to share a story laden with stigma and shame. His close and troubled relationship with alcohol had been with him throughout his life. His time on earth was rounded off by a five-year, whiskey-fuelled, health and safety adventure. Trying to make sense of the experience, the psychology professor that I am, the first piece that I wrote was for a medical journal (Dorrian J, 2010. Alcoholism: disease or symptom? The challenges of managing advanced alcoholism and chronic illness. Medical Journal of Australia, 192,11: 661-662). I also wrote several poems that became songs. I ‘trashed’ them because I wasn’t clear on whether I was telling dad’s story, or mine. More than a decade later, I find myself engaging in more sense-making. I have rediscovered these poems in the process. I wonder whether they will resonate with others.”

“This poem was inspired by the odd account of seeing a rogue egg cracked open on the sidewalk with a cigarette butted in the yolk. As a newly initated city girl, I have seen a lot of strange things. However the egg and cigarette on the sidewalk really sparked some sort of inspiration. So, “Uncooked” was born as a bizarre city-centric poem. It has been submitted to multiple magazines, and after a while, I decided to trash this piece as I felt it only existed in a space of spontaneous creativity with no room to be anything truly literary.”

“I feel like these poems maybe are written in a style not seen much today.  I love nature much like Robert Frost and try to capture that same love of nature.  But maybe this doesn't work anymore.  I don't give a lot of my poems a chance because of this.”

“I threw ‘Circuitry’ into the dead letter office on my MAC because it felt like I was inserting myself into a circumstance I’d never experienced. I had no clue, have no idea what bereaved parents really go through, and it felt like a reader might think I’ve no right to poem about it. ‘Between’ was tossed aside because I felt that readers wouldn’t understand just how devastating it is/was to have a precious pet go through medical hell and not be able to save them. ‘All in Due Time’ felt self-serving and boring. I assume nobody would be interested in reading it.”

“I trashed this piece because it’s not true. I was strong enough, but in the moment I felt weak and scared and sad and didn’t want to return to these words and start to believe them again. But I do like them. I just think they’re a bit pointless, and the idea has been done, over and over and over.”

“This love poem is one of my first poems, and felt too cliché and personal to share with anyone but the person to whom it is addressed. It was inspired by Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”. I think that it’s mostly cheesy and unoriginal, but I do really enjoy some of the imagery I used, and it means a lot to me.”

“The reason this poem made it into my ‘trash’ list was because some of the imagery is confusing. By the time you get to the end, you wonder what happened? It’s not a good feeling.”

“These are three poems that have been residing in my recycle bin for about a year. Perhaps at the time of writing it, I quite liked them, maybe even submitted them on impulse. But after various rejections, I think all that was left to me were its many flaws. I picked the poems apart piece by piece until there was nothing left except disdain. Recently, I’ve been writing poetry again, and looking back, I can see my thought process behind each poem and the different scenes that inspired them, hence I decided to fish them out from the bin!”“These are three poems that have been residing in my recycle bin for about a year. Perhaps at the time of writing it, I quite liked them, maybe even submitted them on impulse. But after various rejections, I think all that was left to me were its many flaws. I picked the poems apart piece by piece until there was nothing left except disdain. Recently, I’ve been writing poetry again, and looking back, I can see my thought process behind each poem and the different scenes that inspired them, hence I decided to fish them out from the bin!”

At the I-10 and I-295 junction in Jacksonville, Florida: “This was one of the first poems I wrote that I was really excited about, but after a couple of years, two pages worth of cuts, and a few rejections, I just sort of forgot about it.”

After the Lights Went Out: “This is not in any way similar to anything I’ve experienced personally, and while I generally tend to shy away from writing anything autobiographical, I was afraid this poem might be too disingenuous. I also was concerned about the lack of specificity but didn’t want to reference a real historical event because it’s not my place to speak for real survivors. I didn’t have it in me to fully delete it, however.”

Just a moment (remembered so vividly):  “As someone who doesn’t use labels for their sexuality (and so never feels “queer enough,” so to speak), I am very nervous about having any writing with heterosexual overtones out in the world, meaning most of said writing immediately ends up in my trash folder.”

“These poems were written on three separate occasions while traveling, and I toyed with and ultimately scrapped the idea of putting together a collection of poetry-written-while-traveling. This was not quite “travel writing,” per se, since it was usually just gay inner turmoil surfacing while I happened to be traveling, and hence never really felt like it would have a place anywhere.”

“I’ve always really enjoyed this poem. I scrawled it over scrap paper in a pitch black basement because I didn't want to forget the words -or turn on the lights. It hasn't changed much over the couple of years I’ve tried to get it published.  I eventually tossed it into my scrap pile because you can only send out a poem so many times before the rejection pangs (/major organ failure) set in.”

“This piece was trashed pretty quickly after I wrote it. It was written for a specific call for submissions inspired by a painting of a lighthouse. After it was rejected from that call, I didn’t ever submit it anywhere else, so it ended up trashed. I never felt like there was another home it belonged in.”

“I trashed this poem because the literary conceit of talking to "Poet" about how to write, or not-write, seems overdone. I am not sure if the poem is as intertextual as it is supposed to be - even though I really was responding to the three authors I quote at the start. Three authors! Is that too many? I use words that are part of my daily vocabulary: sometimes I am a psychonaut, sometimes I am a hermeneut. But I have spent my whole life (since Grade 1 anyhow, kindergarten was way more liberated), being berated for using words like psychonaut and hermeneut (and I have never figured out why).”

“This poem never saw the light of day for different reasons. I’ve been out of the writing universe for quite some time and didn’t think any of it could survive out in the world, like they’re owner. However, life has given me another chance and here they are!”

“This poem placed third in in a category of the MA State Poetry Society contest, 2024. The subject was “a magical journey to an enchanted place” I’d just written this poem not long before and hadn’t sent it anywhere. Usually if you win a state contest they publish the poem somewhere but the person I contacted in Massachusetts said they don’t publish the winning poems at all. Now it’s kind of stuck in the middle of out there but not out the’re. Not published, but not exactly unpublished. I hate to think Coastline of My Mind will be left out.”

“waiter-customer confidentiality: I've been trying to pull together separate customer interactions from my last service job into one poem. I think they all deserve separate poems, but this was my first attempt at consolidation. litany to the animal parts: I wrote this after a breakup and then I got embarrassed about it and didn't want to look at it anymore!!! stop falling in love with white people: I've only ever truly fallen in love with white people, and I've wanted to write about how weird and bad that makes me feel for forever. This poem was one of my first attempts, which was frustrating in that I wanted to talk about everything and feel like I succeeded in very little.”

“Both of these poems, ‘mantra’ and ‘squash’, have been collecting dust for some time now. I gave up on them, not because I don’t like them, but because it seems no one else does. They’ve both received handfuls of rejections from different magazines/journals, one said: ‘For the amount of space it takes up, it doesn't end up saying a whole lot.’ But I think maybe they just weren’t looking hard enough. I love these pieces—the space they take up, their ambiguity, their emptiness, their mundanity, all of it. Maybe I’m biased and I’m seeing things that aren’t there, but I hope someone else can read these poems and feel the things I felt when I wrote them, the things I feel when I re-read them again.”

“I originally deleted this piece because I was ashamed of the way I felt when I wrote it. I want to be a good, respectful person who portrays healthy relationships in her writing, and I felt like the way I portrayed my attraction as destructive and love as something you can win didn’t line up with those goals. But I think it’s very human to have thoughts and feelings that don’t align with the person you want to be, so I’m giving the piece a second chance.”