“I scrapped this poem because, for a long time, it was the single neglected poem in my submissions roster. I wrote it in a flurry of heartfelt enthusiasm and put an enormous amount of effort into the environmental metaphors, hoping to evoke the rural Manitoba of my childhood. But, since I don't normally write poems, I didn't know what to do with it, and then, before I knew it, it was old and didn't meet my standards anymore.”

 “I gave this poem up after a couple of rejections because all I heard was that it was too personal. There wasn't enough context that would make my family's story make sense. That while the words were good, it was hard to connect with. I felt like giving more context would ruin what I was trying to write about, so I just let it sit untouched.”

“It’s a translation and I thought it was too simple so I left it in a corner.”

“I wanted to like this poem a lot; I even read it at public reads more than once. I ultimately trashed this poem because it was an experiment in form that I felt just didn’t work out.”

“All of these poems come from a manuscript I am compiling in a similar spirit to trash to treasure’s mission – I am revising and reclaiming years of my idle, impulsive free writes and polishing them into something that means more.”

“I submitted this two or three times, until I received feedback for it. On the one hand, I could relate to the suggestions that were made. On the other hand, I just couldn’t find the right starting point for revision.”

“Regarding ‘Let’s go out to a movie show’, I thought for a while about writing erotic poetry, and tried, but after widening my reading in erotic poetry, especially in the adult section of All Poetry, I realized that women write better erotic poetry and stories than I could and ever would. So, I just abandoned the piece. Re-reading, I think that was the right decision, as the poem is so teen boy POV that it never gets exciting.
‘Biographies’ has too much self-pity in it. I think that good poetry rises above self-pity. Again, it’s a youth’s poetry, not mature. Is there anything of worth in it? Maybe, if you were an activist once.”

“Rather than trashed, these are some of the poems that were kept in a metaphorical chest with rusty locks, guarded with snakes. I am 21 now and these were written in the dark ages of my 15th year, like for example, the first one is literally a live word vomit during a panic episode. I am (glad to say) far better emotionally than before, and reading these poems brings a lot of ache and not-so-good memories that I would really like to forget, but I can’t, so they were just left to rot…”

“It is made of lines from a story I trashed due to feeling that it didn't have enough of a plot to be worth finishing. However, I wanted to take some of the lines from the piece and give them new life; hence, this poem.”

“I thrashed these set of poems due to internal reasons. When I first wrote these poems - most especially Hymn of Grief and the third poem - I felt I was resurrecting a grief memory. As climate change were fostering, most houses were flooded which form the basic part of the third poem. I remember how an infant was rescued, already death. It was saddening, so I cast them away. Until recently, I decided to revisit them and let the world know about these events.”

“These two poems were rejected by another publication, and I was going to sit on them for a bit. I am a believer in that time can be a great editor, so my plan was to return to these pieces at some point in the future. However, I can be a bit forgetful and have actually unintentionally abandoned poems just because I never thought to go back and edit them.”

“I trashed this piece because it feels more like a personal letter to someone who never had the chance to hear it.”

“I trashed this because it felt more like a reminder for myself to forgive my family for any mistakes they made while they were raising me, because if I was in their position I don’t know if my choices would be any different.”

“I wrote this piece while hiding away at a party during my sophomore year of college. I trashed it because I was simply struggling to find my place in the world. I didn’t know who I was. Looking back, this piece is one of my favorites.”

"I scrapped this one because I found the language to be quite basic and a similar idea done by someone else.”

“This piece was written in college and the story it was based on has long since been abandoned.”

“I exiled these poems to my "Retired Poems" folder. These two poems were written as part of an ekphrastic poetry writing challenge I gave myself last year and were abandoned since I wasn't inspired to continue working on them and submit them places.”

“I wrote this poem months ago. It is one of those poems that I feel like the ending is abrupt. So abrupt that the entire poem becomes not coherent enough to form a cohesive thought.”

“Game of tag is one of the poems I wrote in 2020. I always felt insecure because I'm sort of a late bloomer when it comes to writing. 2020 is the year I first write poetry at the age of 20. All of the writer's interviews that I watch, especially those who I considered as heroes, started when they were young (around 9). And so I felt isolated and you know … late for the party. When reading this poem it feels like I can't put the right words to it. I wanted the reader to have the impression of touch being a reminder of being alive, or to seek another person blah blah blah and I can't make it to that. I put this poem down and avoided it for 2 years. The poem sort of came back to me literally one week ago when I'm cleaning my google drive and then tonight I saw your journal (trash to treasure lit) and I said to myself "why not give it a try?".”

“Dragon fruit came to me months ago when my friend showed me the growth stages of dragon fruit in her backyard. Some of the young dragon fruits were damaged by the insects. Then after a while she said that her neighbor is beating their child frequently. I don't feel like sharing this to anyone because it feels like I have no right to speak about something that does not concern me, especially since I grew up from a conservative country where being nosy is frowned upon. For me, the poem itself has a self-defeating voice that doesn't give justice to the topic it wants to address.”