“This piece felt too autobiographical, with not enough lyrical metaphor to connect the Victorian Language of Flowers to my own life experience. I received feedback that I should incorporate more repetition, but I found nowhere to plausibly do so, and the whole thing kind of sputtered out.”

“Fallacies of Youth is a poem that I didn’t edit very much, so I feel like the thoughts contained in it are disorganized and sometimes ramble on. I also feel like the descriptions can sometimes be heavy-handed.”

“I feel that Things I’ve Learned features too many mundane details, and is a little too moralizing for it to have the sophistication and nuance that distinguishes good poetry.”

“I write tabu, I love dark and strange subject matter. I truly enjoy this niche. Some poems get tucked away for a while for fear they are too out there. Sometimes, I pull them back out and rear their ugly heads.”

“I just don’t know what it is with this one. It was one I liked and then didn’t like and then liked again, so submitted it – got rejected- and then I convinced myself it was awful. It’s seasonal and a bit moody, and I think the lines are too long. Not sure what the message is here, except don’t throw things at people with rocks in them. It’s not nice. Oh, and capitalising random words clearly has a deeper meaning. *rolls eyes at self*”

“Okay, so I thought I was being so edgy coming up with ‘archipelago of sin’. I mean… what does that really mean? This was literally one of the first poems I wrote when I decided to start doing things a bit more seriously, and clearly wanted that to be expressed by using long words and odd metaphors about the body being some kind of dread land mass. Oh, and I make the words look a bit like a mountain at the end. -_- This just embarrasses me and yet it’s still kinda special because I know how much I tried to write something ‘good’.”

“I doubted this piece a lot, because I usually don't write in English and even more rarely write poetry. These words just burst out one time when I was reminiscing while cooking lunch, so they seemed too direct, personal and random to become an actual poem. As often, the thoughts insisted till I wrote them down. And then, I forgot about them for some time, but I don't know... for me, there is still something touching about them. The way we can love people, not despite but because of who they are, and how some moments just make that love grow, even when we already know it's not reciprocal.”

“I decided to trash ‘Chiron in Leo’ because I felt it never really fitted in anywhere. All of the magazines I looked into didn’t feel like a good home for the poem which in turn made me suspect the poem just wasn’t good at all. It’s also inspired by a night I was wide awake and looking through Astro.com (not a great idea!) and it felt quite silly as a premise so that also made me reluctant to publish it.”

TW* strong language

“Admittedly, I did have fun writing out my frustrations about nice guys but ultimately I didn’t think it was literary enough to be published. There isn’t a hidden meaning, there’s no real imagery or any writing techniques. People aren’t going to have multiple interpretations if they ever come back to it. It didn’t seem like anything people would want in their magazines. So I tucked away, never to see the light of day.”

“It was rejected several times and I didn’t really know what else to do with it. This is not my usual style but when our dog died on our road trip it just came out.”

“I consider all of these poems trash because they were written in the moment and never touched again.
This was written back in 2018 while I was in a long distance relationship that just felt long and tiring but I wanted to keep going. I couldn’t bare let them go but I couldn’t be happy because of the hurdles and this was a poem that came out of that. I never shared it with them.”

“I consider all of these poems trash because they were written in the moment and never touched again.
This was written a few months after being all depressed and stuff and finding that we find love again. That it’s a trick. I can’t explain it but it just has this angsty thing to it that I don’t love. Granted they all have a bit of angst to them.”

“This piece is called ‘The Loneliest Hour’ and I trashed it because I felt it was too sad. It felt too self-pitying and I didn’t like that I sounded so…whiny for lack of a better word. I wrote it at a very low point in my life and I didn’t want to be reminded of that point. But I hope in sharing it, someone else can relate and know that they might not be the only one feeling that way.”

“I have written this in so many forms until it was finally forgotten since it always felt unfinished, and I’m concerned I tried to cover too many events and form in the same poem. But I like it.”

“I’m exploring the relationship between the voice in our head that follows us and protects us and who we are in everyday life. It’s clear to me but I never was sure it translated to the page. Hence, under the bed this poem remains.”

“I trashed these pieces because I don't buy the confidence in the speaker's voice. It feels to me that the speaker is putting on a front, is trying to be a poet. I wish he could say what he feels without being so self aware and without asking for the unspoken permission of readers, haters, eyes, etc....”

“I had tried submitting it to a couple places some time ago, but that didn’t pan out. As I kept revisiting it, I began to feel nervous at how personal it is. How if it were published, the person this poem involves would read it. Now, because of those feelings and because someone else out there might read it and connect with it, I want to pull it from the trash and give it a home.”

“The reason why there has been so much great poetry down the centuries is because for our forefathers, just about everything in nature was totally awesome because they couldn’t explain it. You can ‘Google’ just about anything now. Science has an explanation for everything. Maybe nobody wanted this poem because the message it conveys only reinforces the pointlessness of writing it in the first place? Eight rejections and counting.”

“Nocking is the art of stringing a bow. None of Penelope’s suitors could string Odysseus’ bow. Only Odysseus could do that. But it didn’t stop them trying. Maybe this one got rejected because I keep telling people I’m not going to give up sending them stuff. I’m going to keep on trying till I get it right. Then maybe I’ll get to kill off my rivals and show them who’s the daddy. Meanwhile I’ve tried to string that bow nine times, and failed.”

“It made me sad, thinking about passing things on and over. Accidentally making IKEA meatballs taste of existentialism at the age of 19 was not part of my plan! It also felt like it was a bit off balance in terms of what I wanted to portray?”