The Litter I See Project

Anne Simpson was a happy discovery for me more than a dozen years ago when she was speaking and mentoring at Seawords, a workshop series on PEI (which marked the first time I set foot on the island). And while I’ve loved the magic of the poetic form ever since discovering, as a kid, the Welsh poet-and-occasional-itinerant-tramp, W.H. Davis, in a book my sister stole (borrowed too long?) from the school library, I’ve never tended to collect many collections. Simpson has been an exception from the get-go. Among other things, I’m grateful for the visual artist’s eye she writes with and her deep appreciation of the natural world.

‘Laundry’ was one of the earliest pieces published on this site and I remember being struck with what Anne did to turn a few disconnected words on a torn bit of paper into something I’ve never forgotten — the last line, especially, comes to me often, in all sorts of contexts.

♦

** Laundry, originally published July, 2015.

Hung in a whipping
wind, sheets, freshly washed. Top
sheet bound over and under and around the line,
tangled, while the fitted sheet loosens, snaps. Floats, full-bellied—
Dwindles, sags, diminishes into a body flattened
on a bed of grass

mowed the day before. He finds the pillowcases still pegged side
by side. Holding
air, releasing it. Lungs.

She left this morning, but first she did
the laundry. Put the note
where he’d see it, on the counter by the sink.

If, she said. People, she said.

♦

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Anne Simpson is the author of five books of poetry: Strange Attractor (2019); Is (2011); Quick (2007), winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; Loop (2003), winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and Light Falls Through You (2000), winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. She has also written three novels, Speechless (2020), winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award; Falling (2008), longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and winner of the Dartmouth Award for Fiction, and Canterbury Beach (2001). Her first book of essays, The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness (2009), delves into issues of poetry, art, and empathy, while her second essay collection, Experiments in Distant Influence: Notes and Poems (2020), is concerned with notions of courage as well as human and non-human community.

She lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she started the Writing Centre at StFX University.

She can be found at www.annesimpson.ca

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biggest litter peeve:

Simpson — to me, litter seems like a deeper issue than just throwing things out of a car or dropping them in a ditch. It’s a discourtesy—essentially a discourtesy to others and to the world around us.