What We Lost in the Swamp is a collection of poetry exploring youth, growth, being a queer teenager, nature, and jealousy, amongst other things. The poems have a straightforward style and some memorable imagery (I think “holding out own internalized / homophobia like great big onions / in our hands” was my favourite, or at least the one I remember most now), but for lots of people will have relatable moments encapsulated within. The nature imagery in a lot of the poems is more direct than a lot of poetry that uses nature as imagery and metaphor, which may or may not be your thing, and some of the poems I found didn’t quite work for me in their simplicity, but that’s often true in collections. I liked the poems about being a queer teenager at school the most, especially the opening poem ‘When I Realised I Was a Green Tree Frog in Another Life’, as these really hit home and make you consider your own experiences at school.
Fiendfully Reading 
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