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The Gardens of Our Childhoods
Poems considering self, masculinity, and culture through the spectacle of professional wrestling.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods , the distance between spectacle and reality blurs.
Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.
The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
In this stunning debut, John Belk looks at the world of professional wrestling to excavate the real within the artificial and explore the projections we create, run from, and delight in. In The Gardens of Our Childhoods , the distance between spectacle and reality blurs.
Belk uses the spectacle of wrestling to stare deeply into American culture and masculinity, parsing the intersecting threads of patriarchy and gender, and unpacking identity formation and performance. As Belk pries into toxic masculinities, he leaves space also for tenderness, queerness, and resistance to normative structures, opening the potential for love and admiration. Populated by classic and contemporary wrestlers like André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Bruno Sammartino, Marcus “Buff” Bagwell, and more, this book is ultimately about the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of our identities that smudge fiction and reality. Like wrestlers in their operatic and winding storylines, we learn how to project and inhabit identities while growing into and fighting against the scripts we write for ourselves and those that are imposed on us.
The Gardens of Our Childhoods is the winner of Autumn House Press’s Rising Writer Prize in Poetry.
- GenresPoetry
74 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2022
This book isn't just a pretty cover—it's fun, sad and beautiful. I love how Belk used wrestlers to explore lives lived, for better and worse.
May 6, 2026
The description of these poems viewing their topics through the lens of wrestling originally threw me - I’m not particularly a wrestling fan, despite participating in my schools 6th grade team. But I took a workshop with John over the winter and loved both his teaching style and insight, as well as the little view we got into his own writing at the time. And I’m very happy I picked up this excellent book.
The Gardens of our Childhoods cycles through exploring beauty, regret, hope, nostalgia, and dreams. And yes, wrestling. Belk’s writing is lovely throughout - balancing both urgency and space to breathe in a tender way that weaves the collection into a cohesive whole.
Really lovely, will definitely recommend to others and revisit myself. And a good lesson to be open minded to topics that might not normally be a draw for me.
The Gardens of our Childhoods cycles through exploring beauty, regret, hope, nostalgia, and dreams. And yes, wrestling. Belk’s writing is lovely throughout - balancing both urgency and space to breathe in a tender way that weaves the collection into a cohesive whole.
Really lovely, will definitely recommend to others and revisit myself. And a good lesson to be open minded to topics that might not normally be a draw for me.
December 10, 2025
This book is such an eclectic collection of poetry, and makes for a very engaging and thought-provoking reading experience. The seemingly disparate topics explored by Belk come together in a beautiful and surprising way by the end. I love how professional wrestling is used to explore artifice, death, masculinity, and broken expectations. A great read for anyone interested in poetry, wrestling, or simply what it means to be human.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews