Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems

By Melanie Dennis Unrau

Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems, Melanie Dennis Unrau's debut collection, is an elegantly spare, thoughtful, and fiercely tenacious meditation on the trials and tribulations of modern motherhood. Written in response to the platitude "Your children are your poetry now," Happiness Threads explores the struggle of a young mother to balance the demands of raising young children with her desire to make art. Unrau wastes neither words nor sentiment; often brief and wonderfully compact, these poems shy away from nothing--delving into every challenge from the onslaught of dirty diapers and spit-up to the despair in the aftermath of a stillbirth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Muses’ Company
• Release date: Oct 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990737268

Melanie Dennis Unrau

Melanie Dennis Unrau is Editor and co-Publisher of Geez magazine. Once a writer of long posts late at night, she now prefers to make art with a group of visual artist mothers who meet in person in Winnipeg. Her writing has appeared in magazines and art shows, and in Exposed, an anthology of emerging Manitoba writers (The Muses' Company, 2002). This is her first collection.

Book preview

Cover: Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems, written by Melanie Dennis Unrau, published under The Muses Company, by J. Gordon Shillingford, shows the loosely bound threads in black and blue colours hanging from a nail on the perforated panel.

HAPPINESS THREADS

THE UNBORN POEMS

MELANIE DENNIS UNRAU

Logo: The Muses' Company. The logo shows a woman's head with braided hair looking at an open book in front of her.

Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems

first published 2013 by

The Muses’ Company

An imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc.

© 2013 Melanie Dennis Unrau

The Muses’ Company Series Editor: Clarise Foster

Cover design by Terry Gallagher/Doowah Design Inc.

Interior design by Relish New Brand Experience

Author photo by Jason Unrau

Cover art by Brenna George

Printed and bound in Canada on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Manitoba Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from The Muses’ Company, and imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc., except for brief excerpts and in critical reviews, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Unrau, Melanie Dennis, 1979-, author

Happiness threads : the unborn poems/Melanie Dennis Unrau.

ISBN 978-1-897289-95-2 (pbk.)

I. Title.

PS8641.N744H36 2013 C811’.6 C2013-903311-4

J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing

P.O. Box 86, RPO Corydon Avenue, Winnipeg, MB Canada R3M 3S3

To all of my mothers—Jeanette, Elaine, Nim, Mo, Grace,

and Jane—for loving me, and for showing me how.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

prologue: my children are not my poetry

one

enceinte

miscarriage

d & c

still

unborn poems

birth control

anniversaire

two

expecting

the womb is

december 31

second coat

concrete

favour

three

a birth story

reclining buddha

another birth story

four: happiness threads

glossary of abbreviations

thread: welcome!

forum

IRL

MILF

wow

thread: family

DH

DD

DS

hint: to find DW see the obituaries

dear me

thread: babywearing

BW

RS

MT

thread: natural parenting

BF