Goose

Poems that retrace unconscious lines of thought and flight to write a new history of the tar sands

Tracing words the way a tracker moves across land,
Goose collects hand-copied details from Northland Trails, a
book of self-illustrated short stories, poems, and essays about the
Athabasca region authored by ＂father of the tar sands＂ S. C. Ells.
At turns cheeky, sharp-witted, and grave, Melanie Dennis Unrau’s
poems explore extraction and the relationship between humans, non-
humans, and the land, resulting in an act of irreverent, deconstructive
literary criticism.

Melanie Dennis Unrau is a poet of mixed European ancestry living on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis in Winnipeg. A SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina, she is the author of the literary study The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024) and the poetry collection Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems (The Muses’ Company, 2013). Melanie is a former editor of The Goose journal and Geez magazine. Current projects include the ＂Workers of the Warming World Unite!＂ anthology of climate-related work poetry with Fernwood Publishing.