Louise Wallace’s fourth collection, This is a story about your mother, is an almost-breathless exploration of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood.  It pushes against societal expectations, highlights the loss of ownership of one’s body as pregnancy takes hold. The collection is in one major section, Like a Heart, with two individual poems preceding it and a short section after, Vessel, containing the titular poem.

Great tenderness pervades many of the poems, underlying the sharp questioning of society’s undervaluing of women’s labour. In yesterday, a poem about the narrator’s father’s health decline, the protectiveness toward both parent and unborn baby resonates on the page:

                                                                                                         I shelter from the

things that scare      me most I stroke               my belly                ballooning over the

seatbelt like a sunrise            I imagine saying                let’s pretend as my dad might

have once 

 The poems shift between fragments like above, to prose-ish pieces and poems of couplets and free verse. In cleanup, and throughout the collection, the trauma and the effects of losing control in the process of pregnancy and birth are poignant and truthful:

options are offered as If there’s a choice, but even those will soon disappear.

there is a genuine tinge before your selves separate.

This is a story about your mother is a story of your mother, of her mother, of everyone’s mothers, and yet rings with a beautiful personal sincerity and humour. This is a work that matters.

 like a heart

forming channels / like a tube / like a heart / primitive / like a tadpole / like a nail head / like an orange seed / it is a chance / no greater than one percent / it is a personal decision / it is a risky time / for your relationship / you have a partner / who does not yet know / how the world works to whom / it is not yet obvious that / it has begun / you find yourself / confronting the news / and its effects / your disappointment / your delight / the guilt / of every woman / her worry / her joy / her excitement / her meltdowns / and it looks / as though you are lying / on your stomach? are you lying / on your stomach? / you may have a heavy sensation / feel more full / more physically ill / have you expected / you can do enough? / enough to prevent / someone else’s body odour / the fumes of a car / of food / of perfume / your nostrils / are powerful are you feeling / lightheaded? / last week / is very similar to this week in how / you may be feeling / you worry / don’t worry / you don’t look / any different / it’s a fairly classic / sensation / symptoms officially known / and counted by the calculators online / it’s the best time / for your imagination / to wander when you haven’t checked / that there isn’t / something / going on

Reviewed by Erica Stretton