Second Fleet Baby

Second Fleet Baby examines birth and motherhood, drawing on the playful energies and powers of 18th and 19th century ‘convict chicks’, including Rhook’s own ancestor, who was transported from England to Eora land on the Lady Juliana as part of the notorious 1789 Second Fleet. How might a settler reconcile the violence bound up with their role populating stolen land with the love and euphoria that can flow from parenthood? Intergenerational ties are traced through the soft weapons of the body, connecting the intimacies of nation-making with the politics of reproduction in lavishly personal ways.

Nadia Rhook is a non-Indigenous historian and poet, born in Naarm/Melbourne and currently living in Boorloo/Perth. She has a PhD in History from La Trobe Univiersity and lectures in History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her poetry appears in various journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Peril Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Westerly, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Authora Australis, Twice Not Shy: One Hundred Short Short Stories (Night Parrot Press), and What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing (Recent Work Press).