Second Fleet Baby

This poetry draws on the energies of 18th Century English convict women, including Rhook's own ancestors, to open raw questions of belonging.

Second Fleet Baby examines birth and motherhood, with a consciousness that spans centuries. 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. Through stories of childhood, of fertility, and of nurturing new life during a pandemic, the patriarchal weight of history is cast off and origins are pulled 'from the seabed to the surface'.