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Nadia Rhook Nadia Rhook i(9786028 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Mayland’s Aerodrome (1926) i "not long after the war finished", Nadia Rhook , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 67 no. 2 2022; (p. 74-75)
1 y separately published work icon Second Fleet Baby Nadia Rhook , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2022 24397488 2022 selected work poetry A poetry collection that explores the connections between mothering, healing, history and inheritance.
'Second Fleet Baby examines birth and motherhood, with a consciousness that spans centuries. This poetry draws on the energies of 18th Century English convict women, including Rhook's own ancestors, to open raw questions of belonging. 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. 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'.' 

 (Publication summary)

1 The Midwife i "in a tent pitched in a corner of the deck", Nadia Rhook , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , February no. 104 2022;
1 Something Specific about This Boodja i "I try to pause systematically before I drop you at childcare", Nadia Rhook , 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 66 no. 2 2021; (p. 22-23) Best of Australian Poems 2022 2022; (p. 170)
Author's note: In May 2021, a seven-year-old child died of an infection while waiting for medical care at the Perth Children's Hospital. Subsequently, her parents pushed for an investigation. As a result of the Chavittupara family's pressure on the McGowan Government, a report was delivered that observed a 'cascade of missed opportunities' leading to the death. The report listed eleven recommendations, including a clear pathway for parents to escalate concerns to staff and a review of cultural awareness for staff. 
 
1 Origins i "my sister bought a chick home from school we", Nadia Rhook , 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Authora Australis , no. 3 2021;
1 Maar Bidi : Carving Sovereignty and Desire in Indigenous Youth Storytelling Linda Martin , Nadia Rhook , Elfie Shiosaki , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , no. 100 2021;

'Academia has inherited a long history of non-Indigenous people speaking for Indigenous people and defining Indigeneity and Indigenous cultural heritage – each recurring act erasing Indigenous voices and agencies to speak. Within the discipline of Indigenous Studies, scholars are carving out new transformative pedagogical spaces to create Indigenous-determined stories and storylines. We advocate that, now more than ever, next-generation Indigenous storytelling is needed to nurture intergenerational story cycles which imagine and enliven Indigenous-determined futures.' (Introduction)

1 Pearls and Power Bellies i "things here reproduce at every drop of rain, and corner", Nadia Rhook , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Anthology 2020-2021; (p. 17-18)
1 The Storm i "we danced along the beach after the storm", Nadia Rhook , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: In Your Hands 2020; (p. 98)
1 ‘The Chinese Doctor James Lamsey’: Performing Medical Sovereignty and Property in Settler Colonial Bendigo Nadia Rhook , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Postcolonial Studies , vol. 23 no. 1 2020; (p. 58-78)
'This article traces the spatially grounded operation of ‘medical sovereignty' by reading property alongside medical practice and regulation in a settler colonial city. It does so through the lens of the Antipodean life of one Canton-born doctor, James Lamsey, who was a prolific proprietor in the regional Australian city of Bendigo and used his interlinked proprietorial and medical powers to mediate between the Bendigo Chinese community and white settlers and doctors. Reading medical power through the lens of Lamsey’s life, shaped, as it was, by European-made laws, shows how settler medical sovereignty was enacted in a dynamic relation with Chinese medical sovereignty, performed here in the urban context of Bendigo, on unceded Indigenous Dja Dja Wurrung land. With support from the common law system, health-related boards were, in the late nineteenth century, intensifying a settler sovereignty, where board members and doctors practised increasingly exclusive forms of discretionary power and exercised the right to exclude non-white people from membership. At the same time, Lamsey was enacting a diasporic medical sovereignty that drew on Chinese imperial and British colonial authority. He leveraged his medical sovereignty towards promoting collective Chinese entitlements to health and to counter the exclusions of a whitening settler sovereignty.' (source: publisher's abstract)
1 A Father Tongue i "on father’s day we go", Nadia Rhook , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Multilingual Writing Project , January no. 3 2020;
1 2 y separately published work icon Boots Nadia Rhook , Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2020 18541633 2020 selected work poetry

'The past lives in every step.

'Boots are here a symbol and a tool – a heel of feminine desire and a dirt-trodden shoe that cushions feet on paths to power and property, leaving trails of violence and pain. Memories jump and jar in these poems, loosening history from the grip of archives and footnotes to nourish the imagination, freeing me to speak back to my ancestors and the European men who co-created the edifices of 19th Century colonisation. boots looks in mirrors and across seas to dream big. At its restless heart, it draws history closer to my body.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Settler Meets Sky Knowledge i "now that you mention it", Nadia Rhook , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 63 no. 2 2018; (p. 155)
1 Tự Do i "I caught sight of you in District 1, bold, purple, by", Nadia Rhook , 2018 single work
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , June no. 22 2018;
1 i "when a sound wells from belly to tongue", Nadia Rhook , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , June no. 22 2018;
1 The Greeting i "a labourer met a merchant and now sense lives in a", Nadia Rhook , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , June no. 22 2018;
1 Signs of Impression i "I see iron, wrapped, to posts", Nadia Rhook , 2017 single work poetry
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 August vol. 82 no. 2017;
1 Architecture, Poetry and Impressions of a Bendigo Chinese Doctor, James Lamsey Nadia Rhook , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 August vol. 82 no. 2017;

'Responding to architecture

'Natalie Harkin has suggested that for her, and for other Indigenous poets and writers, poetry is a responsibility.1 In this vein, Birch recently challenged white Australians’ Sorry Day performances of guilt: ‘As we contemplate the word sorry and question to what extent it has become little more than a symbolic gesture – at best – we must also pause and give due thought to the word responsibility.’2 This call is a timely provocation for thinking about White Australia’s relationship with Chinese-Australian history and communities too. Two days before Birch’s piece was published a group of 10 Chinese Australians, including Ballarat leader Charles Zhang, ended a march from Robe, South Australia, at Parliament House – a building designed to impress authority if there ever was one. Standing in the Parliament foyer, just meters from the chambers where the Immigration Restriction Act was passed 116 years earlier, Premier Daniel Andrews apologised for the government’s historically unjust treatment of Chinese people; ‘On behalf of the Victorian government’ he expressed ‘our deepest sorrow and I say to you that we are profoundly sorry’.3 Andrew’s apology is evidently heartfelt, but, though he claimed that ‘we are in your debt for all of those kilometres that you’ve walked’4, it remains unclear whether this debt – linked, as it was, to the labour of the walkers and not to the historical labour of Chinese Australians – is merely symbolic or will translate to monetary compensation, as it has in New Zealand and Canada.' (Introduction)

1 A Centre Place i "the birds chirp, in", Nadia Rhook , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Peril : An Asian-Australian Journal , June no. 24 2016;
1 Nadia Rhook Reviews Finding Eliza by Larissa Behrendt Nadia Rhook , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , September no. 19 2016;

— Review of Finding Eliza : Power and Colonial Storytelling Larissa Behrendt , 2016 multi chapter work criticism
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