The poems in This Natal House speak to birth and its aftermath, the body's generativity and its limits. Here, the story of children coming into being is also the narrative of a mother's disintegration, as pregnancy sets off ongoing experiences of hypermobility and chronic pain. Conrad acknowledges the complexity of birth as unfettered welcome and as suffering for another. As the language in these poems breaks apart and comes back together, like the female body undergoing a surgical birth, the otherworldly dimensions of this shift are revealed. This is early motherhood as fairy tale, as alchemy, as transformation.
