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'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane
'Gorgeous' Amy Liptrot
'Urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee
Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London.
In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.
Small Bodies of Water weaves together threads of poetic sentences, sensory detail, and acute observations to create a work that questions how trauma begets creativity. It’s a work that feels at once peaceful and painfully beautiful to read
Nature writing lovers will adore this collection of lyrical essays . . . Traversing Borneo to New Zealand to North London, it explores what bodies of water have meant to [Powles] while navigating girlhood and growing
From Borneo to London, Powles’ evocative collection of essays ruminates on the personal and political subtext of bodies of water, winding themes of migration, natural disaster and family around lyrical description and rare insight
The sixteen essays in this lyrical collection brush gently against one another . . . She stitches together personal experience, natural history and the books, films and music she loves in a mesmerising intertextual patchwork. It’s an ambitious collection but Powles’ assured voice, and the constant presence of water, makes it feel like a dreamy downstream journey
A shape-shifting wonder
A globetrotting watery memoir . . . Powles uses the aquatic as a leaping-off point for explorations of identity, migration [and] dreams
— NIC BOTTOMLEY
Nina Mingya Powles is a writer, editor and publisher from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of three poetry collections, including Magnolia, which was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje Prize and the Forward Prize; and Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai. In 2019 she won the Nan Shepherd Prize for Small Bodies of Water, and in 2018 she won the Women Poets' Prize. She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon. Nina was born in Aotearoa, partly grew up in China, and now lives in London.
@ninamingya | ninapowles.com