Small Bodies of Water

Small Bodies of Water
Nina Mingya Powles
RRP:
NZ$ 32.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 26.39
Hardback
h220 x 144mm - 272pg
5 Aug 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781838852153
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Home is many people and places and languages, some separated by oceans. Where is the place your body is anchored? Which body of water is yours? Is it that I' ve anchored myself in too many places at once, or nowhere at all? The answer lies somewhere between. 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. This collection of essays explores the bodies of water that separate and connect us, as well as everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes, and the ancient lunisolar calendar to butterflies. In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together personal memories, dreams and nature writing. It reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and explores what it means to belong.
A remarkable book . . . Its language trembles on the brink of poetry; these sentences have surety to their rhythms, subtlety to their weightings. Beautifully, dreamily, intricately, it explores movement, migration and memory. Identity, here, is experienced as liquid, as fluent. Small Bodies of Water was the winner of the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize, and it' s my belief that Shepherd would have loved this book - and would have wanted to walk and swim with Nina, talking of all that her book brings to the surface -- ROBERT MACFARLANE Nina Mingya Powles is a distinctive new voice: attentive and tender. Her experience of belonging to many places is one that so many of us can relate to. This book is a beautiful personal journey through plants and sea creatures, food and language . . . A gorgeous read -- AMY LIPTROT Elegant, understated, urgent and nourishing, this is a book that gives shape to the many intimate waters that connect us, to languages loved, lost and longed for, to the lands that honour us by giving us a home. With poetic precision, Nina Mingya Powles shows us what nature writing can be, braiding place, food, family, migration and all their legacies. This is non-fiction at its most dynamic, its most transporting. I will keep this book close by and return to it often -- JESSICA J. LEE So cool and crystalline, but with deep currents of association shifting like tides beneath -- MELISSA HARRISON A tender and tactile meditation on the elements that hold us together and keep us apart, Small Bodies of Water is a luminous, flowing book. Nina Mingya Powles' s mind shimmers -- SEAN HEWITT Evocative, poetic and frankly yummy, Small Bodies of Water is a genre-busting collection of essays by a woman who inhabits more than a single culture and who imaginatively and skilfully delves into this in-between space. Full of contrasting colours, textures and flavours, and carried by currents that ebb and flow, the book turns every nature-writing trope on its head. I loved it. Nina Mingya Powles is an enormously gifted writer -- JINI REDDY From public baths to forest pools, Hampstead ponds to tropical beaches, Powles revisits the waters that have shaped her. Small Bodies of Water invites the reader into a conversation of eloquent intimacy about a life spent thinking of longing and belonging, poetry and language, swimming and family. I read it in one sitting, in thrall of Powles' s skilful, distilled prose, and the fearless way in which she examines her experience of homecoming, of racist injustice, the realities of migration, as well as the many paradoxical legacies of colonialism -- GAVIN FRANCIS A hauntingly beautiful work - as deep and varied as the bodies of water it explores - and just as affecting. Powles writes of the body, the self and the natural world in ways I' ve not experienced before; full of raw and glistening truth. This book is exquisite and perfectly formed and reflective and it leaves ripples on your insides like the sea. The writing is off the scale -- KERRI NI DOCHARTAIGH A book of beautiful and quiet intensity -- HELEN JUKES In this breathtaking book, Nina Mingya Powles writes with the brave grace of a deep-water swimmer, the patience and prescience of a garden designer, and a poet' s passion. These essays sparkle with wit and wisdom, expanding from small bodies of water to encompass food, flowers, friendship and many more wonders that sustain life -- NANCY CAMPBELL
Nina Mingya Powles is a writer, editor and publisher from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of the poetry collections field notes on a downpour, Luminescent and Magnolia, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is also the author of Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai. In 2019 she won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing, for Small Bodies of Water, and in 2018 she won the Women Poets' Prize. She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon, a small press that publishes limited-edition pamphlets by Asian poets. She was born in Aotearoa, partly grew up in China, and now lives in London. @ninamingya | ninapowles. com
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781838852153
Published: 5 Aug 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Canongate Books
Publisher: Canongate Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 220mm
Width: 144mm
Spine: 27mm
Weight: 388g
Pages: 272

In stock - for items in stock we aim to dispatch the next business day. For delivery in NZ allow 2-5 business days, with rural taking a wee bit longer.

Locally sourced in NZ - stock comes from a NZ supplier with an approximate delivery of 7-15 business days.

International Imports - stock is imported into NZ, depending on air or sea shipping option from the international supplier stock can take 10-30 working days to arrive into NZ. 

Pre-order Titles - delivery will vary depending on where the title is published, if local stock is available in NZ then 5-7 business days, for international imports it can be 10-30 business days. In all cases we will access the quickest supply option.

Delivery Packaging - we ship all items in cardboard sleeves or by box with either packing paper or corn starch chips. (We avoid using plastics bubble bags)

Tracking - Orders are delivered by track and trace courier and are fully insured, tracking information will be sent by email once dispatched.

View our full Order & Delivery information