Author: Nina Mingya Powles
Publisher: Canongate
Paperback
Staff Picks! Enya says…
Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles (writer of the poetry book Magnolia), would be considered a memoir but instead of a chronicle of events it is a series of observations. The time-line goes back and forth, up and down. One moment cycling through the rain in Shanghai to swimming in Hampstead Heath Women’s pond. Powles is connected to herself not through landmass but through bodies of water, language and nature. Spotting a Kōwhai tree on the streets of London, a tree she thought only grew in New Zealand. Learning to write her name in Mandarin. A warm meal alone in a new city.