Author(s): Nina Mingya Powles

Essay | Aotearoa New Zealand Non-Fiction

'A remarkable book' Robert Macfarlane 'A distinctive new voice: attentive and tender' Amy Liptrot 'Elegant, understated, urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee Home is many people and places and languages, some separated by oceans. 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.

Bodies of water both separate and connect us, and when we enter them we have a different relationship to the world from the one we have on dry land. The essays in Nina Mingya Powles's Small Bodies of Water are connected by her experiences of the bodies of water that have been meaningful to her, from learning to swim in Borneo, to the New Zealand coast, to a pond in northwest London. 
>>"I float, I strain, I swim."
>>The Safe Zone. 
>>Braver in water than on land. 
>>Periods, nature writing and colonialism. 
>>A pond of likenesses. 
>>NMP on RNZ.