Nina Mingya Powles - Small Bodies of Water

small
bodies
of
water

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

Also by Nina Mingya Powles

Luminescent
Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai
Magnolia,

small
bodies
of
water

nina mingya powles

The paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2022 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition published in 2021 by Canongate Books
canongate.co.uk
Copyright Nina Mingya Powles, 2021
Illustrations copyright Jo Dingley, 2021
The right of Nina Mingya Powles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Excerpts from The Curse and The Institute for Secret Pain in Curses, Curses by Kirstie Millar reprinted with kind permission of the author and publisher. Excerpt from Bell Theory in A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon reprinted with kind permission of the author. Excerpt from Day by Day in Tatai Whetu by Kiri Piahana-Wong reprinted with kind permission of the author and publisher. Excerpt from The River Bears Our Name in Cup by Alison Wong reprinted with kind permission of the author and publisher. Excerpts from First Love/Late Spring, Your Best American Girl, My Bodys Made of Crushed Little Stars and A Burning Hill by Mitski reprinted with permission of Warner Chappell. Excerpt from How to Let Go of the World by Franny Choi reprinted with kind permission of the author. Excerpt from Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. Copyright 2017 by Layli Long Soldier. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 83885 218 4
eISBN 978 1 83885 216 0

For my family

Contents

A Girl Swimming Is a Body of Water

THE SWIMMING POOL is on the edge of a hill overlooking the valley where the town begins. From up here I can almost see Mount Kinabalus dark rainforests. I know the names of the things that live among the trees and streams from flicking through Gong Gongs natural history books: the Bornean sucker fish, the Kinabalu serpent eagle, the enormous Rafflesia flower, the Atlas moth with white eyes on its wings.

My cousin Sara and I are ten. We were born just a month apart but she already knows how to dive head first into the deep end and I dont. I slowly lower myself down the cold metal ladder and swim out after her, kicking up a spray of white waves behind me, until my toes dip down and there is nothing there to catch me. I reach for the edge, gasping. I am happier where theres something solid to hold on to, where I can see our splashes making spiral patterns on the hot concrete. From here, I use my legs to push myself down. I hover in a safe corner of the deep end, waiting to see how long I can hold my breath. Looking up through my goggles I see rainforest clouds, a watery rainbow. I can see the undersides of frangipani petals floating on the surface, their gold-edged shadows moving towards me. I straighten my legs and point my toes and launch myself towards the sun.

Gong Gong used to drive us to the Sabah Golf Club whenever we came to visit. He would go off for his morning round while Sara and I went straight to the pool, our mums lagging behind us. Po Po stayed home, as usual. Over many years of visiting my grandparents in Malaysia, I can never remember Po Po coming with us to the pool.

I am white and Malaysian Chinese, though not everyone can tell this straight away. My mother was born in Malaysia and moved to Aotearoa New Zealand when she was seventeen. I was born in Wellington. We moved to New York when I was three for my parents work, moved back to Wellington four years later, then packed up again four years after that and relocated to Shanghai. I was fifteen when we left Shanghai to move back home again, although by then, home was a slippery word.

Where is the place your body is anchored? Which body of water is yours? Is it that Ive anchored myself in too many places at once, or nowhere at all? The answer lies somewhere between. Over time, springing up from the in-between space, new islands form.

My first body of water was the swimming pool. Underwater, I was like one of Gong Gongs little silver fish with silver eyes. Like one of those he catalogued and preserved in gold liquid in jars on the shelf in the room where I slept, trapped there glimmering forever. It was here that I first taught myself how to do an underwater somersault, first swam in deep water, first learned how to point my toes, hold my legs together and kick out in a way that made me feel powerful. Here, we spent hours pretending to be mermaids. But I thought of myself less as a mermaid and more like some kind of ungraceful water creature, since I didnt have very long hair and wasnt such a good swimmer. Perhaps half orca, half girl.