Magnolia, Nina Mingya Powles’ first full collection, dwells within the tender, shifting
borderland between languages, and between poetic forms, to examine the shape
and texture of memories, of myths, and of a mixed-race girlhood. Abundant with multiplicities, these
poems find profound, distinctive joy in sensory nourishment – in the sharing of
food, in the recounting of memoirs, or vividly within nature. This is a poetry
deeply attuned to the possibilities within layers of written, spoken and
inherited words. A journal of sound, colour, rain and light. "This
collection pays homage to all that the five senses might evoke, with a
particular attention to the myriad of memories our tastebuds conjure up through
food and ritual." - Mary Jean Chan