In the Hollow of the Wave

"Nina Mingya Powles's In the Hollow of the Wave is lyrical, cloud-like, alight, fraying, and frayed. These poems are trying to trace memory, family, and history through a correspondence with what's still here, what remains, or the art and writing in the world. In the Hollow of the Wave grapples with the paradox, as stated in the poem, "Snow Fragment," it is "impossible to look" yet it is also "impossible to look away," and because of this paradox, what remains is beautiful art, like this book."

-- Victoria Chang

‘I love the way this collection comes together like a quilt of memories, textures, threads, images, thoughts, ghosts, resonances and folded language, in a way that is so inviting and so expansive. I found it both comforting and exciting to read, and want to reread it over and over again.’

-- Anna Jackson

‘Nina Mingya Powles’ writing has the effortless clarity and cadence of moving water. In these poems, weather is a thread is a fragment is a collage is a home. Lines pulse quietly with the night work of memory, unstitching the borders between dream and reality, language and language, question and answer. Powles’ hand always holds tightly the strands that she so remarkably weaves together. She does not let go. In these silken poems, we follow the blue patterned edge of a quilt/island/body into the sea of the past. Time comes loose like the seams of a river, pianos become field notes, and the poet poses a piercing question: what does it mean to see and be unseen? The mountain does not answer, but the water line shifts to draw a line across what is left behind or unsaid – fragmented, inky, glacial, and handwoven, In the Hollow of the Wave is an invitation to step inside temperate memories, to house oneself in formal innovations and poetic structures made from the organza of melting ice fields, and to witness in four parts, a fragmentation in reverse.’

-- Alycia Pirmoh