Review: In the Hollow of the Wave, by Nina Mingya Powles

Nina Mingya Powles’ latest poetry collection In the Hollow of the Wave brings us a visual quilt of multicultural experiences. Sewn throughout the collection are pieces of art—photographs and patchwork forming collages alongside written thoughts. It takes inspiration from Aotearoa, Asia, the USA, and the UK, examining how these places have impacted Powles' life and experiences, and how society has, in turn, impacted these places.

Powles’ previous collection, Magnolia 木蘭, was a finalist for both the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In 2018 she won the Women Poets’ Prize and in 2019 the Nan Shepherd Prize. She has also published a book of essays, Small Bodies of Water, and a food memoir, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai. In the Hollow of the Wave explores similar themes to these, but stands apart due to its multimedia integration.

The book is divided into four distinct sections. In the first section, ‘A Woven Sea,’ pieces with titles such as ‘Slipstitch,’ ‘patchwork,’ ‘piecing,’ ‘layering,’ and ‘binding’ unpack the poet’s textile work, including sewing and quiltmaking. Here we also learn about her family connections to craft. Her grandfather’s quiltmaking is described as ‘chaotic and lively, composed of squares cut from old t-shirts and pyjamas and curtains and sarongs,’ whilst she recalls how her own ‘knees pressed against the scratched floorboards…testing different patterns and arrangements.’ This section flows almost like a short story, with pages conjoined through memory, much like the quilts themselves.

A standout piece is ‘patterning,’ which follows the poetic form called ‘Germination,’ invented by Natalie Linh Bolderston. Each stanza includes three lines that can be read both left to right and top to bottom. An image of pink and purple squares creating a quilt of sky and sea sits alongside, and the poem becomes a corresponding quilt of words connecting to the images: ‘new/home of/curving ocean light’ and ‘press/the edge/into the sea.’

‘The Metropolitan Museum’ section is less personal and more observational. Powles shifts from largely first-person perspective to third-person objective voice and list-like structures. ‘search?keyword=borneo’ reads like internet search results, whilst ‘A weaver’s dream seeps into the body of the cloth’ resembles a museum artefact description: ‘Object type / human skeletal remains religious/ ritual equipment.’

The rigid, documentary nature of these poems creates distance from the more intimate earlier section. However, these pieces effectively highlight how cultural artefacts are catalogued, preserved, and sometimes removed from their original contexts, questioning the institutional frameworks through which we encounter other cultures.

‘Spell of the Red Flowers’ draws vivid inspiration from artist Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese contemporary artist known for her obsession with polka dots and large-scale installations. Kusama’s quoted words give the section its title:

‘I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe… I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers.’

Powles focuses instead on ‘repeating patterns of tidal waves and starburst-shaped magenta flowers’ following her experience of an earthquake. She moves between viewing Kusama’s work in galleries and unpacking personal experiences of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and global pandemic. ‘New fear unlocked. If anxiety is a generalised response to an unknown threat whereas fear is focused on a known external danger, what happens when the two merge to combine their powers?’

The final section, ‘The Heart Works Harder,’ offers the collection’s most emotionally resonant poetry, combining personal reflection with environmental consciousness. Powles focuses heavily on Aotearoa whilst integrating te reo Māori and Chinese languages, highlighting her multicultural background.

The poem titled 港 exemplifies this multilingual approach. The Chinese character translates to ‘harbour,’ and the poet writes: ‘In the house on the edge of the harbour, I open the window each night to hear the rūrū calling…The harbour is our pathway 巷 of water 氵… of wind 风.’ The character 港 forms part of ‘Hong Kong’ (香港 - Xiānggǎng, literally ‘fragrant harbour’), connecting to themes of diaspora and cultural identity.

Harbours are liminal spaces—neither fully land nor sea—offering temporary shelter within constant movement, much like the cultural and personal sanctuaries Powles explores throughout her collection. The title poem itself draws on this notion of the harbour as a protective ‘hollow’, echoing Virginia Woolf's image in To the Lighthouse of ‘a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave,’ where moments of potential emerge within protected spaces amid larger currents of time and movement.

Powles transforms this Woolfian imagery for contemporary concerns about identity and environmental crisis: ‘I tried to paint the inside of a wave / I could not locate the light… I asked the wave / how far have you travelled / it did not answer… asked the mountain / what does it mean to see and be unseen / it did not answer.’ The speaker’s inability to ‘paint the inside of a wave’ or ‘locate the light’ suggests the challenge of understanding our place within environmental systems both intimate and vast. The unanswered questions to wave and mountain reflect the silence that often greets our attempts to understand our impact on the natural world.

Throughout, Powles draws inspiration from diverse sources: established figures like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath alongside contemporary voices including YouTube creator Li Ziqi, singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski, and Asian artists like Guo Pei and Sim Chi Yin. Exploring these contexts through research reveals much deeper meaning in the poetry and reduces disconnection.

In the Hollow of the Wave may puzzle upon first reading, but deeper exploration reveals a fresh and exciting work. Powles has created something innovative—a multimedia collection that honours traditional craft knowledge whilst speaking directly to 21st-century concerns about cultural transmission and environmental vulnerability. Reviewed by Savannah Patterson