 Hello and welcome to this cultural event from the British Library. I'm Brett Walsh of the Events team and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this conversation about the new book Small Bodies of Water by Nina Minga-Powls. Now before the conversation begins I just have a few points of housekeeping. If you'd like to buy a copy of the book you can use the button just above the video. You can also donate to the British Library, send us your feedback and watch previous events. Below the video you'll find a question and answer form. We will be taking a Q&A at the end of the event so you can submit your questions to us using the form below the video. Nina's going to be joined in conversation with the writer Kerry Nidokiti. Kerry's book Thin Places was highly commended by the Wainwright Prize judges in 2021. She's also written for the Guardian, the BBC and the Irish Times and she currently lives in the heart of Ireland in an old railway cottage with her family. So without further ado I will hand over to Kerry and Nina. Thank you. Hello, welcome everybody. It's such an honour to be here as part of the British Library's Natural World series and series of events on climate change and nature writing and it's my absolute pleasure to be talking with Nina Minyapowals. Hi, Nina. Nina is a writer, editor and publisher from Aotearoa, New Zealand. I hope I've said that right. She is the author of three poetry collections including Magnolia, which was shortlisted for both the Ondante 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 we'll talk a bit about the prize later. And in 2018 she won the Women Poets Prize. She's the founding editor of Bitter Melon. Nina was born in New Zealand, partly grew up in China and now lives in London. Nina won the Nan Shepherd Prize, which is a biennial literary prize for underrepresented voices in nature writing. And her book Small Bodies of Water, which as Brett said, you can buy through the link and through your local bookstore, is an absolutely gorgeous read. Jessica J. Lee has said, with poetic precision, Nina shows us what nature writing can be. Amy Liptrop said, it is a beautiful personal journey, a gorgeous read. The big issue I've called it mesmerising. The language is like a flower pressed between the pages of a book. And just today I had the pleasure of my break time reading a gorgeous review by Catherine Wolf, who said in her words today, Small Bodies of Water, boys, the reader up. It brings moments of lightness closer to the surface. It felt like being underwater. It was one of the best reading experiences of my life, which I can echo again and again and again. I adore your book, Nina. I love all of your work. Your poetry is glorious too, but it's absolutely beautiful to be in conversation with you. And yeah, so welcome. And how are you feeling right now, a few weeks into your book, Bea and I? Yeah, thank you so much, Carrie, for your beautiful introduction. It's really lovely to get to finally speak to you. I feel like we've met before, but we actually haven't, so it feels special. I'm feeling alright. I'm feeling, I'm feeling very busy. I kind of can't remember. It was about six weeks ago, I guess the book came out. And yeah, a lot has happened since then. Quite a few, yeah, quite a few Zoom events and maybe one or two that were kind of semi-imperson, which was really exciting. It's really exciting, yeah. That's really great. And I suppose when I was preparing to talk to you, and I knew we only had an hour in total, and there are going to be questions from the audience. So just to say that in case I forget that you can submit just under the link underneath, we will be taking questions from the audience. But I just, I couldn't imagine how we would possibly talk about your wonderful book in just an hour. And so I suppose I've kind of tried to bring it right down so that we can find some of the threads maybe that you might not necessarily have spoken about that much, because I know that I've watched and I've heard some interviews with you and a lot of the same things come up rightly so. But I suppose some of the things I want to ask you maybe are just about you, because I think that writers quite often, especially writers like how you write your work, so much more goes into the book than what we really say. And I suppose I wonder if you could talk a little bit, if that's okay, about the process, because I know that small bodies of water grow out of an absolutely gorgeous sort of, I suppose, whole smaller part of it that was firstly on the Amazing Willow Herb Review. So I wonder if you could talk about how it came, how it shapeshifted, how did the shapeshifting look like for you and for the book? I would love to, yeah. So yeah, as you said, there was an essay I wrote, it must have been maybe two and a half years ago now, which was under the same title, yeah, Small Bodies of Water. And I wrote that to submit to the Willow Herb Review, which is an amazing journal for nature writers of color and mixed race nature writers run by Jessica J. Lee, whose words you quoted earlier, she's incredible. And yeah, I wrote that specifically to submit to that journal, which is quite exciting when that happens, I think when you see a call out and think maybe I could put something together just for this and Jessica's own writing on water and the body and swimming has been so profound for me as a writer. And she kind of, her words kind of gave me permission to write more about water and bodies of water. And so that essay was kind of the beginning of that. But but then I realized not too long after that essay was published, that I actually had a lot of older scattered pieces, some quite short bits of essays, some longer, which they did seem a little bit connected by water. Yeah. And it was only around them. So around two years ago, that I started to think, you know, maybe I could put these pieces together. But at the time of writing them, I wasn't thinking of it as working on a book or even a long project. I've just I always enjoyed experimenting with different types of writing. And so as well as poetry, I kind of when I first started out writing, I tried out different types of essays. And I never thought of it as a big project. I think I maybe couldn't even have written them, you know, if I'd had this kind of looming, big project in mind. So I feel really lucky, actually, that I managed to have these bits that I'd kind of drafts, not necessarily anything amazing, but ideas that I tested much earlier, quite a few years ago. And then when I saw the Nan Shepherd Prize had opened, I think I saw it on Twitter probably. And then I thought, you know, maybe I could find a structure, and begin to put the pieces together. And so that's a very, yeah, that's a very rough overview of how it happened. But but definitely that that essay that was in the Willow Herb Review, that really kind of ended up being like a blueprint for what later ended up becoming the book. And it ended up being as you know, the first essay in the book. Yeah, it's almost like operates like an introduction, although I didn't think about that when I first wrote it. But it was really useful for me, it was always like mapping the journey that the book would take. Completely. And I think you've spoken really beautifully about how how that process worked for you. And I suppose in your work, what there is as well, that word mapping, it does kind of come up again and again, because you look at identity and what it means to belong, and you look at the body and what it means to be you in the world. But I suppose as well, you speak on a much more universal level as well, like so many people I've spoken to about the book, particularly women have said yes, like just it just sang to me and even earlier on Instagram, when I shared that I was doing this event, I had so many people come back to me and say, Oh my goodness, this book is just really changing my life. And I suppose that I wanted to ask you a little bit about what it feels like. And I hate I hate asking this question. But what what does it what does it feel like to put such personal things on paper? Because I know it's not always easy. Hmm. Absolutely. I think at the time when I'm working on an essay or a poem or anything really, I kind of have to, and maybe you also might have this experience, I have to not think about who's going to read it. Or yeah, not think about how is this too personal? Is this too much, you know, in the very early stages, in order to get stuff down on the page. I think I really have to just maybe only go as far as thinking, Oh, you know, is this something I would want a friend to read like a close friend of mine? And then it's only later that I might, you know, with probably with the help of my editor, I think, in the case of this book, yeah, to figure out, yeah, what how what's too personal? Or, you know, how much maybe doesn't need to be in the book. And I think Jessica, who we just mentioned, Jessica Lee, she's I've heard her speak brilliantly about this about setting boundaries. Because as writers who write nonfiction, I guess, sometimes readers might have this notion that maybe our whole lives are kind of now out in the open, but that's definitely not the case. So for me, I, I enjoy, I do enjoy writing about very personal things. But in a way, maybe just as simple as sometimes changing really basic details that aren't that important to, you know, the narrative or the story, or just mentioning something, but I feel I don't always feel I need to go into such detail. And I think my editor was wonderful in, in really standing with me and in having those boundaries. And in the end, though, I think it's all it's still a very weird thing. And there's still probably passages that because I remember when I did doing the audio book was very, very strange experience. And that's probably the most kind of intimate closeness that I might have with some parts of the book that I probably wouldn't choose to kind of read aloud very often, you know, at an event like this, or at a book show, which is really interesting. Interesting. Yeah, even though we know that readers will go away and, you know, read the whole thing. And, and that's, I feel oddly okay with that. But perhaps there's some sections that I just put out there. And then maybe that's, that's that makes that makes perfect. That that honestly makes perfect sense. And it's really well put. And it kind of leads in quite nicely into something that I'm absolutely dying to ask you, which is that so in your book, you, I think that you kind of, you show these really glistening moments of just the everyday like how you deal with food, or with memories or with your dream life, are just the same as how you deal with like really big things like earthquakes or worries or family anxiety. And I suppose I want to ask you, and I want to know, do you journal? Do you keep a diary? And if so, what does that look like? What kind of format is it in? And then also, how do you weave that into your beautiful work? Yeah, I love talking about this. Yes, I have a notebook, but I've never been the type of person that keeps a diary. Even when I was young, like I never did. I think I tried to one point, because I had this notion that, you know, like real writers will write in their diary every day. But that's actually not the case. And so I don't do it like regularly, I don't do it daily. But I have a, I have a notebook. And it's kind of more like for me, a place, well, it's literally a place where I write stuff. So I don't forget it. It's like lists. It's more like fragments and lists or lines from things I'm reading. Yeah, sometimes I'll jot down. Very often, it's, yeah, images, the things that I've seen, and I won't necessarily know if it's going to be useful or not, you know, for a project or, or a poem or anything. Yeah, I really, I'm a big list maker. So I'm constantly making this. Yeah. Yeah. So my journaling pretty much takes that form. And it's, yeah, I should be doing it more because it is so useful for me when later on, when I might, there might be a poem that I want to work on or, you know, a commission or something. And later, if I can go back and find things that I've written, maybe about a particular walk I've been on or a meal that's so useful. But it is, it's hard, even I think the effect of the last 18 months is just for me being generally like less creativity, less note taking, less reading as well. And so I'm kind of, I'm slowly building my way back to kind of pre pandemic levels when I would try to note take as much as possible. But so I also use my phone a lot at my notes app constantly. Probably lately, I use that a lot more. Yeah. And again, it's just lists and the weirdest. Yeah. And sometimes my dreams are in there. And I look at it later. And I'm like, what? This is my experience. I see as a list maker. And when Catherine Wolf in her review earlier, her beautiful review earlier, and made her own list at the end, I kind of imagined that that would like touch you in some way. But they're really, that was really great. That was really lovely answer. So yeah, so I suppose as well, like what you've mentioned about like inspiration for poetry and through your your work might come from food or it might come from a walk or potentially, you know, like the dogs that you've looked after in New Zealand or what whatever you've experienced. I suppose that I want to ask if it's okay with you, just to sort of have a bit more of an idea of which other like which other disciplines are you most drawn to? Because I know that from kind of following your Instagram, that you you make your own clothes and shoes, for example, and you're you're in charge of a press, you make these beautiful zines. And I suppose like which other like who's your favorite artist, for example, or your favorite musician, or what's your favorite? What's your favorite tree? What's your favorite color? Like, because I think all of that feeds into your book. And so yeah, that's not too general a question. Lots of questions there. No, that's really wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I, I do have a lot of different, I guess, modes of creativity. And I am sometimes a type of person that will start something and then, you know, not finish it thoroughly. So I have lots of different projects. But at the moment, I yeah, I'm becoming more interested in visual in ways that I am kind of visually creative and how that interacts with writing. And because I think it is very connected. But I'm not, you know, not a visual artist. But like you said, I last year got into making clothes. And I have always, I think been interested in textiles. And textile art really interests me. And I like to think about poems as physical objects too. Yeah, and maybe poems that are like woven, woven texts, even. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I also think of essays like this sometimes too, like an essay might have threads. So at the moment, I'm definitely interested in this. And, and because, yeah, I'm also quite obsessed with color. That comes out in lots of different ways and maybe in, because I enjoy cooking as well. So I'm often thinking about that in relation to cooking and then gardening sometimes too. So I'm definitely in the last couple of years, wanting to embrace all these other parts of my life, which might not seem that might not seem like they're directly connected to my writing, but actually, they are. So yeah, they're all parts because it because I think as writers, we just, we literally cannot be like writing all the time. Yeah, there's so many. Yeah, I remember, totally. I remember seeing an interview with Sophie McIntosh, she said that we can only or she could only really ever write that there are four hours in the day of writing. And like, even if you had a full day, she was saying that, you know, she, she wrote just the same amount as when she was working full time, you know, in a different job. And it kind of, I think what you said is right, like they do, they, I can, I can see, because I follow your Instagram as well, I could see those threads in the book really clearly. In particular, where you talk about food and, and gardening and plant life in general. So what's your, what's your favorite flyer? Oh, um, that's hard. But I, what came to my mind instantly, so I should probably say it was a Magnolia. Yeah, yeah, they're just so big and ridiculous. Totally. Crazy how big they are. Yeah, and it is well, I, I feel like it's probably poppies, like I did it. But, but when they're ahead, when they're dried out, rather than when they're open and just in like, I love the way they suddenly open. Yeah. Look at it one day and it's so tightly shut. And then it just like unfills. And they're so sculptural, right? They're so, and when you see them kind of dancing there. Yeah. I do like kind of how that in your work, you talk about things like that. So, um, one of my favorite lines is sometimes home is not a place, but a collection of things that have fallen or been left behind. And then you go on to list the different things. And I suppose what I would like to ask you if it's okay, is that in your really beautiful book, what the reader comes away with or what some readers might come away with is the idea that home isn't, it's not a place. I suppose what is home to you? Is it a way of thinking? Is it a way of living? Is it a feeling? What does home mean? If that's not too broad a question? I think I think I figured out slowly that it's it's maybe a feeling more than anything else. But I maybe will never really know the answer and will always always be writing towards it. But I think maybe in writing the book, it was useful. I think maybe I figured out what home is not. Yeah. And which is maybe just as, you know, useful and just in the notion that home is not one single place or not, it doesn't have to be the place you were born, or the place you live now, you know. And for me, it's I've kind of only recently been able, being very kind of comfortable with the fact that it's just always going to be two to three or maybe four different places all at once. And, and yeah, and that's always quite confusing. And, and so I think in my writing, I'm always trying to be okay with that and trying to bring myself closer to the feeling. And I think also home is in other people and objects around us, which I'm very interested in, and kind of objects we carry with us. And, you know, there could be such tiny, small objects or, you know, or it could be a place, a room. And so I'm just, I think I'm interested in all the the multiple definitions of home that we carry inside us. That's really beautiful. So if you were going to say move from your home just now to a really small dwelling, just say you were going to move into the back of a small van or a really small narrowboat, what would be three things that you would have to bring with you if you had to choose? Oh, that's so hard, especially after kind of 18 months of being in one, in one place. I would have, I would bring a poetry book. The first one that came to mind is I would bring the, I've got a copy of Night Sky with Exit Wounds. I ocean long that that's signed by Ocean when I met him at a reading. And so I think I would bring that. And then the next thing that comes to mind is that I need to bring food, but maybe that doesn't help. What of the items of clothing that you've made, would you bring with you? Which thing would you bring that you've made? Yeah, so I would definitely bring a quilt jacket that I made last autumn, and it was a huge project. I probably won't undertake anything like that. But I'm so proud of it. And it's reversible. Amazing. I actually want it, not wearing it on. It's fine. I would, I would bring that actually. It's very warm. And I was deliberately kind of trying to, I was inspired by these Chinese cotton jackets that are kind of like quite, they're actually not trendy at all. But maybe they're coming back in in a kind of vintage kitsch kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. And I think when you said that it was kind of autumnal colors, one of the questions I wanted to ask you was what you're because, you know, when we think of nature writing currently, and that's something that I think the Nan Shepard prize is doing really well with is kind of challenging our idea of who gets to write nature writing and, you know, what does it look like and from what kind of point of view. But for you, do you feel like there's a season that you're more drawn to for your creativity? Like is there a home season for you where you write your best work or you kind of come up with your best ideas or you feel more at home in your sense of your creativity? That's such a beautiful question. It's tricky. It maybe depends where I am. But what I first thought of was perhaps like spring and autumn, which I think of as transitional. Obviously, in between each season, there's always a transitional feeling. But yeah, and maybe like at the moment how we're kind of slowly transitioning into autumn and it's much darker now. Although I do love summer and I love the sun, I think maybe these periods of change are what I'm quite interested in and quite and come back to again and again in my writing, particularly spring when, which is so in here in London, especially, it was like my first almost felt like my first experience of a real spring was when I came here. Obviously, that's not true, but it was just so sudden and so pronounced with the daffodils and the crocuses. And in New Zealand, our spring is quite different, also very colorful, but it's somehow not as abrupt. And so that was really fascinating to me. I think I keep writing about it. Totally the different places are shine better in different seasons, I suppose, or bring parts of a site. And I just want to remind people that we're going to be bringing audience questions and answers. And there's a little form beneath the video. So please send any questions in for Nina, and I'll try and get through as many as possible. So I suppose the idea of I remember, I think it was last year or maybe the year before, you were either due to or you did do a festival where you were going to be talking about wild swimming or swimming outdoors or something. And I remember you saying something like, I don't know why I should be doing this. Like, I'm not the expert or something like, can you remember? Oh, it's something along the lines of that. And I suppose that I'm really drawn to the idea with your work and with a lot of other writers that there's not this need to be an expert in something to just experience it and to really love it and for that passion to come through, which it does in your work. Swimming is and even just like water in general, like being close to it in and it being in your dreams runs the whole way through the book. And I suppose what I wanted to know is what what does water do for you? Like, what is its attraction? What does it not that it always does anything or whatever, but what does it do for you? I love what you said as well about not yet not needing to be an expert and kind of giving yourself permission, which I think is something I've slowly learned and given myself over the years. And yeah, absolutely with swimming because I'm not a, you know, I don't even swim in the depth of winter, I swim in autumn. So but I think water is yeah, it sounds a bit cliche, but it definitely gives me strength, I think, or rather, like resilience just if we're talking in physical terms. When I swim, I just feel a lot stronger than I do on land and there's a clarity, I think that comes with it for me. And it kind of resets my body. Actually, probably not so much my body, probably more my mind and my heart. And then afterwards I always feel kind of a little bit more resilient and a little bit less stressed. But yeah, I think on a very physical level, that's that's what it gives me. And it has always has since I was very young. And then on a wider level, I guess I love to think of it as a connect a connective force and the fluidity of all its different forms, something I'm interested in, and portraying that in writing and the challenges of that, I think is is what I try to do a lot in the book. Yeah, I need it really well. And, and something one of the for me, one of the most beautiful threads in the book is how you look at how you look at language and identity and how you weave them together because it's it's really difficult. I think talking about any form of identity and belonging at all is is difficult. But to do it in the written form is even more so. And I I wonder, I wonder firstly, how you feel that language, how you look at language, is it different how you deal with it in your poetry than how you deal with it in your prose, because you you do deal with it in both so beautifully. And is there a difference in how you approach language and belonging with your poetry head on or with your prose? I think it's becoming more and more connected. And I keep writing kind of bits of prose that end up feeling quite a lot like poems and also vice versa. So my I used to think of yeah, my poetry and then my essays is quite separate, but they're definitely kind of combining. And although I think poetry is what where I first tested, kind of these ideas, writing about what it means to lose a language or leave behind a language and then try to come back to it and like retrace your steps towards it as an adult, which is really hard and an experience that lots of people share. And so I was really interested in that. And it's in poets. There's so many parts that have inspired me in this way. But one of them is Safia El Hilo. Another is Mary Jean Chan, just as an example. And I love the way they incorporate their heritage languages and the writing about their family within poems. And so I think it's in poetry where I first got this confidence and gave myself this permission to then try it out in an essay. And so I think in in the section of the book, which is about language, I found myself kind of surprisingly going deeper than I thought I would into kind of cultural history and the context of the Chinese written script, which is something I use a lot in my poems, but don't necessarily incorporate too much research or background information. But in an essay, there's more space for this. And so I really enjoyed doing that. And yeah, coming at it from different perspectives and always thinking of myself as I'm kind of a lifelong language learner of Chinese. And I never I feel I'm never really going to have fluency, although I think there are other types of fluency than just being able to speak. I think there's kind of physical fluency. But yes, I wanted to approach it as, you know, not an expert, but a learner is someone who left it behind and then is slowly coming back to it. And so, yeah, thank you. That was a brilliant question. Yeah, because I was really inspired by how you spoke of language and I know I know other people were as well. And then I think I've got time for one last question before I ask you to do a reading because I'd love to hear you read your work. But you something that comes across in your book really beautifully is the I suppose that the dance between your dream life and your lived experience of the world. And there's a lot of crossover between them. And I suppose could you talk a little bit about what dreams mean to you? Do you like to love your dreams? Do you mean a lot to you? Yeah, I dream very vividly and I always have. But yeah, I certainly don't love my dreams. They I definitely have weird just very strange dreams most of the time. And but I do feel that they they often come into my writing. And I think it was in a class I did with the poet Rachel Long where she she made us keep a dream diary for six weeks or something, which was not something I'd ever done before. But I did have the sense that sometimes there would be something really memorable or strange, really colorful kind of image that might occur in my dream. And then later I kind of wish I could grasp it better. But very often we have this feeling about our dreams, you know. But this was an amazing exercise and she and and and realising that, you know, we dream every night, but we just don't remember them all necessarily. And so forcing myself to write them down was very strange and not always fruitful, but fascinating, very weird. And and I kind of became more interested in because I do have I think I have a couple of weird recurring dreams. I won't go into detail now, but it's in the book. Yeah. And I think I'm quite an obsessive person. And so I think, yeah, things that I'm obsessing over, certainly worrying about they come up in my dreams. And so I'm interested in that. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think my dreams are often a very, a very accurate kind of barometer of how I'm feeling or it's true for many of us. Although sometimes not. Sometimes it's just very weird. So, yeah. So I think inevitably I don't know maybe because I'm a poet, I will often often be writing about my dreams. Yeah, I just I remember someone saying once, don't write about your dreams and just thinking it was such a ridiculous thing to say, like it just didn't make any sense. And I'm really glad that you write about your dreams. And so just quickly before you read from your beautiful book, I want to quickly ask you and who you've already touched on this before, but who are the writers today that I really inspire in you and are really kind of nourishing you and feeding you just now? Yeah, I feel that I've it's been quite difficult to read in recent months, but just in the past couple of months, I slowly got back into it. And there's a beautiful memoir that came out, I think of the same time as my book called Crying in Hmark by an American writer called Michelle Zawner. She's also a musician and her music I knew before her writing and her book is so beautiful. And it's really a food memoir. And so that was so nourishing, just the absolute kind of definition of a nourishing book to me, which is quite rare. So that was really lovely. And I know it's a book I'll keep coming back to again and again and then I think I read more poetry than anything else. And that kind of I find that quite refreshing and because sometimes I have very short attention span, so poem is very useful to be able to kind of read a poem. And like a poem a day and a poet that's really important to me, who I think influenced this book a lot is an American poet called Lely Long Soldier. She's a Native American poet and the way she writes about language actually, specifically and recovering lost language had a really deep impact on me, I think. But yeah, there are so many and in nature writing, though, I would say Kerry, your book has been, you know, it's an extraordinary work that book. And the way that you write about that you were saying before this you yourself in the landscape in your body and liminal spaces and these kind of in-between places that was, yeah, that had that was definitely a nourishing book for me as well. And Nina, I would love to ask you to read from your beautiful book, which I will return to again and again. And I know loads of people will. So will you read for us? I would love to. Thank you, Kerry. So I'll read from the beginning of the book, the essay that we mentioned earlier actually. Where is the place your body is anchored? Which body of water is yours? Is it that I've anchored myself in too many places at once or nowhere at all? The answer lies somewhere in between. Over time, springing up from the in-between space, new islands form. My first body of water was the swimming pool. Under water, I was like one of gung gung little silver fish with silver eyes. Like one of those, he catalogued and preserved in gold, liquid and 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 swim 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 creature since I didn't have very long hair and wasn't such a good swimmer. Perhaps half orca, half girl. To swim in Wellington harbour is to swim in the deep seam between two tilted pieces of land that have been pulled apart over time. Repeated movements along the Wellington Fault have caused cliff formations to rise up above the harbour's western shore. Little islets, Makado, Matu and Mokopuna, which punctuate the narrow neck of the harbour, are actually tips of a submerged ridge that runs parallel to the tonnifar-shaped Maramar Peninsula. Near Oriental Bay, the harbour carries debris from a summer storm just past. Shattered driftwood, seaweed blooms, plastic milk bottle caps, the occasional earlobe jellyfish. The further out I swim, there is a layer of clear molten blue. It's January, the height of summer, and I've flown home from Shanghai where I've been living for a year studying Mandarin. My friend Carrie and I dive above and below the rolling waves. At this moment in our lives, neither of us knows exactly where home is, but underwater, the question doesn't seem to matter. Emerging from nowhere, a black shape draws close to my body and I lurch, reaching for Carrie, but then I see the outline of wings. The black shag is mid-dive, eyes open, wings outstretched and soaring down into the deep. Kawopu, the native black shag. They perch on rocky beaches all over the Wellington coastline, holding their wings open to dry in the wind and sun. Another wave rises over us and we turn our bodies towards it, opening. Home is not a place but a collection of things that have fallen or been left behind. Dried agapanthus pods, the exoskeletons of cicadas, tiny ghosts clinging to the trees, the discarded shells of quail eggs on pawpaw's plate, cherry pips in the grass, the drowned chrysanthemum bud in the bottom of the teapot. Some things are harder to hold in my arms. The smell of salt and sunscreen, mint-green blooms of lichen on rock, wind-baint Pahoota kawa trees above valleys of driftwood. Thank you, Mimi. That was absolutely gorgeous. People can keep sending in their questions, but I'm going to start running through some that are here already. And this is a question that I really wanted to ask as well. So what is Nina planning next, whether that's a book, a poem or something else? What are you working on right now, Nina, or moving towards? Yeah, I still feel at the moment I'm in a kind of quiet in-between phase, but that said, I think I would really like to write more about food and about comfort and pleasure and resistance and the body. That's a lot of things. Incredible. But yeah, I have, you know, I mean, I'm not working on it yet, but I think I have an idea that I would love to write something that is more, I think more bits of poetry, maybe interwoven with prose, so a kind of hybrid work, because I mean, this book, Small Bodies is not, it's not particularly long, but for me, it was very, very long. And I feel that I can kind of never write anything as long again. It might not be true, but right now, I feel that I have to work on very short things. So I'm kind of feeling more drawn towards poetic forms and food writing. And I think that sounds incredible, but I think you said you're not really working on it, but you are, I think, if you're even, it's percolating, right? It's like, maybe, yeah, I will adore it. I'm really drawn to this idea of pleasure and resistance and how they kind of, because I think you're right, they are kind of linked, but anyway, maybe that's for another time. So I've got another question here. What advice would you give for those wanting to get into nature writing? Hmm, good question. Yeah, I think that for me, reading as much as I could was really crucial for me. But that didn't just mean kind of reading things I like necessarily, because I think it's important to discover what you don't like and kind of, maybe the kind of writing that's not for you. And so that's really important. And that maybe doesn't necessarily just mean reading nature writing, but just reading as broadly as you can. But on a more kind of practical level, I think, yeah, the fact that the Nantipid Prize exists now is amazing because I think the definition of nature writing is becoming broader and broader, which is something, because when I was studying it, I didn't really necessarily think of myself as a nature writer. Still, I kind of think sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. But the amazing thing about that prize is that welcomes submissions that maybe environmental writing, but also writing about place, whether urban places or rural places. And I think kind of maybe almost every writer is in some way writing about place. So I think, yeah, maybe I find lots of new writing online and I find that really useful, mainly Twitter. The journals like the Willa Herb Review, I kind of recommend enough to kind of get a sense of what the possibilities of nature writing, and that includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction in so many different forms. And also to get a sense of the kinds of things that journals can be looking for and submission requirements, those kind of boring but really important things. I'd really recommend that journal, which is the Willa Herb Review. Yeah, I think that. That was really well answered, and I think probably really helpful for lots of people. And this question kind of comes in quite nicely after it, which is how do you see yourself in the tradition of nature writing and are there historic writers that you're drawn to? Mm, that's a great question, because yeah, I kind of, until very recently didn't really see myself in the tradition of nature writing, because when I think of that, I kind of more think of when you step into a bookshop and there's quite often a table and covers are very often like pictures of the ocean or pictures of trees and I think here in the UK, especially in Ireland as well, there's such a strong tradition of nature writing. I didn't necessarily see a place for myself at the beginning at all. But now I think this book, it kind of does fit on that table, but I love also that it can fit, I don't know, like with other essay collections or with perhaps travel writing, which is itself a kind of murky genre, but it could fit there or more just memoir writing about girlhood and the body. Yeah. So I think I see myself as very much, yeah, connected to nature writing tradition, but also trying to really broaden it as much as possible. And I think Harry's brilliant book Thin Places does this too. I think Jessica Lee's books do this as well. There are many writers now today doing that, which is incredible. I'm really glad that your book is on that table and it deserves to be there. I like that you talked about your cover and I like that the reviewer today talked about the cover, which is by Gil Healy. I'm just going to hold it up again. It's absolutely beautiful and I think it really represents your book and you. And I think we say we can't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes we can. And I think your writing can be whatever it wants to be. But yeah, so I think we've got time for one or two more questions. I'm going to really quickly run through. You can keep sending them in, by the way. We've got a few more minutes. Oh, this is a tricky one, I think. What is your favorite body of water? Wow, that's a very good question. Yeah, no, I love this question. It changes, obviously. At the moment, I feel like I have not limited access, but I live in London. There's not so many bodies of water I can access, but a few times a week, I do swim at the women's pond in Hampstead Heath and so in terms of intimacy and familiarity at the moment, that body of water is like literally keeping me going. But that said, I think maybe if I pick one, it might be Wellington Harbour, which is a very big body of water and I love that when you swim in it, it feels almost enclosed because the entrance to the harbour is very, very narrow. And yet sometimes a few times a year, southern right whales and humpback whales and orca come through the entrance and it's almost improbable because it's such a narrow stretch of water that they can enter, but it's very magical and it's hills all around and that's where I grew up. Gorgeous, that's a lovely answer. I think this might be our last, we'll see. This is from Caroline Reibos. I hope I've said your name right, Caroline. She says, I'm really interested in your thoughts on language, especially when you talked about physical fluency. It would be lovely to hear you expand on that. It's a lovely question. Yeah, I would love to. I think for me, my feelings about language have in the past been very much tied up with shame and with guilt and with embarrassment, kind of wishing I'd dedicated more time in my life to properly learning, for example. Well, the language that my grandparents speak is mainly haka and I never really learnt that and kind of understand it either. So that's definitely one aspect of it. I wish I could have spoken to my grandparents more. And then there's Mandarin as well, which is kind of a more easily accessible language in terms of learning and popularity and courses and resources. And yet I'm still not so in Mandarin. And then there's Cantonese as well, which my mum speaks too. So, and also another language would be Māori Te Deo. And this week is Māori language week in New Zealand. And I also wish I was better with my Te Deo, but I'm working on it. So I feel, yeah, there's lots of different strands here, but I'm also interested in how language connects us to a place. And I think that's not just through understanding on a rational level, but emotional understanding and maybe just kind of pure childhood memories. Like for me, there are some, the sound, the way that a language sounds, especially haka and Mandarin is so familiar. Listening to it kind of feels like home, even if I have these feelings of sadness or guilt that I can't fully keep up, it brings me such joy to hear it. Last week I went to the movies, which was crazy thing to do. And after a long time not going to the movies, I saw Shang-Chi, which is great. And I didn't realize so much of that movie is in Mandarin. And I felt so emotional, I could even understand little bits of it, which was lovely. But yeah, things like that, I'm interested in those exchanges that we have with language, which go beyond understanding on a surface level. But yeah, because for me, I think fluency is about memory and childhood, belonging. And we all have different, we're at different levels with languages, we have different relationships to it. And yeah, I'm just, I'm all for being kinder to ourselves when it comes to our different relationships to our languages. I totally agree with you, that was really beautifully put. We've got time for one more question and I'm just gonna, it's gonna be my question. Selfishly. What is your favorite meal to cook for yourself? Mm. It's gotta be when I have time, usually on the weekend, I will make a really big batch of dumplings and I'll make the dough as well, which I haven't done a really long time because I've been too exhausted, which is a shame, but I will do it soon. And I'll make like 50 or 60 and I'll put most of them in the freezer. And then for like two weeks or sometimes just last that long, I will, like my lunches will be glorious because I'll have dumplings like every day. But it does take a long time, so I don't do it that often, but that's probably my favorite thing. Probably like pork and ginger dumplings. Beautiful, that sounds so gorgeous. Such a lovely experience. Nina, thank you so much for the beautiful answers to the questions and for your absolutely gorgeous book. Small Bodies of Water, which can be bought through the British Library and lots of nice little independent bookstores. Thank you so much to the British Library for hosting us as part of the natural world, their series on climate change and nature writing. And as Nina said, the Nanche Prize is currently open. So if anybody wants to enter, they can. Nina, thank you so very much. And I'm just really excited about watching this book, meet all its readers and any book you write hereafter. Thank you, Nina. Thank you so much, Kerry, and everyone else for their questions as well and just for tuning in. Thank you. Bye. Bye. A huge thank you to Nina and Kerry for that fascinating conversation. And just a reminder that if you do want to buy a copy of the book, you can use the button above the video. You can also donate to the library and we'd love to hear what you thought about the event. So please do send us your feedback. If you enjoyed this event, please do check out our season on nature writing and the environment. And that's called the natural word. We've got lots of more great events coming up through the autumn. Thank you and good night from the British Library.