Nina Powles
Nina Powles studied English literature and Chinese at Victoria University, where she is now completing her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in Salient, Turbine and Sweet Mammalian. Her debut poetry collection, Girls of the Drift, was published by Seraph Press in 2014.
Powles comments: ‘When I first read Katherine Mansfield’s “The Woman at the Store” I imagined it taking place in the middle of nowhere—specifically, I imagined the black, volcanic tundra of an area in the middle of the North Island called the Desert Road. Being something of a rather volcanic character, it makes sense to me that the woman would surround herself with volcanoes. In this poem, I think I’m trying to crawl into that “curious half-hour”, that volatile territory of the in-between. If you’re in the middle of nowhere, where are you? If there is no twilight, what is there?’
