Poem of the Week: 'Faraway Love' by Nina Mingya Powles
Posted by the Bookshop
Nina Mingya Powles is a writer and zinemaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, living in London. She is the author of two poetry collections, Luminescent (2017) and Magnolia, 木蘭 (2020), and a memoir, Tiny Moons (2020). She is the founding editor of the small press Bitter Melon.
Faraway Love
Tate Gallery description of Faraway Love by Agnes Martin (1999, acrylic and graphite on canvas)
faraway love is a five-foot square
overpainted in light blue wavering
faraway love is made of layers of white
subsequent layers peel away revealing luminous air
faraway love is where blue escapes under the lines
faraway love is a reversal of the traditional notions of work
faraway love is floating across a pale field
beneath a particular hue of sky
faraway love is strong, persistently irregular; it has a hand-drawn quality
an imperfect line traced over the surface
faraway love is translucent in the desert
faraway love is present in light-reflecting segments
into which she pressed lengths of shuddering
some fingerprints still visible
