Anatomy of Sand

‘Like the tide, The Anatomy of Sand returns to the shorelineas a haven and a lens to examine our relationship with nature andenvironmental loss. Nyman is fascinated by the ways we insist onartificially replicating what nature has already abundantly provided,and reminds us that we do not sit outside of our environment. This bookis urgent and timely, rich and lively.’ —Helen Heath, author of Are Friends Electric?‘Thisis a book with flashes of humour, a querying of everything, and minuteobservation. There is a lovely mental toughness, an evolution in thepoet herself, in a collection that is absolutely contemporary.’—Elizabeth Smither, author of My American Chair

Mikaela Nyman is from the autonomous, demilitarised Åland Islands in Finland and lives in Taranaki. Her climate fiction novel SADO was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in 2020. Her two poetry collections in Swedish were nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2020 and 2024 respectively. Her second poetry collection, To get out of a riptide you must move sideways (Ellips), connects Taranaki and Finland and was awarded a literary prize in 2024 by the Swedish Literary Society (SLS) in Finland. In 2024, she was the Robert Burns Fellow.