All Tomorrow's Poets 2016: Gregory Kan
It is only fitting that we begin our interview series with Gregory Kan.
Greg coordinated the very first All Tomorrow’s Poets event with Steven Toussaint in 2014, and this will be his third time sharing his work with us on National Poetry Day.
Cait caught up with him to talk about his writing practice, being a control freak and This Paper Boat.
C: Hello Greg. What are you working on at the moment?
G: I’m working on a project with [artist] Juliet Carpenter. There’s a voiceover, and I’ve been working with her on the text. We’ve worked together as developers for the last year so it seemed very organic that we would start working together like this. We’re both invested in knowing the limits of one’s conscious control–– especially when you are already a control freak. I find that the control freaks are often the ones who will want to collaborate or supplement themselves with some other force so that they can relieve themselves of some of that control.
C: Do you find that incorporating these kind of chance elements enables you to find a kind of surprise or magic in your own work?
G: This has been so important to me and Hera [Lindsay Bird], and probably to Juliet as well. Often, if you have a very strong intention you can’t help but anticipate what the work is going to be, and when it comes out, it is already done and you think ‘Well, I wasn’t surprised one bit.’ Hera and I actually used to get together and cut up all our work, paste it onto a huge board and set it on fire–– and then I thought ‘We could automate this.’ I’ve developed web-based text manipulation tools and we’ve been playing with those things ever since.
C: This Paper Boat evokes an image of many planes of history overlapping one another. You trace the footsteps of the late New Zealand author Robin Hyde almost as if you are walking together. How did this relationship with Robin Hyde begin?
G: It almost started as a coping mechanism. I was in Wellington and I was having a fucking terrible time. I thought maybe I needed to see it all through someone else–– maybe from another time. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I was just going through Wellington history asking ‘Please somebody, show me that it’s different.’
I love Wellington, but at the time I was feeling increasingly alienated. I stumbled across Robin Hyde’s name in Wellington’s Wikipedia page, and as I researched her I started becoming more and more obsessed. It passed some kind of critical threshold and I thought ‘Holy shit, I know what I need to do.’ I started to see more and more intersections between the two of us, or between Robin and some family member of mine–– these little points of intensity, these knots.
C: You seem, for the meantime, to have chosen to base your practise in New Zealand, in Auckland. Is that a conscious choice? Do you ever feel a pull to some overseas centre?
G: I think it’s really interesting that a lot of people in New Zealand who make stuff still look to the Anglo-American centres for influence. But in so many ways–– geographically, culturally, we are on a frontier and they are the centre. Why should they not be digesting us? I do not see why we should give in to this centralising, basically imperial force. We already inherit so much from these places, we can take it for granted that we will be influenced by them. We’re on the periphery–– we should keep pushing the periphery. Being this really weird outpost that is New Zealand gives us so much permission to do all kinds of weird shit. I want to do as much as possible within this, and maybe I’m mixing too many terms now, but this really quite queer space that is New Zealand. People who make stuff in New Zealand should remember how powerful it is to be on the periphery.
C: I’ve asked each poet if there is anything you would like to ask each other.
Owen [Connors] asked if there are any writers in your immediate community that you really admire.
G: Yes! Zarah [Butcher-McGunnigle] and Hera. We actually all met at the same place, a workshop in Wellington. It seems strangely fortuitous for us to have all been there. They’re still my closest writing peers. I’m so grateful for that because I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for them. I’m probably inspired most by them–– I mean, I have my dead-poetry-spirit-animals, but it’s very different to be witnessing someone else’s journey and have them witness yours, to be building stuff together and have that interaction enter this intense feedback loop. It’s very different from me cuddling Sylvia Plath’s poems every night.
