Multi-Verse
Multi-Verse
Episode 4: Gregory Kan and the Mysterious Human Brain
0:00
-15:01

Episode 4: Gregory Kan and the Mysterious Human Brain

Withholding and world-building in poetry

Dear Ears,

What to say? It’s Episode 4 of Multi-Verse: after talking with Gregory Kan about his luminous collection Under Glass, I’m pondering the art of poetic restraint.

Under Glass depicts a journey through a seemingly abandoned world. Alongside its sparse objects (a lighthouse, a spiral staircase) hovers a cloud of what Greg describes as “ghostly utterances”:

It seemed like what we touched was ours.

It seemed like what we touched we couldn’t hold.

It seemed like we might just turn and stumble right back in.

We have been so tired and ashamed

that the past could kill us.

As Greg explains in our conversation, Under Glass purposefully withholds information and strips images of symbolism. What remains is a challenge to received wisdom about storytelling: What if you tell, don’t show? What if the text refuses to give up its secrets? Guided only by a half-blackened lamp and ghostly utterances, we nonetheless arrive at feeling—one no less true for existing outside the bounds of conventional description.


You can find the episode and subscribe to the episode by clicking on one of the buttons below, or by searching “Multi-Verse” in your podcast app.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Pocket Casts


As Greg notes, isn’t it amazing what the human brain can do with just a little information? All the better, of course, when it’s beautifully phrased.

Happy listening,

Evangeline


Under Glass is Gregory Kan’s second collection, published in 2019 with Auckland University Press.

Buy the Book


Multi-Verse is a poetry podcast hosted and produced by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. To hear more poets share and discuss the poems they don’t usually read aloud, subscribe to Multi-Verse at Spotify, Apple PodcastsPocket Casts, SoundCloud, or visit multiversepoetry.org.

New to this newsletter? Click here to receive monthly Multi-Verse updates.

0 Comments
Multi-Verse
Multi-Verse
Welcome to Multi-Verse, a podcast that offers a listening space for poems usually confined to the page. With host Evangeline Riddiford Graham, poets read and discuss their writing, and unwind the multitude of meanings contained in every verse.