This Paper Boat

(Paperback)

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Description

In these poems, rich in understatedly beautiful imagery, two authors, their families and their many ghosts navigate oceans, forests, gardens and houses in New Zealand, Singapore, China, and in dreams. This Paper Boat follows the author as he traces his own history through the lives and written fragments of Iris Wilkinson (aka Robin Hyde), of his parents and their parents. He explores old territories of Robin Hyde's, still dripping with the past - the tide pool at Island Bay with its shrimp and driftwood, the garden at Laloma with its crushed lemon leaves. He listens to the stories of his parents and their parents, the eels and milk, frangipani trees, drains and barbed wire of their childhoods. He remembers a jungle of his own; he searches for ghosts in the water. While stumbling across irreparable fractures between worlds, the author uncovers the permission to have beautiful and imperfect plans.

Author Bio

Gregory Kan is a writer based in Auckland. His first manuscript, a series of poems, was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Prize in 2013. Kans most recent series of poems, A holding apart of air, features in the catalogue for the exhibition what is a life by the painter Kim Pieters, at the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, and his work is featured or forthcoming in literary journals such as brief, `Hue & Cry, otoliths, Percutio, Sport and Turbine. Kan was also featured in and gave the name to `Paper Boat: Moments in the Life of a Book (video.lumiere.net.nz/ paper-boat/), a short film directed by Alex Mitcalfe Wilson.