A Hundred Gourds 3:2 March 2014
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Essay: A Tactile
Form: on haiku and pottery
by Thomas Powell
I have been a potter for
twenty-five years and have been writing haiku
for nearly six. One is a craft that requires
hand and eye coordination, and the other
requires the coordination of mind and soul, or
so people say. However, what pottery and poetry
have in common is that both need to be formed.
hand-thrown
another bowl for fruit
I’ll never taste1
The first thing to learn about throwing a pot is
the process known as ‘centring’. This involves
throwing a ball of clay onto the centre of the
potter’s wheel and clasping it by both hands to
manipulate it as the wheel spins. The ball of clay
is centred when it spins absolutely true on the
wheel without any wobble whatsoever. If it isn’t
centred properly, then even the slightest wiggle
will become exaggerated as the pot gets taller or
wider. This will result in a pot having an uneven
top, or a belly with a thick wall of clay on one
side and a paper thin wall on the opposite side,
making it prone to collapse. Centring a ball of
clay is a vitally important process that will
always determine the outcome of a successful pot.
I see the process of writing haiku in the same
way. If the captured moment or initial image isn’t
centred within the haiku, then the haiku will fall
apart or, worse still, survive to become nothing
more than an unbalanced and flimsy collection of
words.
When I first began learning how to throw a pot, I
was shown the basic technique and then told to
take it from there, to teach myself, as it were.
And unless I needed a pointer or a suggestion, I
was pretty much left to my own devices. There
would be mishaps and mistakes, and I would be
shown where it was I had gone wrong. But of
course, simply knowing where I was going wrong
would not be enough to instantly remedy the
problem. I would have to learn by trial and error
to correct those mistakes myself.
sunlit window…
another jug survives
the apprentice potter’s hands2
I found learning to throw quite a solitary thing
to do. And no matter how much help and advice a
novice receives, only the novice’s hands and
fingers can control and shape the clay. And even
if a novice has the master potter’s pot in front
of them as an example to achieve, it will take a
few years for the novice to repeat that shape with
consistency and ease. And even then, what the
novice creates will only ever be a version of the
master potter’s example.
Learning about the ways of haiku has been a
similar experience for me. I’ve taken my long-ago
experience of learning how to throw a pot and
applied it to writing haiku. I’ve made the
learning process as much of a solitary process as
possible. I’ve taken pointers and suggestions
where I can, and read as many haiku as possible.
But as with learning to throw, the experience of
writing can only be attained by the writer. I have
made mistakes as I’ve learned about writing haiku,
some of which have been monumentally basic, but
that is the same with learning how to throw a pot
– when a novice’s pot collapses on itself, it does
so in spectacular fashion and, more often than
not, for the most simplest reason.
year upon year…
clay from a potter’s wheel
spatters the wall3
To become a master potter can take fifteen to
twenty years. You learn, you improve and you
develop. After twenty-five years of throwing pots,
I’ve developed my own techniques and habits, and a
lot of the rules and guidelines that I had learnt
all of those years ago have been mostly left
behind. The way I throw now is different to how I
did when I was learning. I have garnered enough
experience and confidence to be able to throw any
shape of pot to any size, almost without thinking.
When I was a potter in my sixth year of throwing,
I would have been between improvement and
development. I could throw both small and large
pots on the wheel, but my ‘eye’ for the definition
of the larger pot’s form wasn’t quite developed
enough, and the ease with which I could throw
these shapes was also not quite there.
Where writing haiku is concerned, I like to see
myself at being in that same six year stage
between improvement and development. But even
though I’m still in the early stages of writing
haiku, I know enough to realise that some of those
important, foundation-laying rules that I learned
during the first two or three years will have to
be left behind because of the necessity to
develop.
These days, I tend not to think too much about the
process and I try not to complicate it by
over-analysing the haiku. I now find myself moving
away from some of the rules and, hopefully, moving
closer towards my own voice and nearer to the
point of writing haiku without thinking.
last day in work…
the bowl’s throwing lines
smoothed away4
When I was made redundant from my pottery job in
February 2013, I quickly realised that I was now
free to make my own pots. After nearly twenty-four
years of falling into the safe rut of making other
people’s designs for that guaranteed weekly wage,
I could now retrieve the ambition of making my own
pots, knowing full well that I had nothing to
lose. I had a kiln, a potter’s wheel, and I had
the skills. And so I set about to starting my own
small pottery.
To suddenly find myself making my own designs from
beginning to end was liberating. I knew that to
come up with my own shapes and designs I had to
start with a blank page and do my best to forget
all of my previous potteries.
apple blossom beginning from where I
left off5
What attracted me to haiku on a sunny day in the
summer of 2008 was the simplicity of the form.
Just three lines containing no more than ten words
was something magnificent to me. Just three lines
that, once read, could be held in the memory
simply by the mood and the imagery it produced.
When I began designing and making my own pots in
the spring of 2013, it was important to me that
what I created was both uncomplicated and tactile,
something that people would want to touch and
hold. And because there isn’t a shape out there
that hasn’t been thrown already, I knew how
important it was that I came up with a design that
I could call my own.
dawn chorus shaping light from
darkness6
My first point of focus was to find a form that I
could transfer to all of my planned mugs, jugs,
teapots and bowls – this turned out to be the easy
part. The skills that I’d acquired during nearly a
quarter of a century of making pots gave me a head
start.
When the pot has been made, it then needs to be
‘bone dry’ before it can be fired in the kiln to a
state of biscuit-like brittleness, this will make
the pot’s body porous enough to soak in a liquid
glaze, when applied. This first visit to the kiln
is called the ‘bisque firing’, and can reach a
temperature of up to 1,000C.
My next challenge was to find a reliable glaze
that would bond perfectly with the clay body when
fired in the kiln for a second time to a higher
temperature of around 1200C. This can be a
troublesome process. If the glaze doesn’t ‘fit’,
then you can end up with a crazed glaze that
renders the pot as nothing more than a decorative
object – if you’re lucky. And then add to this the
thickness at which the glaze needs to be applied
to the pot and also finding the glaze firing’s
correct temperature – or ‘the sweet spot’, as I
like to call it, then the pitfalls of glazing are
many.
I feel the same way when it comes to writing
haiku. The words have to fit and there has to be a
balance and a rhythm between the lines that bonds
the whole piece, bringing everything together to
touch that, much sought after, sweet spot.
white glaze dries
on a porous jug…
mid-winter dawn7
In the end, I decided to keep it simple and use a
transparent glaze to bring out the natural tone of
the clay body.
Along with the glaze, I needed to come up with a
decoration, or my own motif. I wanted to stay away
from the fussiness of a lot of pottery that I’d
encountered over the years. There are all the
colours in the world to choose from when it comes
to decoration. I experimented with different
colour combinations, always remembering that plan
to keep it simple. I finally came up with the idea
of a strong colour on just the rim and leaving the
rest of the pot without decoration.
When writing haiku, I try to keep the poem as
uncluttered and understated as possible. It’s all
too easy to over-colour that small collection of
words and fill it with fussy nouns, restless verbs
and dramatic moods. And I always try to include
colour in my haiku, usually by association through
another word. A word need not be limited to its
meaning, in the same way there’s more to clay than
just clay.
breath of air…
my pocket’s contents
coated in clay dust8
With a box or two of finished pots, I headed off
to any craft fair that came into view. And the
more I did, the more I realised that people liked
what they saw – with some even using the very
words ‘tactile’ and ‘simplicity’. At one craft
fair, I was told by a customer that my pots were
‘honest’. For my pots to be referred to in this
way, made all of the hard work and experimentation
that I’d gone through worthwhile.
Where haiku is concerned, after only six years of
writing, I’m still pretty much the beginner. But
my goals are no different to those regarding the
making of pottery – to create something that’s
tactile and uncomplicated. And if twenty years
down the road someone was to refer to my haiku as
honest, then I will know for sure that I’m heading
in the right direction.
clay moon
the trampled road
ends in wilderness9
1
Presence # 44, 2011
2Unpublished.
3 Blithe Spirit Vol.20
No.4, 2010
4 A Hundred Gourds 2:3,
2013
5Unpublished.
6 Unpublished.
7 Presence # 45, 2012.
8Time Haiku 35, 2012
9Time Haiku 39, February
2014
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