Poetry pottery

This project is a collaboration with poets via social media. Using a combination of the shape, meaning and feeling of the poem I translate the written words into three dimensional solid forms.

This is part of a long term project which seeks to turn the intangible into tactile and solid objects.

The poems are short and written using random or found elements.

Blackout pots

Rae Tribbick contributed blackout poetry taken from pages of a paper I sent her. She said

“I started black out poetry when I was first off work for stress. I have always enjoyed the shape and texture of words, and poetry often comes to me in the middle of the night. But when I was ill, it was all too much. The magnitude of the English language.. too many choices. Black out poetry gives you a small dictionary to pick from. The order, too, is decided. I love it for that. The poems for your pots come from an advice article, I’ve tried to subvert the worried advice about staying away from dark places, to offer alternative advice about how beautiful it may be, for example.”

Black out poetry pot front view

Shapes from the poetry accentuated and cut from thrown cylinder.

Be perfect
Use power
Be more

We all have emotional reactions when we like a key.

Stick to poorly lit areas.
The park may be beautiful at night.

Black out poetry pot side view

Ceramics in response to the shape of poetry

Laureate Box Poetry Pot

The second pot came from a poem generated by numbers via a Laureate Box created by Gin Saunders.

thoughts
sleepily
fold

routine
connects
hope

The first part of the poem is the body of the pot, and the second part is the lid.

Gin Saunders is a multidisciplinary maker. Her work is usually collaborative, often about telling stories. The Laureate Box is a manual poetry machine allowing you to create poetry by choosing word tiles from a re purposed slide box. The second Lockdown edition box contains words collected from messages and posts during the UK lockdown.