Glazed

The clay is moist in our hands. We probe it with damp fingers, feeling resistance until we simultaneously throw it on our wheels with a wet thud. Percussion.

The rhythm of the kick wheel gives us impetus to knead and sculpt, and shapes emerge, breathing together with their creators, merging into a breeze, a windy symphony that permeates the factory, where every pot should look the same, every jar part of an army. But we are an orchestra.

Each jar has its maker’s fingerprints, until it is glazed.

The pottery is tense with rebellion. Jars strive for individuality: some are off centre, others have uneven walls, a crack here, a lump there.

There is a slowing down of wheels, the slap of collapsing clay.

Perfect pots are taken away to be glazed.

Uniformly.

Kim M. Russell, 21st April 2025

Image by Mathilde Langevin on Unsplash

It’s Monday and Day 21 of NaPoWriMo, where the daily resource is the Shanghai Museum and the optional prompt is inspired by Sawako Nakayasu’s poem ‘Improvisational Score’, rather surreal prose poem describing an imaginary musical piece that proceeds in a very unmusical way.

Our challenge is to write poems in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.

I was inspired by a black glaze jar from the Shanghai Museum. I’ve always wanted to be a potter. One of my favourite television programmes is The Great Pottery Throwdown.

Also linked up to the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night on 24th April 2025.

40 thoughts on “Glazed”

  3. Love that the pottery pieces here have a life of their own, are “tense with rebellion” and breathe in unison with their creators. I prefer uneven pieces to uniform ones too. Flaws are way more attractive than symmetry.

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  4. Simply wonderful, Kim. I love all the sounds in this poem from start to finish, that feeling of industry but how individuality creeps through the uniformity. The beginning for me, is exquisite:

    “The clay is moist in our hands. We probe it with damp fingers, feeling resistance until we simultaneously throw it on our wheels with a wet thud. Percussion.” 👌🏼

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  9. This is wonderful….so glad you posted it to dVerse, Kim. I’ve not been doing NAPOWRIMO…first year in a long time I’ve missed. So very helpful to read the prompt you were responding to. The music is there…..the collapse of the clay…only the perfect ones taken to the kiln. I can interpret that in so very many ways….only the perfect shall survive…and, as Bjorn writes, that urge to conform is there….but, I must say, I like the unique, the slightly askew the best! 🙂

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  11. Fine, engrossing work, Kim. Thanks. My Beloved Sandra took a pottery class a couple years ago, came home with a few imperfectly perfect beauties. I shared your poem & she dug it as much as I did.

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  13. I think I didn’t do this prompt, but your poem invites repeated reading, Kim. I think it hints at some much more than pots. Like others, I really liked the line, “The pottery is tense with rebellion.” In fact, that tension runs through the poem. So good!

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  17. I would say that you aced that prompt!

    I once went to a woman recommended by a friend, who was supposedly able to tell you about your previous lives by contacting your spirit guides. She told me that I had been a woman in China long ago and that a friend and I had unearthed an historically valuable piece of pottery and had given it to the proper authorities. She said that, because of me, that piece is still on display in a museum in China to this day. I’d like to think so.

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