The floating bowl: A collection of poems and images

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Date

2024

Journal Title

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Volume Title

Publisher

University of the Western Cape

Abstract

I have been a ceramic artist for the past forty years. I have found that working with porcelain has developed an attunement to sound and a sense of the quiet potentiality of the vessel form. The overarching image of a translucent and ringing bowl has served as an aesthetic horizon of sorts as I have begun to navigate the world of poetry. While I studied English, my post academic life led to less and less writing. I embarked on this Master ’ s programme to revive my verbal practice in poetry. My years of visual creativity have instantiated an aesthetic maturation. Shifts in perception necessitated changes in the formal aspects of my work, while thematic concerns remained constant. My poems follow musings regarding these factors, whilst also dealing with aspects of ancestry, culture, and nature in contemporary life. I also look at generational psychological and cognitive patterns which have influenced my way of expressing myself creatively. Strong poetic and artistic voices from my youth have formed a template or resonance. Their power over many of my own perceptual shifts has not waned. Searching through lenses of perception has been pervasive. Hours of reverie in my studio and a solid bedrock of visual production form the substrate of this collection of poems. While my visual research has involved qualities of perception and translucency, my poems are still emerging and finding their place alongside my visual production.

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Keywords

Poetry, porcelain vessels, clay, autobiography, childhood, creative process, translucency, fire

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