| Article number: | 1243 |
| Availability: | In stock (14) |
Clay: Bodies + Matter
Poems by Martha Ronk. Omnidawn, 2025. Paperback, 92 pp.
For Ronk, pottery raises questions about the value of repetition, inevitable failure, and how we may become one with matter. As the potter’s hands ache and age, the bowl seems to age as it slumps or breaks. Ronk’s newest book Clay: Bodies + Matter is comprised of poems that find meaning and connection in the process of creating pottery from clay. Clay includes observations from other potters and writers as well as small photographs of pots.
What is a bowl? A vase? Any thrown vessel? Is it not, above all, an envelope for emptiness? And what is it, then, to leave that vessel empty? The courage of emptiness—to welcome it, to plumb it, and above all, to feel it with the fingertips—drive this hybrid text in which memoir, quotation, and gorgeous lyricism track a network of inter-cultural traditions all based on clay. Ronk finds an aerial lightness in this famously heavy material while simultaneously, through it, celebrating the weight of the world. -Cole Swenson