States of Poetry - Poems

'The pot I imagine' by Lesley Lebkowicz

by Lesley Lebkowicz •

States of Poetry ACT - Series Three

States of Poetry - Poems

'The pot I imagine' by Lesley Lebkowicz

by Lesley Lebkowicz •

States of Poetry ACT - Series Three

(first stanza after Rosemary Dobson’s Over the Frontier)

The pot I imagine
is always better
than the one
I make.

But after all these years
my hands are learning
how to work clay
against the turning wheel
how to have it climb its own line.

Done now, I set the finely turned
white porcelain beside
a small stack of
shallow dishes thrown
by an Indian village potter.
Light glows through
the white; sinks into
the terracotta and sleeps.

Lesley Lebkowicz

Lesley Lebkowicz

By this contributor

Lesley Lebkowicz has been publishing poetry since the early 1980s. Her last book, The Petrov Poems (Pitt Street Poetry), won a Canberra Critics’ Circle award, was shortlisted for the 2014 ACT Book of the Year, and won the 2014 ACT Writing and Publishing Award (Poetry). She has also published a collection of short fiction Washing my Mother’s Hair, and a translation of the earliest Buddhist verse cycle, in collaboration with Pali scholars. She has spent many years in silent retreat and founded the Canberra Insight Meditation Group. 2017 saw her first exhibition of ceramics. Another is planned for 2018 as is the publication of her next book Kvetch (Pitt Street Poetry).