Two Japanese friends from the restaurant Omen-Azen visited today. Their outing to look at pots and see our home/studio opened an ocean of memories. It’s as if each series of pots I have made for Omen-Azen over the last 40 years might be a different beach on the ocean of our friendship. Some adventures with Mikio were like jumping off a cliff. We may not have known why we were going, but if he was going so were we. Our travels together to look at art, food, pots, and culture included Maryland, Japan, Washington DC, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and Maine. Today, with our visitors we walked in wet leaves and ate potato leek soup with the last of the dill from my garden. In the studio we pulled out old and new bowls and imagined future seasonal restaurant menus.
For me, poetry is like the Atlantic Ocean. There are many beaches and strands and cliffs, all looking over the vastness of that salty water mass. You can love the Atlantic Ocean simply by having one favourite beach. You can visit many beaches. You can ignore the beach and watch it from a cliff. You can look at it from Ghana, Trinidad, or Ireland. Iceland? Yes. Cabo Verde? Yes, too.
— Pádraig Ó Tuama, A Conversation “Ahead of the New Season of Poetry Unbound