Wedgwood’s Glazes: A Poetic Sequence Derived from Glaze Chemistry with Contextual Essay

Abstract

The Wedgwoodian heritage of Stoke-on-Trent’s pottery industry is examined from the perspective of an ‘outsider’ and through the double-lens of glaze chemistry and poetics. These glazes, in their acrobatic language and hieroglyphic formulae, formulate a new perception of Stoke. New expressions and perspectives are described that emerge free of a mythologized past and interrupt the narrative of this creative heritage. The poems are as much about demythologized approaches to heritage as they are about identification with a foreign place; a re-psychogeography.

Keywords:

• Wedgewood
• pottery
• glaze
• chemistry
• poetry

Note

Notes

1 ‘Newlipo’ is a term used to describe contemporary writing which is developed from aesthetics and methodologies first put forth by the OULIPO group in the 1960s and 1970s. Paul Hoover notes the use of the term in the introduction to his new 2013 edition of The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. W.W. Norton, New York, New York, p. xlix.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Mansell

Lisa Mansell is a Welsh poet and critic now based in Staffordshire, England, where she lectures in Creative Writing at Staffordshire University. She earned her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from Cardiff University in 2007 on the topic of ‘Sonority in the Minority’. She writes formally and linguistically innovative work that merges the boundaries of identity. Her creative work has appeared in several magazines and literary journals in the UK, France, USA and Canada. She writes on avant-garde poetry and has a chapter on Harryette Mullen forthcoming in Gordon Thompson (ed.) Ablaze with Lyric Fire, Ashgate. She is currently writing about post-bodies, ghosts, and ‘peripheral identities’ in Canadian writing.