Carpe Diem #1076 clay

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our daily haiku meme Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. This month we are celebrating our 4th anniversary and until now we have had wonderful regular posts, but also wonderful specials e.g. the Imagination with ... episodes have really inspired you.

Today we have another nice regular prompt which has to do with tools for writing and creativity, today I love to inspire you with clay. Just for the record, I like pottery, but I am not a potter or something, I am just a writer (photographer and painter) nothing more nothing less.

Maybe you remember that episode about Jane's other creativities, beads and pottery. I shared a few beauties of her pottery and her beads-art. Today ... no beads, but pottery and clay tablets.
Clay ... was always used for pottery, but also for 'writing'.
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen).Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were fired in hot kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East. 

Sumerian Clay Tablet

But nowadays, clay is used especially for pottery. And I know I have seen wonderful art-work made with clay. As I was preparing this episode I also thought of that movie-scene in "Ghost' with Patrick Swayze. (By the way "ghost" is one of my favorite movies).

At kindergarten I learned to create something with clay and when I grew up and started studying to become a teacher I again needed to work with clay, ... working with clay ... not my cup of tea, but as I see how artist work with clay than I am a little bit jealous, but well .... 

pottery by Jane Reichhold

I hope I have inspired you to create haiku, tanka or another Japanese poetry form. It will not be an easy task to create a haiku (or tanka) with this prompt, but I have to try it myself ... of course.

ancient writing skills
forgotten ... children play with clay
creating animals

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... this episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 22nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our next episode, a new "Universal Jane", later on.

PS. Jane inspires me almost every day and at tumblr I created a special "tribute to Jane" tumblr, where I am trying to post every day too ... feel free to visit.