Bernard Leach's philosophy that a pot must be "honest" — showing the hand that made it — becomes a metaphor in poetry for authentic voice over decorative artifice; A poet on craft might invoke Leach: "he said let the thumb-mark stay, let the wall be uneven — truth lives in the flaw"; Leach's Japanese-influenced stoneware, earthy and contemplative, suits poems exploring the meeting of Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions; In a poem about the St Ives arts colony, Bernard Leach's kiln becomes a gathering point — smoke rising over the Cornish sea while painters and potters share a common pursuit of form; Leach's insistence on the bowl as a moral object — useful, beautiful, made with care — offers poets a counter-image to mass production's anonymity; A meditation on ageing hands might use Leach as its presiding figure: the master potter whose fingers knew clay for decades, shaping meaning from earth.