City Poetry Maps

These maps provide ways to rethink and re-know the cities in which we live, work, and play. A map, generally speaking, imposes a system of knowledge upon a place. It denotes the official names of streets and buildings, displays property ownership, tells the reader where she or he can and can't go - that kind of thing. These maps are different. They are, I hope, what Stephen Voyce calls "counter maps," maps "that disrupt and reconstitute notions of place, space, landscape and community." These maps ask readers to explore their cities through poetry, to understand the spaces within it differently because of the poems. Poets and artists contribute works that are in some way related to a particular point on a map. The poems here are not necessarily descriptions of a place. Rather, they are impressions of place. In some cases, the poems were composed at a particular location - in a coffee shop on a busy downtown street, on a patio in a quiet neighborhood. Other poems may be the result of an event that occured at a particular shop, apartment or streetcorner. Still other poems might formally reflect or comment upon a bit of architecture, or they might be composed of a bit of text appropriated from signs and window dressing. In each case, the poet has connected their poem to a location. We, as readers of the map and the poems, perhaps have an opportunity to gain a new understanding of the spaces that we migt think we know well. Perhaps the poetry here will allow us to understand ourselves a bir differently - our selves in time and space - our selves in relation to others - our selves in the cities in which we live, work and visit.

Country of Publication

United States