I created my Found Map Poem using an 1846-1847 territorial map of New Mexico. I really liked this activity because it prompted me to learn more about the map I found and why it was made. (It was made after the area was conquered during the Mexican-American War to help the US government/military learn more about the land they had recently obtained). Looking at the words on the map closely, what I found most interesting was the importance of water. All the rivers and tributaries were very carefully mapped while the rest of the landscape wasn’t as detailed. Finding sources of water in New Mexico is really important. Lack of water in the desert can kill you quickly! I noticed that the Jornada del Muerto was marked on the bottom of the map. This area of New Mexico is a 100 mile stretch of desert with very little, if any, water depending on the time of year and weather patterns. Translated roughly it means route of death. I was familiar with some of the history of this area and its name, but was excited to look up and learn more about it because of this project. The other words that stuck out to me on the map were the words that marked resources (very important for a recently conquered territory): gold, lead, salinas (salt). I also noticed several labeled “ruins.” A lot of the ruins were destroyed and abandoned as the result of conflicts long before the Mexican-American War, but it’s very interesting to contemplate all the “ruining” that results from war…and how these ruins often become landmarks after the conquering has occurred.
Here is my final product for this week’s prompt. I started out by looking through historical maps of my town, Springfield, MO, because I thought it was interesting seeing what the town looked like in the past. This map that I chose to use is from the 1920s but still has a lot of the landmarks I am familiar with! I thought a fun activity for teens or school age children would be to have them write a poem based on how they experience the landmarks they see on a map. Maybe they could find their school, their house, the park they go to a lot, etc. This is what I chose to try out for this week’s prompt!
I began by looking at all of the street names or landmarks and determining which were familiar to me or a part of my life. In the process I found Broad Street and decided to make this part of the opening of my poem even though this wasn’t a landmark I recognized. Then I used white out to make room for me to write my experiences on on the map near their designated landmarks. I found that the experiences I wrote down were all over the map and it didn’t read like a poem, so I used a sharpie to highlight the flow of the poem and make it easier to read. This process felt similar to black-out poetry, which I find is a fun gate-way activity to get kids and teens more comfortable with the idea of writing poetry.
I started working on this project by exploring our local history collection and pulling works by local poets. I think I got a bit ahead of myself (and ended up running short on time 
). I decided to start cutting out words from all of the maps I had printed and use the common themes I found in them to assemble some kind of poem using only those words. Since many of the places nearby are food places, it became a poem about breakfast! I pasted it over the part of the map where my hometown would be, if it had been included on the map. My biggest challenge with this was finding maps that I could print with text that was large enough to be workable. What I came up with ended up being very tiny! I added a zoomed in photo of the actual poem itself. My plan moving forward is to continue adding to this same map from week to week, so I’ll have a compilation of works all in the same place.
Wow – how amazing to see everyone’s awesome map poems!!! Loving it 
For mine, I focused on the Rio Salado (or Salt River) riverbed which runs through Phoenix [and occasionally has flowing water]. It’s a contested site with a charged position in our city’s history of exploitative agriculture, urban development, and housing segregation. There is a high concentration of industrial properties flanking the riverbed, including many of the city’s landfills. It is both a place of respite, providing free access to walking paths and vegetation, and also a contaminated zone that highlights many of the legacies (and present iterations) of environmental injustice in South Phoenix. In recent years, there has been a development project brewing (whose name I’m choosing not to list and thereby amplify) which plans to radically transform this stretch of Rio Salado. While on its surface the project claims to be focused on ecological restoration, there is significant community concern that the project will serve to facilitate rapid gentrification of this area, similar to what has been seen further upriver in Tempe and north of the river in downtown Phoenix.
To create my map, I collaged together several screenshots taken from the portion of this development project’s website which shows the current map of the Rio Salado riverbed and surrounding areas. For my fluxy gif, I focused on the segment from around 19th ave to just past 24th st. First I used canva to create several versions of the map using slightly different opacities for individual words/sections. Then I used a website called EZGif to compile the images into a cross-fading gif. My reproduction of the same area over and over was a way for me to think about the various iterations of land use along the riverbed while highlighting some of the themes that have remained constant – an attitude of extraction that has concentrated toxic industries along the river, a history of segregation that has meant disproportionate impacts from exposure to these pollutants for bipoc communities, and a deep loyalty to ceaseless development. I also wanted to spotlight the heavy policing of South Phoenix while thinking about the concerns that gentrification accompanying riverbed restoration will usher in even more police presence.
To learn more about environmental injustice in South Phoenix, check out this historical overview (which explores how South Phoenix and the area around Rio Salado became “the dumping ground for wastes produced in the remainder of the city”) and this newpaper report from just a couple weeks ago (which features one of our local poets, Rashaad Thomas, talking about his family’s experience living near the city’s transfer station).
Totally love this personalized map!
I took a bit longer than expected on making my shadow box map, just because I was playing with the printing and cutting and pasting (real not virtual). It was fun to play around with cutting up the maps and picking only the words I wanted. It gave me a sense of freedom, that nobody was making any rules about what I could or could not include, and that I could be as random or planned as I wanted.
The central base map shows the earthquake fault lines running through Long Beach. Over that, I laid parts of a city map in pink, and then parts of the map of Tongva Villages map that covers the same area.
I know that calling the poem “Our Faults” could seem a little pun-y, but it came to me while I was cutting and pasting and seemed to fit. Bixby is the family who bought much of the land covering Long Beach in 1860 from owners who had purchased it from the Nieto. Nieto had been the original Spanish land grantee. These transactions all ignored that the land was originally indigenous peoples’ lands. Bixby Family descendants still reside in Long Beach.
I picked words on the map that evoke current Long Beach communities and then highlighted words that recognize the hazards we face here from environmental pollution, our clogged ports, and from the Earth herself. I end with the names of two villages located here before Spain colonized the area.
I agree Savanna. When I’m feeling stressed out creatively by all the options in front of me, I find blackout poetry a good place to just start and see what happens.
Ok today was a holiday for us in Long Beach. We now have an election day holiday every November so I used the day to enjoy the work here, and explore the new prompt - the street shape poem. I call my poem “Traffic Star.”
Here is a photo, and because I had holiday free time I made a little video documenting my process. I hope it is not too boring. I did it on a whim and the light shines in my glasses too much, but it was fun. (Link to my Instagram post here: Login • Instagram)
Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s poems. Sorry I can’t join the Open Hour this week due to work. See you all next time.
I struggled to find a clear map of my area, especially since I was home and had no maps available. I wound up making my own map of my town and leaving out everything I would have whited-out. Although I’ve lived here 30+ years and it’s a farming community, I hadn’t realized how many things were named after food. Also, I’m assuming “Whales Head” is a rock formation, since we’re 100 miles from the sea.
Here’s my food-based, map-based poem:
We Ate the Rest
We ate!
Bear, whales head, wildlife.
We farm.
We fish.
We bake.
We store.
Orange, berry, blueberry.
We ate!
Moose, chestnut, bulls.
We ate the rest.
Love your work. How is it that four little words, “We ate the rest,” could hold so much meaning in them?
I love the animated collage!
I love this idea of exploring “new” and “old,” @JacquiV! I’ve been thinking about how to explore timelapse or change–because maps can be such a powerful way to investigate this sphere–and you’ve really inspired me to combine maps together! Thanks for sharing this. I’m definitely going to create my own riff on this idea. Just have to think about what timescale/phenomenon I want to look into 
Report-out from Week 2 Open hours!
We shared some initial thoughts about materials used to create physical/analog spatial poems after @STORYTIMESTEPHANIE shared a series of old maps donated to her library. We loved the idea of collaging maps, historical and contemporary, taking a lead from @JacquiV’s found poem from week 1 of beta-testing. @binka also had the idea of using maps themselves as a material for making, particularly large-format ones, which could work well as a collaborative installation in a library space.
We then dug into thinking about historical context of towns and street-names; @anjchang shared a rich and thoughtful history of her own community, Berkeley, MA, which inspired the creation of her poem in the previous post! I did a bunch of digging into my own local history, to try to find some context for Highland Avenue in my city, a main drag that I had planned to write this week’s poem about.
This week’s prompt is to create a street shape poem – tracing the shape of a particular street and using that street and its intersections to write a poem. We had a lot of great discussion about how to take this prompt in different directions to create the “portrait” of a particular street (or series of streets) in your community. @sami.kerzel plans to explore topographical/elevation lines (rather than street shapes!) to create a poem, and this got us thinking about other datatypes that have a form which could inspire poetry (like growth of vegetation; flow of water/hydrology/floodplains; wind patterns; etc.). She also shared this resource for creating topographical profiles that folks might find helpful! @rygreene is exploring the same street in Phoenix multiple ways, recounting many different journeys on it (and @Carine thoughtfully noted the accumulation memories each time we walk a path means that it’s different every time we visit!). @STORYTIMESTEPHANIE thought she might explore El Camino Royale, the history of which she’s always been curious about. I can’t wait to see all of these creations!
Outside of thinking about the prompts, I’m also brainstorming some facilitation tips that we might provide with this activity. Spatial Poetry, I think, lends itself well to family and inter-generational creative learning–I can see this activity working well if young patrons come in with grandparents (or other older adults/learners), who can share deep historical context of a place’s past, and their memory of how a community used to look compared to today. As a facilitator, I think there are ways to invite families to participate, and envision this activity being implemented as something where the whole family is involved, sharing discussions and memories, and piecing together their different ideas of place (and poetics!).
Finally, ending with some fun resources we shared today. The first is a course at the New School in New York City by Shannon Mattern: Mapping the Field. Check it out for lots of inspiration about creative map-making and creative writing/naming. We also quickly talked about this tool, which auto-generates a haiku for any location of your choosing. I’ll share the one for my street below:
ohhh! love the proposed facilitation tip re: intergenerational/interfamilial creativity! so much potential for overlapping accumulations of memory 
Yes! If anyone else has any facilitation tips they’d like to contribute/throw into the mix/discuss, please share! I think there’s also definitely something around having a wide variety of maps printed/displayed (for IRL activities).
By the way, @rygreene (et al.), here’s a doc where we can start compiling tools and resources for all things cartography/mapping/etc.
The Haiku Generator is awesome. Here is what it came up with for the Circle that I used for my street shape poem. Super fun. I will share with the kids in my poetry workshop.
Not exactly poetry, but I thought some of you might be interested in this tech setup for a mapping project led by Georgia Tech. A friend I met at the MIT Media Lab is now a prof there and when I saw this I knew at least one of you’d be inspired!
Ok, I went off topic here a little bit. The history of my road is a bit foggy. I assume it was named after a farmer, but there is only ONE written history of Wendell, written about a decade ago. Street names aren’t a part of it and the name Jennison doesn’t come up.
And honestly, I got so excited at the thought of this prompt, I started it at home, right after the onboarding. I didn’t have any fancy paper, so I cut up a paper grocery bag and burned the edges to give it an old map feel.
I’ve lived on this road for over 30 years and the poem is my history. I moved in while pregnant with twins, with 3 children already. Sickly Swamp and Specter of Death refer to my sons cancer diagnosis at 15 and my husbands at 59. (They are both healthy!)
One of the intersections is with Rush Road. (really!) It’s a perfect road for all the rushing a mother of 5 does, although it’s really a lovely dead end. Cooleyville Road is where I most often hike and play.
“Dead People here” refers to the small cemetery in our side yard.
Here’s my poem:
Jennison Road
Vast changes.
Asphalt to dirt.
Ocean to Mountain.
Pregnant. Mother of 3, then 5.
Consumer to farmer.
Specter of Death.
Then healing.
Repeat.
Crazy, weird, odd jobs. Library jobs.
Kids, pigs, chickens, gone.
Grandbabies 3.
Life twists and turns like Jennison Road
Rush Road
Diapers, soccer, laundry, scrub.
Gymnastics, shop, supper, tub.
School, homeschool, homework, strive.
Work, garden, animals, drive.
Cooleyville Road
Peace, flow, walk, hike.
Roam, river, water, bike.
Leaves fall like fat snowflakes
And no one here needs to rake.
Turns out, I struggle with poetry a bit… maybe I’m out of practice? The exercise of looking at the world around us in new and different ways is certainly impactful, and worth pushing through the discomfort.
During the meet up this week, as Avery mentioned, I got caught up in another shape that roads take, and that is it’s elevation. Then I started thinking about the phrase/saying of “I walked to school, uphill both ways!” So I learned how to create a transect elevation map, and @binka shared a site, Geokov, which will do it for you. I did one as the crow flies, and then used the site to create one for the actual path I took.
Here’s the poem to go with the official walking rout:
Grandpa walked up hill both ways.
In a blizzard.
On a horse.
I walked uphill both ways.
In a rush.
On my own.
Generations walk uphill both ways.
Even the same roads now and then.
Time walks uphill both ways.
Around the clock and around again.
I also played with my neighborhood, known as The Willows, although there are only a few willows actually in the neighborhood. I think you could turn this one into a shape poem too, maybe making it look like a willow, but I ran out of time to pursue this further.
About what is actually in the neighborhood:
Mountain views,
Aspen leaves,
No HOA dues,
Or creepy thieves.
Sunny days,
Where my head lays.
Questioning the names (pardon the struggling poet):
Weeping, snowy, mountain, desert.
How did these names come to be?
Only one or two make home in this dirt.