Reawakening wonder: how cartography can act as creative research for prose poetry

Abstract

ABSTRACTMany writers and artists have been interested in the aesthetic beauty and the language of maps. Katherine Harman, author of You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Maps of the Imagination, argues that ‘part of what fascinates us when looking at a map is inhabiting the mind of its maker, considering that particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those unique contour lines of experience’ [Harman, Katherine. 2004. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 11]. This suggests a palimpsestic relationship that I too want to explore: between the personal experience that one gains from a particular place and the way that this experience, in turn, makes one read a place differently, more idiosyncratically, thus coming to influence one’s sense of identity. This palimpsestic relationship – juxtaposing the process of cartography with creative writing – forms one part of this article’s focus. But it is linked to a second concern, which relates especially to coastal regions, where there is forever a tussle between sea and land over sovereignty. It struck me that prose poetry captures a similar tension between the prosaic and the poetic. The palimpsestic and littoral qualities of prose poetry thus provide the twin foci of this article, which explores these attributes in relation to the sense of place in the north of England.