What is poetic cartography? Simply, it seeks to accomplish the same thing a map does - guide the reader through an unfamiliar place. Instead of county borders and bodies of water, however, I want to explore something harder to find on your handy atlas - the human situation in that unfamiliar place, the beauty and pain within those borders and seas.

In this project I brought a poet’s lyricism and an academic’s analysis to a pair of countries with rich yet embattled histories. Through the spring and summer, a series of poems and contextualizing essays explored the juxtaposition of traditional past and bustling present, the experience of a sojourner in a foreign land, and the textures of a contemporary life in these cosmopolitan nations.

*Note: This was a 2015 Chappell Lougee grant project.

Learn more about the project here