map quest

august inklings challenge

Greetings, Poetry People! Since my last post I have actually been IN PERSON with the Inklings including Molly Hogan, who set our challenge for August. I will get to that, but first, can I just say? Can I just say how thrilling and filling to spend a weekend of creative challenge and comfortable chit-chat with people I know rather well in some ways but not at all in others? It was grand, with a bonus stint with Laura Shovan and her inaugural group of February Poem Project retreaters in Clarksville, MD!

Thanks to generous neighbors on my block and the next, we were all able to to have a private space--like hotel rooms, but better!—and we used the WHISPERshout Studio as our workshop space. We took care of meals in the most cooperative way possible, which made hosting them in my kitchen and dining room a dream of ease. I’ll come back around to what we learned for next time (and there WILL be a next time, folks!) along with some photos in another post.

So here’s Molly’s suggestion, and boy do I love it.

Write a poem about maps or travel or journeys, real or imagined. Maybe you want to write about finding your way or marking your path. Maybe you want to consider where your map begins, where it ends, or the liminal boundary spaces. Perhaps you want to take a different perspective— that of the map maker (cartographer if we’re getting fancy :) ) or that of the map itself. Here’s a poem to add to the mix— Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Map”. https://allpoetry.com/The-Map

I am all about the big picture, the 30,000 foot view—and that’s what maps provide. The map inside the front cover of the book, the map in the glove box, the map on the board by the trail, the map on your phone…they all lift us up over a place and give us a perspective that both increases our power over that place and reminds us how small we are in comparison to it. And of course we carry maps in our minds, where maybe we appear larger than we should—so, gratitude for the external maps that reorient us!

However, despite all the time I’ve spent with a map of Brighton, UK in recent weeks, I do not have a new poem to share this week; instead I’ll give you THREE old ones.

First, from my book SQUEEZE (2005), the original title of which was WHEREVER YOU ARE and was conceived as a book about the places kids go on their own.

Second, this March draft from a collection I’m working on called TREEOGRAPHY:

And in between those two, a poem I wrote for a poetry residency I did at a local elementary school, which came with a collage artwork.

Finally, I leave you with a little prompt I wrote for Claude*:

Find Brighton & Hove UK on a map, use Seven Dials as the center point, and draw a circle with a 1-mile radius around it. I need to be able to read every street name.

Is that a poem? No, but it may be a manifesto of sorts. Wherever I am, show me the money map! Claude obliged, as you see above.

I’m thinking that Ruth knows her way around quite a few maps in the world, and I’m thanking her for hosting us this week at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. This blog continues to be cross-posted to my juicy little universe at Blogger for now, but may the map lead you here, where I expect to be posting for the long haul and exclusively starting September 1st. Bonne continuation to us all!