The Poem as a Map

A walking workshop with Svetlana Sterlin & Dave Thomas

Bring a jacket, sun hat

Something to write with (notebook and pen/pencil, phone, etc.)

Something to sit on (blanket, camp chair/stool, towel or cushion)

Wear good walking shoes - this workshop traverses rough terrain, rocks, and winds through nature.

Periplum, not as land looks on a map

but as sea bord seen by men sailing.

• Ezra Pound (Canto 59)

History forgets some places, and stutters on new ways to name old ghosts. There’s more than

asbestos rotting in these walls. But I would give most things to read the careful way you spelt

our names above the phone, or to watch an afternoon sink across the dam. To sit on the

verandah and hear you tell me about the birds.

• Evelyn Araluen (“Concessions”, from Dropbear)

Can a thing washed ashore ever return to the sea or does it simply circulate, forever both

arriving and departing? Is that what it means to travel? Is the act of creating a map an act of

violence? Or is it an act of love, of attentiveness to the place described? Down in the mangroves

on Lamb Island, there’s no actual path – to make your way out to the water, you have to

choose your own way, using the kind of embodied cartography that we all learn as soon as we

can walk.

This workshop is interested in the ways in which a poem can function as a map to its own

destination, guiding the reader to a place (emotionally, intellectually, even physically or

geographically) resembling where the writer was during the act of composition or inspiration.

We’ll start together in the community garden with some prompted writing and group

discussions. After that, we’ll go for a wander, writing on foot, using poetic thought to respond

to the environment we're in. At the end of our time together, the goal is to have produced a

new poem or piece of writing that didn't exist before. While no one will be expected to read

their work aloud if they don't wish to, there will be time to share as well.

Bring something to write with (notebook and pen/pencil, phone, etc.), something to sit on

(blanket, camp chair/stool, etc.) and wear good walking shoes – a full bushwalk isn’t required

but it's nice to know you can stray from the beaten path if you want to.

History forgets some places, and stutters on new ways to name old ghosts. There’s more than

asbestos rotting in these walls. But I would give most things to read the careful way you spelt

our names above the phone, or to watch an afternoon sink across the dam. To sit on the

verandah and hear you tell me about the birds.

• Evelyn Araluen (“Concessions”, from Dropbear)

The gray-brown mountains or hills

Are in a lifting cloud over Under Mountain Road

Often there’s a cloud on the town, the town is on a mountain

Or halfway up a ridge declining north to south

• Bernadette Mayer (Midwinter Day)

Check out other events at The Island Storytellers Festival!

Photo Credit: Marguerite Carstairs