Where Maps Touch
My poetry was born in a swamp. Forged from filth, shaped by shame. I’ll spare you the gory diary, suffice to say I called my first cluster of poems “After You Raped Me Everything Rhymed”. The page was my empire, stanzas battle formations, with strong borders and a strong chestbeat.
In the aftermath, I learned about these places, where I wasn’t in control, called “feelings”. I experienced them as places. I drew them: the swamp, a floor ocean, a space basket, a roulette nightclub! I was mapping my mind. It was deep and strange work. I became obsessed with the concept of “whereness”, the most fundamental question being “where are you?”.
Meanwhile, therapy was recreating the contours of my brain. One issue, of many: I was impulsive. It’s funny, you sense impulsivity as this rush of wild freedom but really it’s routine: you’re running up and down a gated alleyway. And isn’t it all addiction? Insert your own vice: alternative substance but the rivulet’s the same.
See, maplines are routes, where people or liquids or thoughts go over and over – green-lit and shortcut; highways and desire lines. A map’s a noun of our territory’s habits. Hmm... if mindscape is boundless, why think like rodents in a gym when we can freewheel dream? Well, we do need the bloody-mindedness to take some roads and travel them in reality. Otherwise it’s less dreaming and more internal telly/thoughts as coffeeless lattes/cosy fantasy.
Actual creativity is less like conquering a page or escaping into dreamland and more like growing something, growing somewhere, real. It takes time, tending and some vines wither. But some spaghetti into cities. Oh yes, there are many kinds of garden. Even a city is made of nature: think of all the clay in all the bricks, all the sand in all those windows – tetris soils, high-rise beaches. Then the city itself grows like a garden: town planners pruning, politicians taking cuttings, population pollinating. All nature-real, stemming from seeds in neural flowerbeds. I’m not the first to say: we grow our places; thereafter, they grow us.
But, ay, there’s the bud: where are you in all of this? Philosophers talk of a moral compass. I believe in a cultural compass. A cultural alethiometer. Culture is the “whereness” we navigate in. It’s embodied, even our bodies swim in it: N. right, S. wrong, W. yes, E. no. Eureka: orientation requires orienteers. You are: the reader.
I mean reading in its broadest sense: reading people, nature, music! Perhaps it sounds passive but, remember, writing is a form of reading. Some people impose the same story over and over. But real reading requires honesty plus creativity.
Somewhere among your animal anatomy and your human neurons and your cultural coordination, there’s an I-sized needle making meaning through little leaps of grounded imagination. And true readers can turn our cultural dial. By changing minds. Yes, you start with the map in the mirror but then we must branch out. Reading’s exploring. And explorers require accurate cartography in order to draw new places.
I love the image of our mind like a computer game map, with areas we haven’t explored yet clouded in darkness. I’ve been to a roulette nightclub and a space basket and a floor ocean and I can report: where there’s bacteria, there’s bloody well art. My poetry was born in a swamp. But what about yours? Where have you been? How deep? How high? What’s your favourite quarter? Your favourite room? Where are you?
Show us. I think art’s telepathy, and stories overlay our mindscapes, and the greatest intimacy we feel are those bridges, like fingertips, where an end of my map touches a start of yours...
Performed at re:shape @ P3 Annihilation Eve 23rd August 2025