The Poet and the Map: (Di)versifying the Teaching of Geography ::m, This paper focuses upon four twentieth-century poets who write about Adele J. Haft ~e's maps. Spanning three generations and countries, they offer lessons on Department ofC lassical and geography to children (John Fuller, May Swenson) and reminisce about Oriental Studies their own geography classes (Don Gutteridge, Fiona Pitt-Kethley). Since ~e's their poems have much to teach regarding the meanings and uses of Hunter College maps, this paper suggests that we introduce students to their verses and The City Univ. of New York apply their ideas to (di)versify the way we teach about maps and geogra 695 Park Avenue phy. New York, NY 10021 [email protected] Keywords: Poetry about Maps, Map I Geography Education, Children's Verse A ristophanes' Clouds provides a comical glimpse at one map in an Athenian classroom during the late fifth century BCE. When the dull witted hero, Strepsiades, is confronted for the first time with a map of the world, he protests that Socrates' students have placed Athens much too close to her enemy, Sparta (Aristophanes 1924, 1:282-83, lines 214-17). Twenty five centuries later, poets are still reflecting on the map's role in education. Today, widely-read geographers and educators recognize that poetry is a memorable and unique way to teach maps. While writing a book on twentieth-century poems about maps, I have collected thirty that provide "Twenty-five centuries after instruction or focus upon a student's view of maps. I wish to introduce four of the most engaging to further the dialogue between scientists and human Aristophanes, poets are still ists that began in ancient Greece. reflecting on the map's role in Each of these poems offers a different experience of maps. We begin with education. Today, widely-read the two that appear in children's collections-John Fuller's "Geography geographers and educators Lesson" and May Swenson's "The Cloud-Mobile" -since both are acces recognize that poetry is a memo sible, on some level, to every reader. This is particularly true of "Geography Lesson," the only one of the poems to be illustrated by a map. Fuller's work rable and unique way to teach highlights the peculiar relationship between text and image: ,it teaches us as maps." much about translating maps into verse as about translating poetry into graphic form. But like the quote from Aristophanes above, "Geography Lesson" has a political lesson lurking behind its satire. May Swenson, on the other hand, prefers the subtlety of nature's riddles and discards the static map entirely. In "The Cloud-Mobile," she conjures up a map of time and change that can be used as an elegant introduction to physical geogra phy. Don Gutteridge' s "My Story: Maps" and Fiona Pitt-Kethley' s "Geogra phy" are complex autobiographies. In his five-part poem, Gutteridge employs a variety of maps to situate, decenter, and simultaneously recover the places of childhood. The focus of "My Story: Maps" becomes our sense of where we fit-or don't fit-on a map. Pitt-Kethley' s acerbity contrasts with Gutteridge' s nostalgic memory of the way he was taught geography in school. Recalling her boredom in "Geography," Pitt-Kethley urges us to find maps that fire a child's imagination, whether they be medieval repre sentations of the world or maps of classic adventure stories. Her sugges tions, in turn, act as springboards to other captivating texts, maps, and poems. ~ 2' " -"~-~-"' ~, "'"'~~ "--- "'-,,=~ ~~~"'~~~~~~~-~~~--m"~BiW@j ~ 34 . . .. car~o~tCl/Jg}'Hc J!!:~11S'Se~°:t;i~e~" .. . _. . Nl_~lll_~.e!7 ~3_,c S!'!ringc1~:~~: ANTHROPOMORPHIC MAPS English poet John Fuller (1937-) first published "Geography Lesson" in his AND POLITICAL SA TIRE collection of children's verse Come Aboard and Sail Away. Accompanied by Nicholas Garland's delightful anthropomorphic map, "Geography Lesson" (Figure 1) nevertheless conveys a serious message-that England is a poor nurse to baby Ireland (1983, 8-9: reprinted by permission of John Fuller): With Highland hair and arms of Wales Reaching for Ireland, England trails A lonely distance behind Europe Trying impossibly to cheer up: A sloppy nurse who hopes that maybe No one will see she's dropped her baby Splash into the Irish Sea While bouncing it upon her knee. With hips of Norfolk, bum of Kent, Her posture's more than strangely bent. Yorkshire gives backache with its Ridings. The Midlands, full of railway sidings, She blames for burps of indigestion. Her Birmingham has got congestion. Her Derbyshire is full of holes. London's asleep at the controls And her subconscious shifts the worry Out to Middlesex and Surrey. Yet Devon's a comfortable shoe From which old Cornwall's toes peep through. On Lleyn, sedately, Anglesey Is balanced like a cup of tea, While clucking in her tea-time mirth Her mouth's the open Solway Firth Ready to swallow if she can The little cake of the Isle of Man. Even asleep she falls apart: Dreams of the Orkneys make her start And stitches of the Isle of Wight "By converting countries and Drop off from Hampshire in the night. With bits of knitting in the Channel, islands into figures, Fuller pokes Most of East Anglia wrapped in flannel fun at England's penchant for And snores exhaling from Argyll, tea, nannies, wool and dowdy The dear old lady makes you smile: clothes. And by associating What can you do with such a creature geographical regions with places To whom each county lends a feature? She'll still be there when I am gone. on a nurse's body, Fuller trans Through all your lives she'll shamble on, forms into a mischievous game Grubby, forgetful, laughing, hatless the exercise of locating places on The silliest country in the atlas. · an ordinary map." "Geography Lesson" cleverly conceals its instruction in an appealing package. As its title indicates, Fuller's poem teaches the various "parts" of the British Isles. By converting countries and islands into figures, Fuller pokes fun at England's penchant for tea, nannies, wool and dowdy clothes. And by associating geographical regions with places on a nurse's body, Fuller transforms into a mischievous game the exercise of locating places on . Figure 1. Nicholas Garland's illustration of "Geography Lesson" by John Fuller. Reprinted by permission of Nicholas Garland from Come Aboard and Sail Away by John Fuller (Edinburgh: The Salamander Press, p. 8). Copyright ©1983 John Fuller (text) and Nicholas Garland ··.·.(illustrations). an ordinary map. Here he follows a tradition dating back to another of Aristophanes' plays, the bawdy Lysistrata. After its heroine's pan-Hellenic sex-strike abruptly ends the Peloponnesian War, the inebriated Athenian and Spartan ambassadors skirmish over the scantily clad Reconciliation, "Fuller, an erudite poet and whose desirable parts the ambassadors identify with strategic sites lost in Oxford don, is known also for the war (Aristophanes 1924, 3:110-111, lines 1162-1170; Parker 1984, 447-49 his interest in nineteenth and 467). century England. So it is no If Aristophanes' double entendres and comic performance emphasized his wonder that "Geography Les political message, Nicholas Garland's illustration of "Geography Lesson" certainly adds to the pleasure and understanding of Fuller's poem. One son" vividly evokes the anthro might wish that his labels were placed more accurately ("Yorkshire," pomorphic cartoon-maps so "Kent"), that the boundary between England and Scotland were less popular from the late eighteenth ambiguous, or that more of Fuller's place-names appeared on the map. Yet to the early twentieth centuries." all maps are generalized; simplified, and selective views of the world. In focusing on the memorable image of nurse and child, Garland highlights England's policy towards Ireland-a detail that otherwise could be lost as the poem progresses . . Fuller, an erudite poet and Oxford don, is known also for his interest in nineteenth-century England (Hulse1986). So it is no wonder that "Geogra phy Lesson" vividly evokes the anthropomorphic cartoon-maps so popular "'""'"''~~= " "'"" -,~"'l"'" j"<'""''~""'°"'\'."/J!;;!~""'"'~ =~-= ~""""~= ~9' ~~""'--"""'~ 'l~ """'*"""'<'-""1"i'?"'!('"~~~''t;'. "' ~~,"':0"""" ~~~ 0'-~"""'11'"" JP""''*'!i'-'i:!P4~~"""~~"""'"''!::'<'-"1Yi,~&~~"""t~"'"'~':\k~"'~"~W'''"':::;-,,;:-;s 36 - l!ra11If:e~11a~!ftie ~ercS~ecefJ,i'lPces . _ _ -·--~~~e_r~~,-~~r~~i:~ 1E~@9 from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries (see Hill 1978). Fuller's poem and Garland's illustration are inspired by at least two of these maps-both of which depict Ireland as a caricatured peasant womar with her baby. Robert Dighton's Geography Bewitched! or, a droll Caricature Map of Ireland represents Ireland as John Bull's wife "Lady Hibernia Bull" carrying an infant on her back (Bowles and Carver, London, c. 1794; see Rose 1981, 63). And the illustration William Harvey(" Aleph") made for hi Geographical Fun: Being Humorous Outlines ofV arious Countries shows Irelan as a woman laden with goods for the market. Tied to her back, a child of indeterminate age clutches a herring and gazes not at the reader, as in the "Garland, obliged to make Bowles and Carver map, but at Protestant England and Scotland (Harvey 1868; and see Yale University Map Collection). Ireland look like a baby in his Fuller is obviously not the first to portray Ireland as a child dependent o illustration, plays with scale and England. Like William Harvey, he and Garland have made geography shrinks the island considerably. appealing to children, in part by depicting Ireland as a youngster. Yet each For him, the clarity of the conveys subliminal messages. Harvey imagines the Irish as servants to stately England (Lewes 1999, 39). Garland, obliged to make Ireland look lik1 human figure takes precedence a baby in his illustration, plays with scale and shrinks the island consider over geographical accuracy and ably. For him, the clarity of the human figure takes precedence over geo detail. But by representing graphical accuracy and detail.1 But by representing Ireland as much smallE Ireland as much smaller than than Great Britain, Garland's map seems to reinforce the notion of depen Great Britain, Garland's map dence. Furthermore, despite Fuller's criticism of the way England has seems to reinforce the notion of handled Ireland, the England of his "Geography Lesson" has "usurped" Welsh Anglesey and Lleyn as well as the Scottish Orkneys and Argyll. dependence." Substituting "Britain" for the metrically equivalent "England" would have resolved the problem. Yet Fuller's poem is ultimately about his country's "Englishness" .2 In spite of England's repeated failures in Northern Ireland and her Celtic neighbors' nationalistic movements during the 1970s, she remains for him "the dear old lady who makes you smile." However self mocking the tone, Fuller's "Geography Lesson" invites analysis of cultural stereotypes and personal biases inherent in verse and on maps. ANIMATED MAPS, NATURE'S Offering another playful map-poem for readers of all ages is May Swenson RIDDLES, AND SCIENTIFIC (1913-1989). An American poet and MacArthur Fellow, Swenson publishec THEORIES "The Cloud-Mobile" in 1958 (Swenson 1958, 28). With its disarming simplicity and wonder, this poem earned a place in her children's book, Poems to Solve (Swenson 1966, 29), and later in the collection from which ot1 version derives, The Complete Poems to Solve (Swenson 1993, 41: reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. Copyright© 1993 The Literary Estate of May Swenson): Above my face is a map where continents form and fade. Blue countries, made on a white sea, are erased; white countries are traced on a blue sea. It is a map that moves faster than real but so slow; only my watching proves that island has being, or that bay. I It is a model of time; mountains are wearing away, coasts cracking, the ocean l spills over, then new hills heap into view with river-cuts of blue between them. :s td It is a map of change: this is the way things are with a stone or a star. This is the way things go, hard or soft, 1n swift or slow. May Swenson enjoyed riddles. Although her verses capture the ephem eral motion of clouds, Swenson allows only the title to give her subject e away. Within the poem, she refers to maps and models-to representations of clouds rather than to clouds themselves. By comparing a sky filled with clouds to a map of continents and countries, Swenson calls attention to a map's most basic characteristics. Her ~r description of clouds as "white countries ... on a blue sea" accords with our cultural stereotypes of an icy white Antarctic and blue seas, in nature and on our maps. But the initial shock of "blue countries ... on a white sea" makes us re-evaluate our assumptions about mapped space. Historically, maps have shown water as white-and a host of other colors besides blue " ... Swenson's map, while (Ehrensvard 1987, 123-46; Woodward 1987, 326-27; Wood 1992, 99 and alluding to its paper cousins 121-22). Just as the sky's shifting pattern of clouds alters our perspective, so a reader's view of a map determines, from minute to minute, whether land flattened in atlases or behind or water is the figure or the ground (Wood 1992, 140). "The Cloud-Mobile" glass frames, has a vitality that also reverses the normal way we look at a map, forcing us to lie on our technology could not match backs to look at a map over our heads. Yet her map, while alluding to its until computers began paper cousins flattened in atlases or behind glass frames, has a vitality that technology could not match until computers began generating animated generating animated maps." :l maps (see Hall 1992, 264). Fascinated by "form as it becomes what it is" (Howard 1980, 604), Swenson moves us onto her map of time.Not only are clouds subject to change, but so are the mountains and continents that appear so securely tr moored beneath our feet, and on our maps. Rivers, ice and wind build up the earth's surface and erode it away again. Oceans reclaim land exposed during colder periods; waves shatter and reshape coastlines; rivers excavate valleys. In addition to these external forces, "The Cloud-Mobile" suggests some of the internal processes at work in landform development. From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, as Swenson was writing and republish ing her poem, new evidence concerning the earth's magnetic patterns and the mid-Atlantic Ridge broadened interest in the theory of continental drift, an idea hotly debated since the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener detailed it in his 1915 study, later translated as The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Wegener 1924; see LeGrand 1988 and Stewart 1990). As elaborated in the current theory of plate tectonics, all the earth's landmass at one time formed a single supereontinent that Wegener named Pangaea(" all-lands"). Pangaea began to split apart some 200 million years ago, as the plates under the continents shifted, dividing Laurasia in the north from Gondwanaland in the south. These massive continents split in turn about 100 million years ago, creating the continents whose shapes and positions appear so familiar on our maps. Yet our continents continue to drift. Within 50 million years the Mediterranean will disappear as Africa collides with Europe. Only the earth's inevitable cooling will end the continents' cloud like motion on convection currents within our planet (McKnight 1992, 26: 63, and Scotese 1999, for illustrations). Swenson's "Cloud-Mobile," in oth words, helps us visualize the forces that continually reshape our earth ov the vastness of geologic time, and challenges us to continually re-examirn our scientific explanations for such changes. THE MAP AS "GRAPHIC Canadian poet Don Gutteridge (1937-) reminisces about his childhood AUTOBIOGRAPHY" geography class in "My Story: Maps." Like the Fiona Pitt-Kethley poem tr follows, "My Story: Maps" appears in a collection for adults, yet is acces sible and comprehensible to younger readers. Opening A True History of Lambton County, Gutteridge' s poem tells how one teacher in southern Ontario taught him, at the age of twelve, to view his native Lambton Cour (1977, 5-9). For brevity, section 3 of "My Story: Maps" has been removed a ellipses indicate verses I've omitted at the end of sections 1and4 (excerpt reprinted from A True History of Lamb ton County by permission of Oberon "Opening A True History of Press): Lambton County, Gutteridge's 1 poem tells how one teacher in SS No.12 southern Ontario taught him, at Sarnia Township: 1948 the age of twelve, to view his map of our county etched in smoke native Lambton County." on the blackboard looks like Labrador north and remote edged in blue never-ending on the corner-globe ... 2 In class we chant the townships' names, the song of the shape that holds us in: Lambton County: Bosanquet Sarnia Moore and Sombra Plympton Enniskillen Dawn and Warwick Brooke Euphemia Louder now! Lamb tun Coun tee bows an kay Sam ya Moor an Som bra Plim tun En askill an Don an War wic Brook you feem ya A dance, a riddle: sidewalk skipping-song with no meaning at all but leave it out and nothing works 4 Today we add the creeks the Plank Road to Petrolia, Highway 22 zig-zag at Warwick, the London Road drifting at the border ... my map's bones are bloodied with indelible veins, the looped intestines of a mythical beast home-grown, lurking behind the white page, ready to charge the second we say the password, sketch in the crucial line ... 5 We add the towns, a circle for Petrolia at the dead-centre: a drop of perfect oil, pencil-smudges for Watford, Wyoming 1 balmy Port Lambton Sarnia is an ink-blob oozing at the page- the Point is a dot, a blink in somebody else's eye I am ashamed: demand bigger maps Miss Kernohan draws down Neilson' s [sic] Mercator Projection of the World and shames us all ... For over sixty years, Don Gutteridge has not strayed far from "the Point" -his nickname for Point Edward, the village where he was raised in Sarnia Township. Now Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, he lives only an hour from Point Edward (Atherton 1997). Gutteridge' s proximity to Point Edward reflects a profound attachment to his childhood home. A eulogy to the place of his youth, "My Story: Maps" also reveals his interest in pedagogy. Framing the poem add its classroom are the corner-globe and Mercator Projection of the World, published by Thomas Nelson and Sons (Gunn 1931, 2-3). On the blackboard, the class busily maps Lambton County. To reinforce its visual image, Miss Kernohan teaches her class to chant the names of its townships. A map of Lambton County shows the order of these names within the song (Figure 2). Bosanquet ("bows an kay") leads as the most northerly of the townships. Next come, from north to south, the three GENERAL DESCRIPTION TOWNSHIP BOUNDARIES MAIN HIGHWAYS MAIN HIGHWAYS ANO TOWNSHIP BOUNDARIES RAILWAYS 0 s 10 WARWICK SARNIA J_ CN" Watford -1-- - -1 I MOORE ENNIS KILLEN BROOK E Br~den I I I --t- Oil Springs - - _I_ i SOM BRA I DAWN EUPHEMIA I ~~/ I Florence ,_'-:/ KENT COUNTY N r Figure 2. "General Description" of Lambton County, Ontario. Reprinted by permission of the Lambton County Historical Society, from A Physical and Cultural Atlas of Lambton County by Frank G. Higgins and Michael R. Kanouse (Sarnia. Ontario, p. 2). Copyright ©1969 The Lambton County Historical Society. ·.... ...... ·.... ships bordering the St. Clair River; the three directly to their east; and town . . Jast, the three bordering on M1~dlesex County. . , .. ~·· ··· The Lamb ton County song is a verbal map. Guttendge s ability to recall '> the words thirty years later indicates how tenaciously a f~miliar verse ca:i ··•··· Jodge in our memory. ~s a i:oet and educator, ~uttendge is concerned with .. ... . . tersections of place, identity, and verse: for him, a map-whether verbal or .~/~aphic-beco11'.es_memorable when a person discovers how to read his "The Lambton County song is a gw n experience m it. From the Lambton County song, the boy learns not verbal map. Gutteridge' s ability . ~nly his county's townships but that language is "a riddle," a code like the to recall the words thirty years symbols on his map. "My Story: Maps" is about making sense of the world and one's place in later indicates how tenaciously a it. On the blackboard, the map of Lamb ton County reminds the boy of familiar verse can lodge in our Labrador. The association is particularly Canadian. With a coast extending memory. As a poet and educa nearly 700 miles and an area of over 100,000 square miles, Labrador dwarfs tor, Gutteridge is concerned Lambton County. Yet his comparison has merit. In terms of shape, with intersections ofp lace, Gutteridge' s county is a mirror image of Labrador. And while the coast of Labrador forms a section of Canada's eastern boundary, the western edge of identity, and verse: for him, a Lambton County forms part of the boundary between Ontario and Michi- map-whether verbal or . gan, dividing Canada from the U.S. along its sixty-mile border. To a child graphic-becomes memorable raised beside the heavily trafficked St. Clair and the immensity of Lake when a person discovers how to Huron, even his township's ten miles of lakeshore and motley collection of read his own experience in it." villages must have seemed like a world barely explored, especially since his distances were traversed on foot. Yet by the end of the poem, the childish illusion that his home is the world shatters. Some Lambton County towns, like Petrolia, boast symbols of respectable size. Its" circle at the dead-centre: a drop of perfect oil," reminds us that Lambton County gained prominence as Canada's first oil capital and home to Imperial Oil. But Gutteridge' s Point Edward is only a dot on the map ofLambton County. And the village disappears entirely on the world map his teacher displays. "My Story: Maps" ends with the shame Gutteridge felt at the absence of Point Edward on the authoritative "Mercator Projection of the World." The v way Gutteridge has overcome his childhood dilemma is to create maps of his own. Throughout his works, he recognizes the power of maps to document an era and the mind of their creator. For over twenty-five years now, he has turned his once rural Canadian village into the subject of a multi-volume epic spanning two centuries. A True History ofL amb ton County is the second volume of Time is a Metaphor (1974-), which Gutteridge envisions as a large-scale map of the people and events that have shaped Lambton County and his own life. Into volumes 5 and 6, he has inserted large-scale maps depicting Point Edward and Lambton County during the late nineteenth century, a period he depicts in novel form (Gutteridge 1987b and 1988). Gutteridge modeled his maps on Belden's Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Lamb ton, Ontario, 1880 (Phelps 1973), one of the thousands of county atlases sold by subscription to local residents during the second half of the nineteenth century (Conzen 1984). By recovering authentic maps of individual towns ". .. what animates "My Story: and landholdings, Gutteridge-in his own words-" reconstructs history Maps is the relationship be as-art" (Gutteridge 1987a, 255). fl tween maps and the viewer's But what animates "My Story: Maps" is the relationship between maps and the viewer's personal history. In this respect, Gutteridge' s poem has personal history. fl much in common with J.B. Harley's breathtakingly poetic article "The Map as Biography." Reflecting on the power of one Ordnance Survey map to evoke the most poignant memories of his own life, Harley concludes (Harley 1987, 20): ' ;; ~ ~~~~R= ~="~'M=~ ~~ m3J'"'tR"Rl~=tr~"'-~Yg0i.<10i."1if'0)'~'iihi8"/'>.r;0;0?~~:!5'.j! ~ ~rrfiBr.V:::""-'>' 'f";J"" 1W;;c;'i"-""- r;:h-~2. B~OX$)'t''~ ~ " 42. _ CJJifftO~PatJ/liie ~el!SfJ/ltJJ'tives " Numlier 33, $!iring iJ,!~f'li:: r = ~- ~ ~ "' - ~ ~ ~~ ~ y .:;~ ~'*1\ The map has become a graphic autobiography; it restores time to memory and it recreates for the inner eye the fabric and seasons of a former life ... Till other landscapes and their maps crowd it out, this wi] remain my favourite map. 3 MAPS THE FIRE THAT English poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley (1954-) is more critical of her youthful IMAGINATION education. "Geography," published in her first collection Sky Ray Lolly, slangs the Philips' Atlas she was required to read in her English public school and suggests that medieval world-maps or Mark Twain are more exciting ways to teach geography (1986, 60-61: reprinted by permission of the poet, ©Fiona Pitt-Kethley from Sky Ray Lolly, Chatto and Windus, 1986) Each year they passed out Philips' Atlases full of unmeaning maps I'd try to read first the Political-bright pastel rags of land with river veins-the Physical, earth colours, yellow, brown and green. I'd scan the sticky label in the front to see the book's lineage of fellow-sufferers. If there were many there, I'd garnish it, anthropomorphise coastlines-put eyes in inlets, nostrils in peninsulas. I used to do my homework lying by the pale gas fire for warmth. Visitors would step over me. One trod right on the map I'd drawn. Miss Foxton, a walking advert for the role of shoe-adviser, her own brown leather lace-ups polished like conkers, thought Africa no place for that grubby Man-Friday-print and gave me 'E'- a grade used only for those beyond redemption. I think I could have liked the subject in the Middle Ages; but modern textbooks lack wonder and humanity-precis of precis, their glossy pages never show monopods or anthropophagi. Their servant-teachers are not Mandevilles, nor like eighteenth century gentlemen, who, when in Rome, got out their tape measures to find the truth about St Peter's dome. Outside school walls, my mind could travel to Haggard's poetic Zululand, Mark Twain's fanatically detailed microcosm of the Mississippi, Verne's islands, ice, lighthouses and subterraneous wonders. And I was angered for the dynasty of navy-ink strangers in my Atlas, who, in the name of learning, signed to hear the world chewed up, spat out in terms of tons of jute, asbestos, cocoa crops and tin. One glance at a Philips' New School Atlas convinces us that Pitt-Kethley has a point. Published by the firm of George Philip and Son, founded in