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Number 3, Fall 2002 cartographic perspectives Earle Birney's "Mappemounde": Visualizing Poetry With Maps Adele J. Haft Department of Classical and Oriental Studies Hunter College The City Univ. of New York 695 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 ahaft@hunter.cuny.edu This paper is about "Mappemounde," a beautiful but difficult poem composed in 195 by the esteemed Canadian poet Earle Birney. While exploring the reasons for its composition, we examine the poem's debts to Old and Middle English poetry as well as to medieval world maps known as mappaemundi, especially those made in England prior to 100. But Birney took only so much from these maps. In search of more elusive inspirations, both cartographic and otherwise, we uncover other sources: Anglo-Saxon poems never before associated with "Mappe- mounde," maps from the Age of Discovery and beyond, concealed details of Birney's personal life. Then we trace Birney's long-standing interest in geography and exploration to show how he used maps, espe- cially mappaemundi, as visual metaphors for his intellectual, spiritual, and personal life. Keywords: Poetry about Maps, Medieval World Maps/Mappaemundi, Medieval Poetry, Renaissance Maps, Moby Dick. arle Birney was one of Canada's most beloved writers and public figures, a man whose life spanned most of the twentieth century from 1904 to 1995. Among his finest poems is "Mappemounde," written in 1945 when Birney was forty-one. This paper introduces "Mappemounde," then explores the poem's inspirations and analogues—literary as well as carto- graphic. These range from Anglo-Saxon poetry and Herman Melville's Moby Dick to medieval mappaemundi and maps from the Age of Discovery. Our survey reveals not only the complexity of "Mappemounde" but the degree to which Birney uses medieval world maps as visual metaphors for his life and the world he knew. Earle Birney's "Mappemounde" No not this old whalehall can whelm us shiptamed gullgraced soft to our glidings Harrows that mere more which squares our map See in its north where scribe has marked mermen shore-sneakers who croon to the seafarer's girl next year's gleewords East and west nadders flamefanged bale-twisters their breath dries up tears chars in the breast-hoard the brave picture-faces Southward Cetegrande that sly beast who sucks in with whirlwind also the wanderer's pledges That sea is hight Time it hems all hearts' landtrace Men say the redeless reaching its bounds topple in maelstrom tread back never Adread in that mere we drift toward map's end Line 1. "Whalehall": i.e., "the sea" (Birney 1972, 85) 1 Line 3. "Mere": Old English, "the sea" Line 6. "Gleewords": Old English gliwword, "song" (Jakes 1979, 73) "Nadders": Old English naedre, "adder," "serpent," "dragon" (Birney 1972, 84) "Our survey reveals not only the complexity of Mappemounde" but the degree to which Birney uses medieval world maps as visual metaphors for his life and the world he knew."

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