City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, by Kei Miller

eng

In his new collection, acclaimed Jamaican poet Kei Miller dramatises what happens when one system of knowledge, one method of understanding place and territory, comes up against another. We watch as the cartographer, used to the scientific methods of assuming control over a place by mapping it (‘I never get involved / with the muddy affairs of land’), is gradually compelled to recognise – even to envy – a wholly different understanding of place, as he tries to map his way to the rastaman’s eternal city of Zion. As the book unfolds the cartographer learns that, on this island of roads that ‘constrict like throats’, every place-name comes freighted with history, and not every place that can be named can be found

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion

dictionaries

882255302

by Kei Miller

Groundation -- The shrug of Jah -- Establishing the metre -- Quashie's verse -- Unsettled -- What the mapmaker ought to know -- The cartographer tries to Map a way to Zion -- i. in which the cartographer explains himself -- ii. in which the rastaman disagrees -- iii. -- iv. -- v. in which the rastaman offers an invitation -- vi. -- vii. -- viii. -- A Prayer for the unflummoxed beaver -- ix. in which the cartographer travels lengths and breadths -- Place name -- Me-No-Sen-You-No-Come -- x. in which the cartographer asks for directions -- xi. -- A ghazal for the tethered goats -- Roads xii. in which the rastaman begins to feel uncomfortable -- xiii. -- xiv. -- Place name -- Swamp -- For the croaking lizards -- Place name -- Wait-A-Bit -- xv. -- xvi. in which every song is singing Zion -- xvii. -- Place name -- Shotover -- Place name -- Corn Puss Gap -- xviii. -- xix. -- xx. in which the cartographer tells off the rastaman -- Place name -- Half Way Tree -- Place name -- Edinburgh Castle -- Hymn to the birds -- xxi. -- Filop Plays the Role of Papa Ghede (2010) -- Distance -- When considering the long, long journey of 28,000 rubber ducks -- xxii. -- xxiii. -- xxiv. in which the cartographer attends Reggae Sumfest -- The blood cloths -- Place name -- Bloody Bay -- For Pat Saunders, West Indian literature critic, after her dream -- xxv. -- In praise of maps -- My mother's atlas of dolls -- Place name -- Flog man -- Place name -- Try see -- What River Mumma knows -- xxvi. in which the rastaman gives a sermon -- xxvii. in which the rastaman says a benediction