On January 14, 2022, Mapmakers Alumna Catherine-Esther Cowie and Pacific MFA alumna Jamaica Baldwin (Poetry, 2017) met for a reading and a discussion of poetic lineage.

Telling the stories of our ancestors can be an act of writing into unwritten spaces—culture, geography, generations, identity, etc. “a means to uncover and restore experiences and life stories that might otherwise remain absent from the historical archive” (Marianne Hirsh). How does that influence your use of language and how you write about lineage? How does writing into those unwritten spaces through lineage contribute to the larger cultural narrative or public memory of a people?

These are the questions these poets discussed.

The Mapmakers Scholarship fund is named after Mapmaker, an early collection of poems by MFA faculty member Kwame Dawes. Dawes has been a leader in the program’s mission to diversify the writers we serve and create equity. In helping us name the scholarship, he said, “The title characterizes what I think of myself as both a writer and as an advocate for the work of others and as someone who tries to open new territories for those who have not had access.” First offered in January 2018, this scholarship is awarded to exceptional students of color.

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