Macabre Reaches of Edgar Allen Poe - hand drawn map

[BrendanLorber]

Here’s a just-finished map of the Macabre Reaches of Edgar Allan Poe. Please say hi and let me know what you think! (This is one of my first posts ever!) And tell me if there are other writers or musicians I should focus on.

The Poe map is part of an ongoing series of hand-drawn charts that depict the known poetic and musical universe, a series that also includes explorations of Emily Dickinson, David Bowie, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gertrude Stein, John Ashbery, Prince, Frank O’Hara, Madonna, and Robert Burns. Each is hand drawn in pen and ink, and then letterpressed in a small edition on 9” x 11.5” archival paper. The maps invite you to get lost within their wild topographies, each named for a trailblazing writer or musician, and to discover yourself in new worlds perhaps better than this one. The geographic portrayal of the realms would be impossible without visual worldbuilding practices made available through Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons, and Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. But they owe an equal debt to the earthbound cartographers of the Age of Exploration. Master mapmakers like Al Idrisi, Fra Mauro, and Gerardus Mercator.

After I began the series last year, the Museum of Modern Art acquired one. In addition to MoMA, the maps have found homes at The Free Black Women’s Library, Opus 40 Gallery, Artists Space, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodland Pattern Center, Edinburg’s Scottish Poetry Library, and private collections. Brooklyn Magazine just did a feature on my maps: https://www.bkmag.com/2021/02/18/the...conic-artists/

I’ve been so inspired by the maps I’ve seen here since joining a few months ago, and it’s an honor to be among such talented cartographers. Please let me know what you think!

Brendan

[mapmage]

Oh my goodness, I'm a huge Poe fan. This is, although rather convoluted, spectacular

[Ilanthar]

Nice map and great layout!