Welcome to the International Cartographic Association
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic AssociationGet to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic Association
Get to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027

President’s Blog: Website feedback and a map poem

The relaunched website has caused an impressive number of positive reactions, including a note in the “Kartographische Nachrichten”, the Journal of the German Cartographic Society, where the Editor Rolf Harbeck refers to the relaunched ICA website as the probably “richest source for information on the international community of cartography”. He also highlighted the use of modern web technology. The new added LinkedIn – Group option (have a look at the small blue button “in” on the top right part of the ICA website) has helped ICA to reach out in only two weeks time to many who share interest in ICA topics but have not found the right instrument yet to get in contact. Interested? Try it and share it!

Our polish colleague Beata Medynska-Gulij has informed us about the passing away of the polish poet and nobel prize winner for literature (in 1996) Wisława Szymborska in February 2012. The last poem she finished before her death is called “Mapa” (“the map”). I would like to share a draft translation of the first and third part of the poem, done by Agata Ciolkosz-Styk from the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography Warsaw, with you:

 

Wisława Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska, 2009,
photo by Mariusz Kubik

THE MAP

by Wisława Szymborska (2012)

Flat as a table,
On which it is put.
Nothing moves underneath it,
Nothing changes its place.
Above it – my human breath
Does not create vortexes of air
And nothing muddies its pure colours.

I like maps, because they lie.
Because they do not give an access to the virulent truth.
Because generously, with good-natured sense of humor
They spread on a table in front of me the world
Not of this world.

 
 

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