Cartography of Voice

<p>Completed in a single year of urgent relentless creation <em>Cartography of Voice</em> charts the journey from individual grief to collective testimony-a blueprint for finding the voice that was always waiting.</p><p></p><p>When designer and writer Rick Maderis's mother died in 2025 the brush went quiet. He returned to what remained: old poetry journals college fragments pieces written in periods of silence between composition books and yellow legal pads. From this excavation-fusing past material with immediate grief-he built a five-phase curriculum for securing voice after loss.</p><p></p><p><strong>Phase I: Excavation</strong> - <em>Until Silence Spoke</em></p><p> Finding authentic voice creating maps from scar tissue treating silence as preparation rather than emptiness.</p><p></p><p><strong>Phase II: Architecture</strong> - <em>After the Last Echo</em></p><p> Constructing conscious relationships exploring the mathematics of repair over performance.</p><p></p><p><strong>Phase III: Intervention</strong> - <em>Waiting for Room</em></p><p> Expanding beyond the self to use poetry as collective service embracing the radical discipline of hope.</p><p></p><p><strong>Phase IV: Witness</strong> - <em>American Witness</em></p><p> A confrontation with Lady Liberty using Echo-mapping methodology-transforming readers into co-witnesses of America's collective trauma.</p><p></p><p><strong>Phase V: Convergence</strong> - <em>Between Breath & Release</em></p><p> 24 poems across 12 dual forms where witness becomes inheritance and love becomes matter. Ezra dies at 24 saving a stranger learns he was adopted then witnesses his birth parents rebuilding love after dying together in purgatory.</p><p></p><p>This is not a book for passive reading. It is sound made visible structure made necessary. Maderis weaves verse memoir manifesto and formal analysis into a work that operates as both autobiography and map. A sixth phase <em>Memory</em> will follow after the necessary distance of time.</p><p></p><p><em>Cartography of Voice</em> asks: <em>Where do I find my voice?</em> and more importantly <em>What do I build with it?</em></p><p></p><p>Essential reading for anyone who knows survival isn't about breaking clean-it's about holding the line in between.</p>