The Map Was Etched in Ash
About
COMING SOON!
Following the celebrated success of her debut chapbook I Am Still Becoming, poet Stacey Mataxis Whitlow returns with her first full-length collection—an extraordinary fusion of modern travelogue and ancient knowing.
The Map Was Etched in Ash traces the poet’s footsteps across continents and sacred sites, but the deeper journey unfolds within. Each poem moves between worlds—physical and spiritual, rooted and mythic—mapping the places we travel to in order to remember who we are.
From Havana’s shadowed altars to Kyoto’s golden temples, from New Mexico’s burning mesas to the quiet ancestral hum of Southern soil, Whitlow transforms every landscape into a portal. What emerges is a breathtaking exploration of pilgrimage, memory, and the elemental forces that shape a life.
Lyrical, haunting, and deeply human, this collection invites readers to walk beside a speaker who is both wanderer and witness—and to discover, along the way, the sacred map etched into their own story.
Arriving Spring 2026!
Praise for this book
What others say about this collection…
In ‘The Map Was Etched in Ash,’ Stacey Mataxis Whitlow charts a soul’s journey across cosmic terrain. These poems unfold like sacred waypoints on a spiritual pilgrimage, each one invoking the raw beauty of elemental forces and the hidden light we carry within.
With reverent lyricism and mythic clarity, Whitlow turns gardens, cities, celestial bodies, and ancestral lands into portals of transformation. Her voice—both ancient and intimate—guides us through collapse and reclamation, reminding us that what is burned can be reborn, and that every exile carries the map of return.
This is not just a collection—it is a ritual, a remembering, a resurrection. “A luminous pilgrimage through ash, myth, and memory"—Whitlow writes with the voice of someone who has already walked the path and returned bearing fire.
Each poem in this collection opens a door between worlds—between shadow and light, past and presence, soul and soil.
Whitlow’s poems don’t just speak—they invoke, remembering what the world forgot.
A spiritual atlas of loss and return, 'The Map Was Etched in Ash' is a testament to the sacred work of becoming whole.