This project began with a simple idea: to map Diane di Prima’s life across the spaces she inhabited. Di Prima was one of the great voices of the avant-garde movement of the mid-20th century, but as a queer, gender non-conforming, woman navigating the male-dominated “Beat” cultural and literary scene, di Prima occupied a complex position — both within and outside the mainstream. The poet, who described herself as a “pirate, bandit, outcast” (Di Prima, 54), lived a life defined by constant movement through both geographical and cultural margins.

While working as a Junior Researcher in Anglo-American Studies at CETAPS, in collaboration with the Digital Lab, I set out to build an interactive map that could complement my Master’s research on di Prima. The goal was to organize the scattered, often incomplete records of her life — and in doing so, make her achievements more visible.

But this project isn’t just about putting pins on a map.

Mapping di Prima’s movements reveals how she pushed against the boundaries of domesticity, claiming public, creative spaces that were often hostile or inaccessible to women. For di Prima, the city - especially New York -  became a site of liberation.
Of course, the project is shaped by the gaps in the historical record. Di Prima’s life was not documented with the same care or volume as her male peers. Some locations remain difficult to pinpoint; photographs are rare. Mapping, in this case, also becomes an act of recovery, making visible what is fragmented.
Originally, I had created this database to develop an interactive map, which remains the pillar of this project. However, as the database grew and became more complex, it allowed for other possible visual explorations.  

When you explore the map, a pattern of movement begins to emerge — not a straight line, but a kind of pendular movement, swinging between the East and West Coasts of the United States. Di Prima was never fully rooted in one place; her life unfolded across different cities, landscapes, and communities, reflecting a constant negotiation between centers and margins, between home and departure, between community and solitude. Rather than being constrained by space, di Prima’s movements reveal a need to inhabit multiple worlds at once. Over time, the nature of the spaces she occupied changed: the early years are dominated by bohemian, often male-dominated sites of bohemian life, to claiming visibility within institutional public spaces traditionally dominated by patriarchal structures. Alongside the interactive map, the project features supplementary visualizations, network analyses that reveal the depth of di Prima’s artistic networks.
 

This project stands, above all, as a geographic tribute to di Prima. A mapping of the spaces she inhabited, transformed, and left her mark on. It doesn’t just trace her movements across space and time, but also to recover the ways she reimagined space: claiming it, reshaping it, and refusing to be confined by the boundaries placed around her.
Mapping is never neutral. It is a practice of power dynamics that determines what and who is visible. Traditional literary history often mirrors these patterns, reinforcing pre-established narratives that privilege certain figures and spaces while marginalizing others. Much of Diane di Prima’s story remains fragmented or poorly undocumented, and each new piece of the puzzle —a poster, a photograph — can add to this archive. 
This ongoing project welcomes any contributions. Together, we can continue expanding the cartography of Diane di Prima’s world — and keep her spirit of movement, defiance, and imagination alive!