recent work and current projects
Route 66 – open road for promiseland
‘Route 66 – open road for promiseland’ (published by Halsgrove in 2016) is John’s narrative sequence of poems inspired by his three week drive of ‘Main Street USA’, that symbol of Americana, with its hinterland of iconography and imagination as vast as its geography and landscape and his experience of the great American road trip.
The book is richly illustrated by Carol Ballenger’s images, created in response to John’s poems, inspired by the legacy linking the American West and landscape photography and derived from Carol’s virtual Route 66 journey using Google Earth and Street View to replace her camera.
‘Glimpses from the corner of the poet’s eye woven into an odyssey – together with Carol’s photographs, these contain the essence of Route 66’ – Simon Butler
The book had its major launch at London’s prestigious ‘Photographers’ Gallery’. John performs a set based on the book with Carol Ballenger, Arts Live colleagues and other singers and musicians.
‘Route 66 – open road for promiseland’ can be bought direct from Halsgrove through Amazon or from Arts Live.