James Navé

Language can change the course of a life. I’ve seen it happen—on stage, in workshops, and once, in a departure lounge, where a single recited poem earned me a first-class seat from San Francisco to London.

I’m a poet, storyteller, and teacher. I’ve committed more than 600 poems to memory and carried them like old friends across continents—performing in cafés, classrooms, festivals, and concert halls. Poetry, for me, is not something written and left behind. It’s something lived, spoken, and passed hand to hand.

I’m the founder of The Imaginative Storm Writing Project, where writers and non-writers alike learn to trust their voice, think imaginatively, and write with clarity and force.

My work has taken many forms over the years:
I’m a founding member of Poetry Alive!, a former Poet Laureate and Strategic Advisor to the Lake Eden Arts Festival, and a co-founder of The Artist’s Way Creativity Camp with Julia Cameron. I hold an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and have represented Asheville on three National Poetry Slam teams.

At the center of it all is this belief: language—spoken, written, and remembered—shapes how we move through the world.

Straddling the Line

Highway 167 looking east to Hawthorne, Nevada

During the summer of 2006, my good friend John van Hasselt and I drove east on Highway 167 from Mono City, California, to Hawthorne, Nevada.

John, a Paris-based photojournalist, and I were on the Nevada backroads, collecting radio stories and photographing casinos, roadhouses, brothels, and offbeat hotels—remnants from Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack days in the ’50s and ’60s.

John said, “Stop the car right here.”

He grabbed his Nikon and said, “Walk down the road and straddle the yellow line.” He took the shot.

Now, John’s photo belongs to all of us travelers out on the great, long highway that always goes somewhere.

Do we not all straddle lines, pause, and wait for what comes next, perhaps a car, or the sun to set, or something to happen, which it always does?