Straddling the Line

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?

James Navé

Language can change the course of your 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 cafes, classrooms, and concert halls. 

  • Founder of The Imaginative Storm Writing Project

  • MFA in Writing from Vermont College

  • LEAF Global Arts Poet Laureate and Strategic Advisor 

  • Founding member of Poetry Alive! Theater Company

  • Founded The Artist's Way Creativity Camp with Julia Cameron

  • Board member of WPVMFM-Asheville 

  • I've memorized over 600 poems 

  • I represented Asheville on three National Poetry Slam teams

Language can change the course of your 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 cafes, classrooms, corporate events, writing and creativity workshops, and concert halls. 

With an MFA from Vermont College and a lifetime on the road, I’ve spent three decades helping people unlock their original voice—and use it to write, speak, and create with confidence and clarity.

My recent book, 100 Days: A Poetic Memoir After Cancer (3: A Taos Press, 2023), explores what it means to continue creating art, regardless of the circumstances. I’ve also co-authored How to Read for an Audience and Write What You Don’t Know: Ten Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow, both part of the Imaginative Storm series I run with my longtime collaborator, Allegra Huston.

We teach the way jazz musicians play—improvised, unfiltered, and rooted in rhythm. Our workshops, salons, and writing sessions invite people to explore what's raw, alive, and unedited in themselves—and put it on the page.

Since 1995, I’ve hosted the LEAF Poetry Slam, a three-hour celebration of truth and risk onstage. I’ve directed festivals in Taos, sat on boards for TEDx Asheville, WPVM-FM, and LEAF Global Arts. I host Twice 5 Miles Radio, where I talk with artists, thinkers, and culture makers about creativity and what it takes to make something that lasts.

I’m not interested in perfection. I’m interested in voice. In courage. In the spark that turns a blank page into something that matters.

If you’re still reading, we may have something to talk about.

A Few Facts (That Might Surprise You)

  • Mistaken Identity: I was once chased down 21st Street in Manhattan by three teenagers yelling, “We’ll get you, Rocky!” They thought I was Sylvester Stallone. I escaped.

  • Greatest Accomplishment: Lifelong friends who still pick up the phone when I call.

  • Big Fear: Heights. Even a photograph of a cliff makes my knees go weak.

  • One Line That Says It All: “Imagination is the birthplace of truth.”.

  • The Road Is in Love with Me.

    It comes twisting out of my childhood, meandering through my mornings, interrupting my picnics. It taps when I'm asleep, like a kitten

  • Wishfully Wating for the Door to Open.

    I’m always dreaming of the road. As a child I stood beside it and watched as it stretched in the summer afternoons, so concrete, so eternal.

  • As a Young Man,

    it carried me through my gate, past my school, with its oak wooden floors and wide eastern views. Carried me past my church, so small now, inadequate, steeple,

  • Stained Glass Windows.

    Carried me past gardens with corn so high I’m sure it only grew to give the wind a place to go. Carried me past my father’s blows,

  • And Mother’s Easy Words.

    Carried me away from home, and into the night, and the next morning, and the next night, through archway after archway—and at every turn,

  • I Spread Myself

    wider and wider, until I stand before you,

    right here, breathing and alive.

    The road is in love with me.