Highway Sky

Diverse poetic forms give a range of rhythmic experiences, like musical variation. The poems evoke nostalgia for a wilder freer time, a time of wrestling demons and coming to a new understanding of life.
Marie Craven writing at Via Negativa

Highway Sky is a collection of road poems originally published in various literary journals and anthologies and on author James Brush’s website Coyote Mercury from 2009 – 2015.

Highway Sky is available in paperback from most online booksellers including:

Paperback: Amazon, Barnes & Noble | Kindle

Projects & Collaborations

Got an idea to take the words off the page? Want to work together? Let me know.

Chasing Headlights

Chasing Headlights is an EP from Cwtch (vocals: Marie Craven / music: Paul Foster). The lyrics are remixed from poems in Highway Sky (“God Bless Johnny Cash,” “For Gasoline,” “At Night,” and “Night at the Interstate Diner”). Marie and I each made a video (see “I Drove to the River” & “Goddess” below).

Blurbs & Reviews

Diverse poetic forms give a range of rhythmic experiences, like musical variation. The poems evoke nostalgia for a wilder freer time, a time of wrestling demons and coming to a new understanding of life. The tone is serious, at times confessional, and also at times humorous, at others uplifting: many shades as the narrative progresses. Themes of history in the American landscapes traversed are a strong thread in the collection.
Marie Craven writing at Via Negativa

Previous Publications & Draft Poems:

The following poems from the collection were previously published. Where there are links, they can be read online. My thanks to the editors of these journals for publishing these.

“Sonnet Found in a Road Atlas” Verbatim Found Poetry (Jun 2015)

“a hundred miles out” tinywords (Apr 2015, Issue 15.1)

“All the Way” Synchronized Chaos (Mar 2015)

“Three Scenes from the Road” The Lake (Mar 2015)

“windshield rain” A Blackbird Sings: A Book of Short Poems (Woodsmoke Press, Sep 2012)

“if there are angels” feathers (Apr 2012)

“North Through Fog” Houston Literary Review (Feb 2011)

“Night at the Interstate Diner” qarrtsiluni (Dec 2010 – The Crowd issue)

“Highway 73 to Port Arthur” a handful of stones (Jul 2010)

“Deeper into Texas” America Remembered (Virgogray* Press Chapbook Anthology Jul 2010)

“Miles (Never Once Imagined)” Carcinogenic Poetry (May 2010)

“I-10 Eastbound” Carcinogenic Poetry (May 2010)

“We Talk of Trains” ouroboros review (Jul 2009 – No. 3)

“A Texas Highway in Springtime” Bolts of Silk (May 2009)

Many of the poems first appeared here in draft form. You can read those early drafts here. My thanks to the many people who commented, critiqued and left feedback on these drafts.

Videos

All of the individual poems in Highway Sky are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license so if you want to envideo/remix… have at it.

all roads lead here

Goddess (from Chasing Headlights)

Music & Vocals: Cwtch (based on “For Gasoline”)

For Gasoline

Video: Javi Zurrón, Translation: Eduardo Yagüe

Gasolina

Video & translation: Eduardo Yagüe

Gasolina was featured at #Contemplating Hell at Kuntshalle/Hall of Art in Kosice, Slovakia. Oct 5-13, 2017.

I Drove to the River (from Chasing Headlights)

Video: Marie Craven / Music & vocals: Cwtch (based on “God Bless Johnny Cash”)

Highway Sky