How to Make an America

by John Tanner

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About the book

How to Make an America explores the American West through poetry that combines the exhilaration of a road trip through epic landscapes with reflections on the fragility of human presence there and the validity of the myths that America projects. These myths are embedded in media images and in the images we construct from the written word and from American music. America is a movie and this book is another version of an endlessly evolving, always personal, and utterly surreal screenplay.

The poems also express the way that travel both reflects and alters our perceptions and how, as in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, a journey can become its own destination. How to Make an America’s poetry is complemented by compelling images from the London artist, Trish Wiley, and by photographs taken by the author.

About the author

John Tanner’s poetry has appeared in various magazines, including Poetry Wales and Acumen, in a collection of his verse, Pieces, and in the Cinnamon anthology, The Lie of the Land. He has also written a revisionist study of the American writer, Richard Brautigan, called Landscapes of Language, published by Humanities-eBooks, who are also publishers of How to Make an America.

John was born in South-East Wales and, after a degree from Swansea University, became a journalist on regional and national newspapers before moving into media management. Then, in his fifties, John took early retirement and returned to university. “I made a stupid, immature mess of my first shot at uni and I wanted a chance to do the job properly,” he says. John gained a first-class honours degree from Bangor, then a PhD, and worked on the material that would become the books listed above. He taught literature and creative writing in the university’s English and Lifelong Learning departments.

John lives in North Wales with his wife, Judy, and their cat, George.