High Street, Blaenau Ffestiniog

Poet Simon Chandler says of his A470 poem, The Cult of the A470

The poem’s aim is to perform the function of a zoom lens. Starting with a satellite image of the entire road, resembling an immense serpent as it stretches from Cardiff to Llandudno, the poem then (from space) takes a close-up photograph of a solitary labourer in a flat cap, sacrificing his health as he toils with a rusty shovel in the construction of the High Street in Blaenau Ffestiniog, which eventually became part of the A470.