Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
As It Happens

"Anything's fair game — short of death," at the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

The 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is on in Elko, Nevada. North Dakota rancher and poet Bill Lowman says the event has its roots in the poems that cowboys would recite to pass the time during the Texas cattle drives of the 19th century.
CBC Radio ·
Bill Lowman performing at the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. (Elton de León/Western Folklife Center)
As It Happens5:06Rancher and poet Bill Lowman recites at the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is underway in Elko, Nevada.

The 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is on in Elko, Nevada. Rancher and performer Bill Lowman says the multi-day event now draws artists and audiences from around the world. But it has its roots in the poems that 19th century cowboys would recite around the fire during long Texas cattle drives. 

A few of those classics are still performed today, but Lowman and other contemporary poets infuse that tradition with the rigours and wry wit of modern cowboy life. 

"I have a 20,000 acre ranch in western North Dakota, and I write about things that happen around me with my neighbours and wrecks with a horse or anything. In our tradition, it's fair game to pick on anybody in a wreck -- if he got bucked off and broke an arm or something. Anything's fair game as long as it's short of death." 

More from this episode