Wrangling with words and walking in boots - Cowboy Poetry

It was a fantastic, though very long Thursday! We left the hotel before 9 am and got back at 10 pm. We spent most of the day in the Conference/Convention Center (pic above), where a full schedule of performances was offered. The day began with the grandiose opening - called Key Note Address - presented by Hal Cannon (pic below), the founding director of the WFC, in the large auditorium. The NCPG celebrates its 35th birthday this year, and, therefore they had arranged for a surprise performance of the local highschool band.


Afterwards, we attended several poetry panels, taking place in different smaller rooms at the same time. Full schedule, always hard to decide where to go to. We didn't even think about lunch, getting enough "nutrition" for the soul and the brain. Usually a panel consists of three or four poets who take turns in presenting their poems or stories. There are some music presentations and workshops, too, and some individual shows, but mostly it's group performances ("panels") under a certain motto, about 45-90 min. long. The poets were so interesting to listen to and all of them so different - in style (old-style cowboy poetry, poetry-slam-like, poetic, funny, ernest, essayistic,,,) and focus, in age - from about 15 to over 90 -, old-hands and newcomers, cowboys and -girls, black and white, Indian and Mexican,,, Just a couple of pictures of some of the poets we experienced, names from left to right, top to bottom:
1. panel with Shadd Piehl, Sareena Murnane, Maria Lisa Eastman, Colt Blake
2. John Dofflemyer
3. Dick Gibford
4. panel with Mary Flitner, Vess Quinlan, Diane Peavey
5. Amy Steiger
6. Olivia Romo



In the evening we drove the short distance into downtown Elko (pics) to the Western Folklife Center, the core of the NCPG, for two evening shows in their theater, adjacent to the famous G3Bar:

The first show we attended, was terrific and, again, so truly refreshing and diverse: a Californian singer-songwriter-guitarist (Mike Beck), Paul Zarzyski (a not-too-young anymore fantastic poetry-slammer, "juggling with words and steering with his knees" and famous for his cowboy ties), Rob & Halladay Quist (father: traditional, daughter: modern with a superb voice and great musical skills) and - the grand finale!: 3hattrio with Hal Cannon (the charismatic founding director of the Western Folklife Center), who presented "American Desert Music" with two other fantastic musicians - a completely surprising new style of Western music! Keep this group in mind!



The second show was mostly funny, with Sourdough Slim (cowboy comedy/entertainment), Rodney Nelson from North Dakota (a cowboy poet with a great sense of humor) and Henry Real Bird, a Crow Indian, who is an old hand at the NCPG, impressive stage presence, and always rather serious, emotional and accusatory.