Yvonne Hollenbeck is a South Dakota cattleman’s wife who writes poetry about her life on a beautiful, remote ranch where she helps with everyday duties–putting up hay, feeding a crew, doing bookwork, or working cattle. Her writing, often humorous, takes a serious side when she reflects upon the h...

Waddie Mitchell was immersed in the cowboy way of entertaining as a boy on the Nevada ranches where his father worked. The art of spinning tales in rhyme and meter about a rich lifestyle of pushing cows and living off the land came to be called cowboy poetry. Waddie recites the older classics as ...

Baxter Black is synonymous with contemporary cowboy poetry in the mainstream consciousness, reaching an audience larger than most cowboy poets with his newspaper column, weekly radio commentaries, and repeat appearances on the Tonight Show. And, for those “in the know,” he remains hands-down one ...

The audiences at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering love to laugh and our poets never disappoint. From 100-year-old classics to others fresh off the iPad, we've assembled some the finest belly busters in our archives.

Photo by Jessica Brandi Lifland.

Travel back to the early days of the Gathering with this collection of gems from our archives.

Whether you're new to cowboy poetry or a lifelong fan, these poems by the likes of Badger Clark, Frank Desprez, S. Omar Barker, Curley Fletcher, Gail Gardner, and Bruce Kiskaddon, are the bedrock of the cowboy poetry tradition. Every week, we search our archive for beautiful recitations of these ...

Written during the poetry renaissance ignited by the first Gathering, these are the new classics.

At the core of our Moving Rural Verse series are poems that powerfully communicate contemporary rural issues, ideas and insight—and, in particular, the subject of water in the West. We believe that the artful fusion of poetry and video will nurture a deeper understanding of rural America and kind...