Off the train in Elko, Nevada we meet cowboy poet Henry Real Bird, former Montana Poet Laureate, teacher and bronc rider from the banks of the Little Bighorn.
Cowboy poetry is often very structured. The good poets play with that structure and surprise you with twists or a pauses, jokes, word play. Henry’s poems do somethin’ else entirely. They feel like suddenly you’re walking down a path and you don’t know where it’s goin’, or if it’s goin’ anywhere, but it usually does and then you’re somewhere a little different and he says thanks and puts his hat back on and sits down in a chair at the back the stage.
Portrait at the Gathering by Kevin Martini-Fuller
“Where am I from? Yeah, I'm from Garryowen, Montana, and that's the Crow Indian Reservation. And that's on the Little Bighorn. And I grew up there pretty much speaking Crow Indian until I was maybe five, six years old. …I grew up, strong, and, now, now that I'm writing more about my life, I see how lucky I am. I was a strong person. I rode bucking horses and then taught and put together a ranch and stuff like that against the odds. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What else?’’
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering started in 1985, becoming an annual roundup of cowboys, ranchers, poets, artists and the many combinations therein, hailing from all parts the American west and sometimes beyond. Hosted by the Western Folklife Center, the gathering is always held in January/February when folks’ ranches are dormant. Elko’s oft-snowy streets are then marked by the soles of boots, mostly of the cowboy variety, some rounded, some pointed, and most of them pointing into the Western Folklife Center’s Pioneer Saloon, or up the front steps of the Elko Convention Center.
Featuring:
Henry Real Bird | Library of Congress Recording
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering | Western Folklife Center
Mentioned in the interview: Andy Hedges’ podcast interview with Henry on Cowboy Crossroads. This is a great podcast if you’d like to dig deeper into cowboy poetry.
All year, the words come up from the land itself
and the poets bring them to town.
we all feast
and we leave warm and full, or cold and spent or some combination and the snow falls starting at dusk and then on through the night
Then the wheels rumble beneath us, “tomorrow is only a horizon
It’s the line wavering under my feet” -[M Jiang]
and behind, Elko as a tiny speck,
buzzes away
over the horizon.
Tags, Topics and Mentions: Henry Real Bird, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Western Folklife Center, Elko Nevada, Garryowen Montana, Crow Indian Reservation, Little Bighorn, Cowboy Poetry, lullabies, poetry, western poetry, Thought by henry real bird, cowboy crossroads podcast, the wind podcast, rural art, rural poetry, american west