Was privileged to attend F219. A Rattle Reading: Cowboy & Western Poetry.
Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal.
Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.
I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.
I also do have a brief video of David Romtvedt playing the accordion for us. You can hear it in his performance. I don’t have the bandwith at the moment to upload it but if anyone wants to see it, drop me an e-mail at toddbstevens at gmail and it shall be yours.
Thank you to all the participants, and much thanks to Rattle for a panel that was vibrant, varied, and overall fantastic.
(See the following 6 posts for each of the panelist discussions)
As a writer in the “West,” I couldn’t help but wonder if cowboy poetry is featured at other AWP conferences, or just this one in Denver. Was it a full house? Did people in attendance seem to be from a wide background? I’m glad there are cowboy poets and glad that AWP included them
My own cowboy (or, rather, cowgirl) moment is remembering my dad telling my sisters and I to run across the lawn so he could practice his roping skills on us 
He was a team-roper sometimes.
Well, as far as I know, it is a frequent panel, though this was my first AWP I’m fairly sure they are having a similar one in Washington, and last I remember, few cows there! Only donkeys and elephants…
I believe there were two panels actually, this one was the people that contributed to Rattle’s cowboy poetry issue. If you are interested in the genre you might check out http://www.rattle.com/current.htm Rattle does some gret genre issues, and hearing the panel, picked some fantastic poets.
Cheers!
Todd B. Stevens
Excellent post. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Very helpful info specially the last part
I care for such information much. I was looking for this certain info for a long time. Thank you and good luck.