Poetry Cowboy Style in Lewistown

It was the 26th annual Montana Cowboy Poetry Gathering & Western Music Rendezvous this weekend in Lewistown, Montana and I was lucky to be there.

Most of the hourly poetry and music sessions were held downtown at the Yogo Inn. The art and gear show surrounded the pool at the Yogo and I couldn’t resist wandering through it. I go to quite a few art and craft shows but this one had some very unique vendors, ones you don’t see at a lot of the shows. Cowboys, Montana and the West were the prominent themes.

We bought tickets for the evening performance which was about 10 performers (poets and musicians) and they were followed by the headlining group Riders In The Sky.

The Fergus Center for the Performing Arts in the high school was the location for the evening performance. I took this quick snapshot just walking from the car to the highschool – the scenery was beautiful. The Big Snowy Mountains are in the background.

I’m not sure how the performers were selected for the evening show but they were all great. Lewistown’s local radio station held a Young Cowboy Poet Search and the winner of that, a young Hutterite girl, read her poem. Two young girls sang and the crowd loved them too. Dave Stamey from California, Mike Logan from Helena, Miriam Dreher from Alberta, and more performed.

Lloyd McKenna, local Lewistown poet, also performed and he recited (from memory) a fairly long poem he had written about a gambler. I caught a quick photo of him in the lobby after his performance.

There was a sell-out crowd for this performance and you just had to glance around the room to see how much people were enjoying it.

It was a good time!