THE image of the cowboy, a rugged individual on a horse battling the harsh American frontier, seems incompatible with the more refined sensibilities of poetry. It is difficult to imagine a modern-day Wordsworth waxing lyrical about sitting round the ranch fire with a bowl of beans.
But for three days each winter, Elko, a small mining town in the middle of the Nevada desert, is invaded by almost 10,000 wild westerners for a three-day jamboree of poetry, music and story telling in the United States' biggest celebration of the cowboy tradition.
And cowgirls too.
She buttons her shirt and slides on her boots, fastens her chaps and ties her wildrag of crimson, and then to add some finishing touches, she brushes her hair and puts on her Stetson . . .
Thus wrote Monique Lidell of Big Bend, Texas, in her poem Identity, performed at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, now in its ninth year.
It is a little known fact, but the unlikely pairing of cowboys and couplets is based on a long recitative tradition which is increasingly being recognised as an indigenous American folk art.