34th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Yvonne Hollenbeck is a South Dakota cattle rancher's wife; she participates in every aspect of the operation from feeding a crew to helping put up a hay crop, bookkeeping, sorting cattle and marketing livestock. She writes poetry about her life, sometimes humorous and sometimes... Read More →

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... Read More →

Rodney Nelson and his wife Teri live at Sims, North Dakota, population 2, a suburb of Almont. Despite advancing age and declining health, Rodney continues to make his living rodeoing, which has caused him to enjoy a low standard of living. His rodeo career has been in a steady... Read More →

Jake Riley grew up, for the most part, in the Upper Arkansas Valley of the Colorado mountains and graduated from high school in Buena Vista. He began roping and rodeoing as a kid, and was introduced to cowboy poetry as a young teenager. Jake has always loved rhyming, publishing... Read More →