Bringing Cowboy Poetry to a Younger Audience

Bringing Cowboy Poetry to a Younger Audience

Bringing Cowboy Poetry to a Younger Audience. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Jessica Hedges fell in love with cowboy poetry at a young age and as a young bride and now mother she is doing her part to keep it alive for the next generation.

HEDGES: I grew up about an hour outside Elko, NV which is where the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is and it was kind of family tradition to go there every year. After kind of watching a little bit I said: “I was on a ranch. I’ve got stories. I can do that.” And so I started writing.

What was once pretty much an old-timers game has now grown to include many women poets. Hedges talks about why she likes it.

HEDGES: You know it’s the people and the traveling and you know as a society I think we’ve lost that ability to really sit down and share stories. Everybody is so into their own thing and so I love the fact that it really asks people to interact with one another, it celebrates history. You know and that ability to kind of be able to say look, people aren’t just riding around on these fancy bridal horses for no reason, this is how our nation gets their beef.

But what brings a young, 20-something into this arena.

HEDGES: Yeah it is a little unusual but I love - I love getting to hear the stories. You know I have really had an opportunity to talk with some of the old timers and find out what buckarooing really was, hearing about the old Miller and Lux outfits and what a long day looked like and that’s really morphed over time so it’s kind of cool to hear how it used to be and something we still strive to keep around.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. 

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