Cowboy Poetry

Cowboy poetry is a form of American folk verse composed and recited by working cowboys and ranch hands, written in rhymed, metred stanzas about horses, cattle work, weather, humour and a vanishing way of life. Descended from the oral entertainment of nineteenth-century trail drives and bunkhouses, it mixes older British and Irish ballad habits with workplace slang and direct address. Poems are performed from memory at gatherings and on recordings, in a storyteller's cadence rather than sung. The genre is both a literary tradition, with classic texts by poets such as *Bruce Kiskaddon*, and a living occupational folklore.