Huge Opportunity!!!

I am so excited for my big opportunity of being the photographer for the Cowboy Poets of Utah tomorrow. What a great opportunity this will be for me. I am so excited to meet some wonderful and very talented people at this. For anyone who is interested there will be a program Saturday January 8th 6pm at the Salem Hills High School put on by The Cowboy Poets, should be a great night if entertainment. Here is the add that was published in the Daily Herald about it today.

Cowboy poetry symposium sure to entertain any buckaroo

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Matt Reichman - Daily Herald | Posted: Friday, January 8, 2010 12:15 am | No Comments Posted

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Saddle up, muchachos, it's time for the rip-snortin'est poetry jam this side of the Rio Grande.

The Cowboy Poets of Utah are gathering for the inaugural CPU Symposium Saturday in Salem. The rough 'n' tumble bards will spend the afternoon planning for the coming year, inducting new leadership, workshopping, and, of course, waxing poetic about cattle drives, lariats and rawhide.

CPU is an association of artisans -- poets, storytellers and musicians -- who live and breathe western motif.

"This organization is for Utah cowboy poets, cowboy poets who like Utah, cowboys who like poets, Utahns who like cowboys, and cowboys who like Utah," the CPU homepage says. Members and non-members alike are invited to attend.

With an active roster that stretches from California to Iowa, CPU is essentially a network for recreational/semi-professional entertainers, some of whom travel the country performing. Most have some kind of ranching background.

"It's western, not country-western," cattle/sheepherder-by-day, CPU-board-chairman-by-night Pail Bliss said of the genre. "It's more or less handed-down type stuff, like oral tradition. It has to tell a story." (Think, "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash, not "A Midsummer Night's Dream.")

"Me and my wife tailed 100 head of horses to Kanab, and I wrote about it and got it on a CD called 'Cowboy Poetry in Motion,' " Bliss said. "We write about ranch work, roping, doctoring and castrating calves ... about a cow chasing them through the pasture, or about grandpa's hat, or milking the cow, or riding through the mountains with grandpa and son."

During the symposium, sixteen CPU acts will be recording an album, to be released during Cowboy Week in March. A professional photographer and editor will also be on hand to help budding performers perfect their portfolios to obtain future gigs.

Outgoing CPU president C.R. Wood is excited to see so many priceless stories handed down and recorded. It was during a trip to Elko, Nev., in 1993 that he realized that his personal history, including the memories of his great horseman father, would be lost unless someone put them on paper.

"In 15 years I've probably written 90 pieces, most of them really bad," he said. "The trick is to write a lot of stuff that is really bad; it's like the monkeys at the typewriters: sooner or later every doughhead is going to write a good one."

CPU has more than 150 members on the books, and around 50 year-to-year active participants, Wood said. Poet Rod Miller, a Goshen native, will provide a workshop on writing, while Brian Arnold, a member of the cowboy band "Saddle Strings," will teach a class on stage etiquette.

If you go:

Cowboy Poets of Utah Symposium

Where: Salem Hills High School, 150 N. Sky Hawk Blvd., Salem

Cost: Free for CPU members, $5 general admission

Schedule of events:

Board of directors meeting at noon

Executive board meeting at noon

Board of directors & executive board meeting at 1:30 p.m.

Regional reps meeting at 3 p.m.

General membership meeting at 4 p.m.

Lecture by Rod Miller at 5 p.m.

Passing of the gavels at 6 p.m., followed by poet and musician performances

Matt Reichman can be reached at (801) 344-2907 or mreichman@heraldextra.com.