Dick Gibford to Read at Santa Barbara’s Blue Agave

Out past the hills north of Santa Barbara lie some of the quietest expanses of land in the county. It’s there that cowboy poet Dick Gibford makes his home. He lives alone, except for the company of his horses, his cat, his cows, and the great silence that pervades the valley where he lives and works. On second thought, maybe Gibford’s not so alone after all. It’s out there, far from the city, where he hears the voice of the muse that inspires his poetry.

Gibford wears a blue bandanna around his neck, and a cowboy hat rests on his head. This morning, we sit in his outdoor living room, a menagerie of mismatched pieces of this and that gathered from who knows where, like the metal barrel that serves as our coffee table. A dozen brown-black cows and calves wander up a nearby trail. Beyond them the land rolls to the horizon, quiet and unspoiled.

In 1983, Gibford proposed the idea for a national gathering of cowboy poets. The first National Cowboy Poetry Gathering was held in 1985, in Elko, Nevada, where it’s been held annually ever since. Attendance at the gathering reached almost 10,000 in 1990.