The Return of Old Joe.

“Old Joe” is a rendering of a buffalo skull that has been the logo for Westerners International since the 1940s. A three-dimensional version of the skull graces the handsome award plaques handed out every year by the organization.

Among those awards is the Fred Olds Poetry Award. I am pleased to say that yours truly is the recipient of the 2025 version of that award for rodeo poems that appear in my collection Buckoffs and Broken Barriers. Old Joe will find a place on my wall next to earlier versions of the award from 2011 for Things a Cowboy Sees and Other Poems, and from 2014 for Goodnight Goes Riding and Other Poems.

Westerners International is an organization of historians and history buffs that “celebrates fun, scholarship, and heritage in the American West.” At present, there are more than 3,000 members organized into 60 “corrals” or “posses” in the United States, as well as 20 corrals abroad, including England, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Japan, Sweden, and Finland.

This has been a noteworthy year for my attempts at writing, with Spur Award Finalists for poetry and short fiction from Western Writers of America, the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best Western Novel for Where the Long Trail Ends, and my inclusion in the OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters “Masters Series” for poetry with the release of the chapbook, Saddle Work: The Art & Craft of Cowboy Poetry.

And so it goes