Rocky Mountain Front Country, with 2 most important possessions—Smith-Corona typewriter and rodeo riggin’ bag. (Photo by Kent Reeves)

Paul Zarzyski, the recipient of the 2005 Governor’s Arts Award for Literature, has been spurring the words wild across the open range of the page and calling it “Poetry” for 40 years. In the early ‘70s, he heeded Horace Greeley’s “go west young man, go west”advice and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from The University of Montana, where he studied with Richard Hugo. In the same breath, he took up a second lucrative vocation—bareback bronc riding—and rode the amateur, the ProRodeo, and Senior circuits into his early forties.

Paul has been a featured performer at the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the past 26 years, has toured Australia and England, and has recited at the National Book, Folk, and Storytelling Festivals, The ProRodeo Hall of Fame, The Library of Congress, The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also featured in 1999 on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, aired from The Mother Lode Theater in Butte, Montana.

His recent publications include 51: 30 Poems, 20 Lyrics, 1 Self-Interview (Bangtail Press, 2011).

Born and raised in Hurley, Wisconsin, Paul has called Montana “home” since 1973. 

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