Joel Nelson

Joel Nelson is the quintessential “cowboy poet,” one of the founders of the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas, which recently celebrated its 23rd year. Nelson is a native Texan with an undergraduate degree in Forestry and Range Management from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. After working with the U.S. Forest Service and serving in Viet Nam, he returned to Texas and has made his living with horses and cattle ever since.

Joel’s love of poetry began at his mother’s knee while she read to him from Eugene Field and many other writers’ works. Two high school literature teachers nurtured his interest in the bard’s art. He especially admired Edgar Allan Poe, Robert W. Service, Stephen Vincent Benet, Robert Frost and Rudyard Kipling. Nelson began writing poetry in Viet Nam and become a serious poet and performer in 1985. He alternates his writing style between free-verse and rhymed-metered poetry and describes his writing as “the distilled product of the life he has led.”

Nelson performs every year at the well-known Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. In 1999 he was a Poet-in-Residence in Rothbury, Northumberland, just below the Scottish Border. His sponsor was the Mid-Northumberland Arts Group, in collaboration with the Western Folklife Center in Elko. In 2000 his first CD of poetry, The Breaker in the Pen, was nominated for a Grammy in “The Spoken Word” category alongside such notables as Leonard Cohen, Jewel, and Tom Brokaw. In 2002 he was selected by the Academy of Western Artists as male poet of the year. Most recently Joel was chosen as a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow.

Joel still performs extensively across the country. He and his wife Sylvia work side by side horseback operating/managing the Anchor Ranch near Alpine, where they raise Corriente cattle. Joel will interview fellow writer/rancher/cowman J.P.S. Brown during the Book Festival.