Award-winning poetry inspired by stint in Wyoming

Poet William Notter’s “Holding Everything Down” (Southern Illinois University Press) was just awarded the High Plains Book Award in the poetry category. Notter grew up on the plains of northeastern Colorado, and currently lives in Richmond, Virginia. He spent three summers as an interpretive guide in Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest, which inspired his poem “Morning News in the Big Horn Mountains.” Here’s an excerpt:

Morning News in the Big Horn Mountains

The latest movie star is drunk just out of rehab,
two or three cities had extraordinary killings,
and expensive homes are sliding off the hills
or burning again. There’s an energy crisis on,
and peace in the Middle East is close as ever.
In Wyoming, just below timberline,
meteors and lightning storms
keep us entertained at night. Last week,
a squirrel wrecked the mountain bluebirds’ nest.
I swatted handfuls of moths in the cabin
and set them on a stump each day,
but the birds would not come back to feed.

Buy the book and read the rest.

(Info gleaned from New West Online)