Proclaiming Space

WRANGLER AWARD - 2012 OUTSTANDING POETRY BOOK from the NATIONAL COWBOY and WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM. Poetic perspectives derived from a life of raising cattle on the same landscape as generations of family before him, John Dofflemyer offers a personal glimpse of his relationship with the natural world, both wild and domestic; of life, death and politics from the distance of Dry Creek, a tributary of the Kaweah River in the southern Sierra Nevada range of California. Often blending native and cattle cultures with the pantheistic, his lyric line is visual and in-the-moment celebrations of the wild, of the realities of the land, of family and community, and ultimately humanity. Dedicated to a sustainable living of raising livestock on native grass, these are ‘hands-on’ poems to enrich life. Dofflemyer has read his work at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada since its beginning, authored twelve collections of poetry including ‘Poems from Dry Creek’, published by Starhaven, that received the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City for the ‘2008 Outstanding Poetry Book’.