Well-Versed Wranglers

A steely cowboy named Skeeter who rides the range with a beeper; Charlie, a tough-as-nails cowhand who turns out to be oddly feminine; Miss Sullivan, a beloved frontier school teacher.

They’re the stuff of poetry--as you can hear Sunday at the Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park when the Conejo Valley Poetry Society offers what it calls “poetry tours.”

This is a new twist on poetry readings. Seven poets will be stationed throughout the museum grounds, and you can listen to the works of each as you stroll from one setting to the next. The tours run from 1 to 4 p.m. and last 30 to 40 minutes.

Given the museum’s link to the Conejo Valley’s past, much of the poetry will have a historical bent. The poets, dressed in period outfits, will be located at spots such as the museum’s carriage house, schoolhouse and pioneer house, where they’ll perform verse.

Among the poets will be John Gorham, who directs the Conejo Valley Poetry Society. Wearing rattlesnake-skin boots, he’ll likely read his poem, “Charlie Parkhurst,” about a cowboy who spat and cursed with the best of them--and turned out to be a girl:

Charlie used to hitch the team

as fast as lightning struck

loading coaches quick and sure

he earned the greenhorn’s trust.

The popularity of poetry has been on the rise the last three or four years, according to Gorham, who ran the Poetry Shop in Thousand Oaks, which closed a year ago.

“The unique thing about poetry these days is that it’s more accessible to the average person,” he said. “It’s more down to earth. It’s a lot easier to understand.”

Poetry readings used to attract more of a highbrow crowd, he said. “Now we see professionals, seniors, housewives, painters. You can’t pigeonhole them.”

Gorham got hooked on poetry after living through a series of tragedies, including a traffic accident that left him bedridden. He adopted poetry as therapy.

Likewise, Eunice Udelf was laid up with an injured foot when she started writing poetry about two years ago. The former schoolteacher wrote about her injury, and hasn’t stopped writing.

Her poetry is a mixed bag, but Sunday one of her works will likely be a fictionalized account of a frontier teacher, Miss Sullivan, whose gentle but humorous ways were remembered after her death.

“It has a little edge of ghostliness to it,” said Udelf.

Cowboy poet Gary Robertson will also be among the guest poets. He not only writes about cowboys but he is one. He manages a cattle ranch, Rancho de los Fresnos in Hidden Valley, south of Thousand Oaks.

“I chase cows,” he said. “In this day and age, most cowboys cowboy out of a pickup. I make up excuses to do some of it on horseback.”

Robertson, who has been writing poetry since 1991, was picked Cowboy Poet of the Year last year by the Horse Gazette. He appears at cowboy shows, reading his poetry.

For Sunday’s tour, he might read “Skeeter’s Wreck,” about a cowboy bounced off a colt when the animal was spooked by his beeper:

When that pager started beepin’

that colt broke plum in two

‘n the words that come from Skeeter

like to turn the air dark blue.

Cowboy poetry is enjoying a burst of popularity now, he said. “It’s absolutely honest poetry.” He likes nothing better than to face a dubious crowd that is ho-hum on the subject.

“My favorite audience is one that’s been dragged kicking and screaming to hear poetry,” he said. They’re the ones thinking, “How many things can rhyme with cow?”

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BE THERE

Poetry tours will be from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday (the last tour starts at 3:30 p.m.) at Stagecoach Inn Museum, 51 S. Ventu Park Road, Newbury Park. $3 for adults; $2 for seniors, $1 for children. (805) 498-9441.