EVANSTON — Wyoming’s Poet Laureate Barbara Smith entertained a crowd of poetry lovers at the Uinta County Museum’s brown bag lunch held on Thursday, June 5, in the Beeman Cashin building. Smith read from her recently published collection of poems, “Putting a Name on It,” all of which celebrate the pioneers, her ancestors and present-day people living in the high plains of the American West.

Smith’s poems are filled with humor, nostalgia and memories. She writes of the experiences of living in a western boomtown, the loss of family members, grief, love and motherhood.

“People always ask me, how did you come to write your poetry? Purely accidental. I moved to Rock Springs in 1969, brand-new right out of college. I thought Western hired me because of my talents but I was really the cheapest they could get,” Smith said and laughed. “When I was a little girl, I used to listen to my grandmother tell stories of her pioneer days and during the boom in Rock Springs I began to see the parallels between the people coming here from all over and living in campers in a parking lot and not happy. They were pioneers in their own way. So, I began to write about what Wyoming is really like for those people not born here.”

The first poem Smith read is titled, “Flyover Country” and speaks to the experience of one in an airplane looking down over what might seem to be nothing but miles and miles of sagebrush, small towns and prairie. One might think the land there is only good for flying over but Smith brings the listener/reader down in the last verses to the experience of walking the pioneer trails to feel a connection with the land and its people.

Smith read several more poems portraying the isolation and hardships of living in a boomtown, the expanse of land and nothingness but in contrast the same poems are also filled with humor and gratitude for the bird songs and flowers and gifts from the land. She also read several of her poems that touch on the simple acts of kindness, of sisterhood and the bonding of women facing hard times, of the death of parents and loved ones, of recreation like fishing and basketball, of all the little things in life that make living worthwhile and lovely. There is something for everyone in Smith’s poetry; her poems touch the heart, the mind and speak of myriad human experiences.

One audience member who had heard Smith read her poems at another event, asked Smith to read a favorite one titled, “Interstate 80.”  This poem speaks to the terror of driving on interstate 80 and all that comes with it — semi-trucks, snow and ice and limited rest stops. The poem is full of humor and as Smith read it the audience was laughing and shaking their heads in agreement.

Smith received loud applause at the conclusion of her readings and many people came forward to purchase a copy of her book and visit with her.

Barbara Smith grew up in North Dakota and Montana among an extended family of Norwegian immigrants and others who made their way across the world, surviving and thriving together. Her family settled in Montana in 1960, where Smith attended Montana State University-Northern. She moved to Rock Springs in 1969 and taught English and writing at Western Wyoming Community College, retiring in 2007. Smith currently teaches memoir writing for the college.

Smith’s poems have been widely published in a variety of anthologies and collections. She has received the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award, the Neltje Blanchan award for Nature Writing, a Wyoming Arts Council Literary Fellowship, a writing residency at Ucross Foundation and, in 2024, Gov. Mark Gordon appointed her as Wyoming Poet Laureate.