Francine Robison.
After a long career of teaching high school English and humanities, Francine Roark Robison took retirement seriously by trading in a high school classroom to go on the road with Cowboy Poetry. However, retirement didn’t last long, and she is now an adjunct teacher at Oklahoma Baptist University. She has taught in Oklahoma as well as summer sessions in Mexico and China.
Francine’s background includes a farmer dad and a schoolmarm mom. She writes from personal experience or from family stories passed down from her parents, with most of the settings in southern Oklahoma and the Arbuckle Mountains. Farm life included a horse, a collie dog, and numerous cats. She didn’t walk five miles in the snow to school, but she did walk down to the cattle guard to catch the school bus, carrying her homework and Roy Rogers lunch box.
She has performed at several gatherings, including the Oklahoma and Texas State Fairs; the Red Steagall Gathering in Ft. Worth; Cowboys, Heroes, and Friends in Branson; the Chisholm Trail Festival in Yukon; the Poetry Society of Tennessee in Memphis; the Farm and Ranch Heritage Gathering in Las Cruces; Festival of the West in Scottsdale; Echoes of the Trail in Ft. Scott; National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City; Western Heritage Classic in Abilene, Texas; Bookfest 2000 in Dyersburg, Tennessee, and many others, as well as a couple of pig roasts.
Francine has been designated Oklahoma’s Cowboy Poet Laureate and is endorsed by West Quest.
She has a book and CDof original poetry.
