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| 11/5/2009 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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Courtesy Photo
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, pictured with her daughter Vivian in their pear orchard, will read poetry and give a workshop in both Cortez and Mancos this weekend. “My most frequent subjects would include the landscape and now, in the last five years, parenting,” she said. |
| | Poetry | Poetry reading and workshop. "Writing the Path: A Workshop Where Nature Meets Human Nature"
• Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
• Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 6, 7 & 8
• Cortez Public Library, Mancos Public Library
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Beauty of Colorado inspires poet
Local libraries host workshops, readings this weekend
Hope Nealson
Journal Staff Writer
For poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, it's all about the relationships between the landscapes - the exterior and inner emotional ones.
"The thing about Colorado is, one of the deepest relationships we have is with the land - where we resonate, where we feel really alive, where we can explore - and Colorado has always been that for me."
It's finding that relationship that Trommer is helping other people to do in her poetry workshops. Trommer will present her workshop "Where Nature Meets Human Nature" at the Cortez Public Library Saturday, Nov. 7, at 10 a.m. and at the Mancos Public Library, Sunday, Nov. 8 at 6:45 p.m.
"We have so much to learn from our environment and so many places within us to explore - and these journeys are not very different," she said. "The workshops will be focused on our relationship with the natural world and writing about that - finding the place where the inner emotional landscape speaks to and meets the exterior landscapes and looking for the way that these two landscapes engage with each other."
Trommer will also be on hand at the Cortez Public Library for a reading, Friday, Nov. 6, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and again at the Mancos Public Library, beginning at 6 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 7.
Trommer's latest of 10 books she has authored or edited, "Intimate Landscape: The Four Corners Region in Poetry & Photography," is a collaboration with Durango photographer, Claude Steelman that has been almost five years in the making.
The collection of poems written by Trommer was released last month and is a "visual and sonic journey to mountains and deserts, ice falls and aspen forests, resonant canyons and silent fields" according to Trommer's Web site, www.wordwoman.com.
Besides Trommer's award winning poetry - she was appointed Poet Laureate of San Miguel County three years ago - Trommer has taught both on and off the road at Mesa State College and with Young Audiences, a nonprofit organization which provides arts education to children - also called "Think 360."
"I think that so many people are looking for a way to make meaning," she said. "People are increasingly hungry for that. Capitalism doesn't feed us spiritually and that's one thing that writing and poetry have to offer people."
It helps us, if not find the answers, it allows us to ask the questions and it allows us to be a part of the mystery - why we're here."
Trommer said her practice of writing one poem a day has helped her develop as a poet by taking the pressure off.
"I think that poem-a-day practice has really given me sanity for one," she said. "It's my little piece that is mine, and beyond that it's helped me develop a pleasurable relationship with poetry and writing. It allows me to not have to write something brilliant and perfect every time I sit down. A lot of people won't write anything for fear of writing something bad."
Trommer said as people move through different phases of their lives, they will find they resonate differently with places.
"Like the Mud hills out of Montrose and Delta Adobes," she said. "I recall initially not thinking they were beautiful at all, but, wow, do I like the big expanse of nothing now."
Trommer said she doesn't favor any one part of Colorado, although she is more of a rural person.
"My muse pretty much shuts up in the city, but there's not a single place we can go that we can't be inspired. It's not just the beautiful places but the burned out places," she said.
Trommer's current landscape has definitely changed from the above-treeline variety of her earlier years to organic orchards on a 75-acre farm near Placerville, called New Leaf Fruit.
"I grew over a 100 pumpkins and winter squash, and I can't tell you how many hundreds of carrots," she said. "It's a great place to be able to sustain yourself."
Now in their third year, Trommer and her husband sell their organic produce to Roger's Mesa Fruit, a packing shed that sells their fruit to bigger markets like City Market, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods Market.
"I have a lot of orchard poems now," she laughed. "The book that came out just before "Intimate Landscapes" - "Holding Three Things at Once" - has a lot more exploration of the orchards and a lot more exploration of parenting. It's not directly landscaped based poetry."
Trommer said she will read from both those books at her readings, adding her latest poetry seems to be moving towards the mystical.
"Increasingly I've been influenced by a lot of the mystic poets like Rumi, Hafez, Rabia and St. Teresa," she said. "So, I've been interested in the relationship between matter and spirit - not just 'what's here' but 'why are we here.'"
Trommer added her "driving word" of late is "allowing."
"Poetry has been the most important tool for me to embrace what is," she said. "And what's brilliant about sharing poetry is it becomes a communal act of camaraderie."
For more information, call the Cortez Public Library at 564-4078 or the Mancos Public Library at 533-7600.
Reach Hope Nealson at hopen@cortezjournal.com
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