Biography
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Placerville, Colorado, on the banks of the wild and undammed San Miguel River. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate (2007-2011) and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017).
Devoted to helping others explore their creative potential, Rosemerry is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process (with Christie Aschwanden), co-director of Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club (with Art Goodtimes) and co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (with Sherry Richert Belul). She also directed the Telluride Writers Guild for ten years.
She has 11 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine and on A Prairie Home Companion, on fences in back alleys and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around town.Her poems have been used for choral works by composers Paul Fowler and Jeffrey Nytch and performed by the Ars Nova Singers. Her most recent collection, Naked for Tea, was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Other books include Even Now, The Miracle Already Happening, The Less I Hold and If You Listen, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She’s won the Fischer Prize, Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge (thrice), the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest (twice), The Blackberry Peach Performance Prize, has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Sundress Best of the Net Prize.
She teaches and performs poetry for 12-step recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, teachers and more. Past clients include Camp Coca Cola, Craig Hospital, Business & Professional Women, Deepak Chopra, Think 360, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Desert Dharma, Wilkinson Public Library, Telluride Literary Burlesque and Mesa State University.
She believes in the power of practice and has been writing a poem a day since 2006. Her daily poems can be found at https://ahundredfallingveils.com/. Favorite themes in her poems include parenting, gardening, the natural world, love, science, thriving/failure and daily life. Her most recent book, Naked for Tea, was a finalist for the Able Muse Poetry Award.
Since 1994, she’s been singing with Telluride’s 8-member female acapella group Heartbeat, performing jazz, folk, bluegrass and pop songs around the Four Corners region. She also sings nightly while making dinner.
She earned her MA in English Language & Linguistics at UW-Madison. One-word mantra: Adjust. Three-word mantra: I’m still learning. www.wordwoman.com
