How Creative Practice Helps Us Find Praise in Challenging Times
Exploring Rosemerry's new poetry collection, The Unfolding
“Writing poems is again and again and again an invitation to say yes to the world as it is and be curious about it.” —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Preview: Episode 121 with Rosemerry & Christie
What does it mean to be wholeheartedly human? To meet the world nakedly with our fear and our joy, with our crippling sorrow and our ecstatic jubilance? What does it mean to belong? How do we celebrate this journey of our becoming? These questions are at the heart of Rosemerry’s new poetry collection The Unfolding. Christie and Rosemerry discuss not only the contents of the book—paradoxical poems simultaneously somber and playful, brokenhearted and uplifting, even solemn and sexy—they focus on how to create a collection. In Rosemerry’s case, the themes that give this book shape include the eleven powers of the universe (as presented by cosmologist Brian Swimm) and four words Rosemerry made up in an attempt to name more nuanced, complex versions of praise. Plus they discuss why the cover is pink.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her most recent poetry collections are All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) and The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, October 2024). In January, 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief, bereavement, wonder and love through poetry. One-word mantra: Adjust.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
I’ve been thinking so much lately about interconnectivity—how touching one string of our existence forever effects every other string. And this poem, Chaos theory, by Clint Smith is a beautiful example of this. You can listen here on The Slowdown Podcast.
And maybe it’s true that ALL poems speak the language of interconnectivity, but I am now feeling highly attuned to it, as in this poem by one of my heart heroes Dorianne Laux, “Dark Charms,” in which she explores the past and future and this very present.
Christie:
I love this essay, “100 ways to paint (or write) the same thing” by previous Emerging Form guest Jill U. Adams.
I just finished Laura Pritchett’s new novel, Three Keys, about a recently widowed middle-aged woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery, seeking to revisit three places from her past that might help her create a vision for her future. It’s a fast, fun, thought-provoking read with a gorgeous cover!
You Belong
The way grass belongs to the meadow—
how without it, the meadow
would not be meadow—
this is the way you belong in my heart.
Not that I’ve made a space for you here,
more that you’ve helped make my heart what it is,
and without you, my heart is not my heart.
I cradle you here as in a nest of wheat—
soft home, humble home, ever rewoven
to fit the changing shape of you.
It’s not true our hearts are our own:
they’re symbiotic as meadows in spring.
The heart exists for who grows in it.
Who am I? Who am I?
You, my sun, my grass, my wind.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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This week, Rosemerry reads from her new collection, The Unfolding. She talks about the four words for praise she’s made up and then reads two poems from each section to illustrate these moments of complex challenge and gratefulness. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com, or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
Is there a poem or other literary work that inspires the creative work you are doing now? How? Share it.
How do you know when a creative project is finished (or finished enough)?
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