Trommer’s “Naked for Tea”: Now Available!

28 Mar Trommer’s “Naked for Tea”: Now Available!

Telluride’s Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer will be reading from her book, “Naked for Tea,” and signing copies at Telluride Arts, April 3, 6 p.m. as part of a special event co-sponsored by Telluride Arts, Between the Covers, Talking Gourds Poetry Club, Telluride Institute and the Wilkinson Public Library. The event is free and includes tea, of course, and refreshments. Also perhaps a surprise musical interlude. (A second reading is also scheduled, this one for Cimarron Books in Ridgway on May 21, 6:30 p.m.)

“Naked for Tea is available at Between the Covers or at Trommer’s website for $19.95.

Please scroll down and listen to a podcast featuring Rosemerry Trommer.

Word Woman Rosemerry Trommer, courtesy reallife photographs.

Rosemerry Trommer.

Her first name all by its lonesome has morphed into an adjective in the Telluride community signifying beauty, inside and out.

Rosemerry’s name twins with extraordinary gifts too, when she sings out loud (with Heartbeat) – or when she sings so melodically through her poetry.

Book after book of poem after poem demonstrates a wild and wide-ranging intelligence.

Rosemerry’s poetry, like her peripatetic mind, resonates with a sense of relentless inquiry that hums just below the surface of every single spare but pithy line.

Her curiosity kills – figuratively of course. Meaning Rosemerry nails the motion behind the emotion every single time.

That’s right.

Every single time.

“That’s Right.”

The name of a poem whose opening line became the title of her latest work, “Naked for Tea, a finalist for the Abie Muse Book Award, now available in pre-release.

That’s Right

I’ve shown up naked
 to tea.
I know it’s not 
the proper thing to do.
In fact, I am a bit surprised
myself to be wearing
nothing more than this pink scarf.
I was wearing more
 when I left the house.
At least it is soft, the scarf,
and at least it is warm,
the tea.You don’t have
to pretend you don’t notice
and I’ll not pretend
 either. No, let’s go on.
That’s right,
it’s a bit uncomfortable
I suppose, as all things are
at first. We’ll go on.
Maybe, by the time we pass the cream
you’ll have slipped out of
your own button up shirt,
your judgment, your embarrassment,
your belt.
Maybe by the time
we get to the bottom
of our cups we’ll wonder
why we would ever spend
an afternoon together
any other way.

“‘That’s Right’ is a playful daydream exploring the art of vulnerability,” Trommer says.

Vulnerability, she says, is one of the major themes in the book, as are failure, parenting, nature, gardening, literature, donkeys and cauliflower.

“Reading Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is to float upon a never-ending waterfall of wonder,” says best-selling author and spiritual leader Wayne Muller in the foreword to ‘Naked for Tea,’ adding: “Pay attention. The elegance of her simplicity will blind you to her mastery. Then, she will let you fall, head over heels, in Love. With everything. You have been warned.”

This is Trommer’s eleventh collection of poems, all written since she first moved to the Telluride region in 1994.

Trommer served as San Miguel County’s first Poet Laureate, was selected as the third Colorado Western Slope Poet Laureate, and is poetry editor for the Gourmet magazine’s Edible Southwest.

She teaches poetry for 12-step recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats and more.

The publisher, Alex Pepple, says of “Naked for Tea”: “Trommer’s poems are at times humorously surreal, at times touchingly real, as they explore the ways in which our own brokenness can open us to new possibilities in a beautifully imperfect world.”

And poet Teddy Macker writes on the back cover:“Heart-thawingly honest, deliriously sexy, and compassionate down to the fingertips. A book of kindness and bewilderment and delight from one of our best poets.”

Asked in a New York Times interview if he read poetry author Ian McEwan (“Atonement,” “Sweet Tooth”) replied he has many shelves of poetry at home, adding: “Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist…”

Having read “Naked at Tea,” promise, it is a nuclear bomb of a collection.

You will be annihilated.

And all the happier for it.

https://soundcloud.com/telluride-inside/word-woman-rosemerry-trommer

More about Rosemerry:

Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “never fails to bring sensual joy and rich music,” says
Utah’s poet laureate emeritus David Lee. She was Colorado’s Western Slope Poet
Laureate (2015-17) and served two terms as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate
(2006-2010). She has authored and edited 13 books, including:

• “Naked for Tea”
• “Even Now: Poems & Drawings”
• “Holding Three Things at Once,” finalist for the Colorado Book Award

Trommer is widely anthologized, including “An Elevated View: Colorado Writers on Writing, Poems of Awakening, and Poetry of Presence.” Her work has appeared on “A Prairie Home Companion,” in O Magazine, on back alley fences, on rocks she leaves around town, and in dozens of literary journals including Rattle, Clover and Spectrum.

Her poetry was chosen for the 2016 Shared Visions project, in which composer Paul Fowler arranged “Yet Another Layer” for the Ars Nova Singers.

Trommer has taught and performed poetry for Think 360, Craig Hospital, Hospice, 12-Step programs, meditation retreats, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Weehawken Arts, Camp Coca Cola, SpiritFest, Business & Professional Women, Wellspring of Imagination, and for
hundreds of libraries, colleges, festivals, schools and groups.

She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years and now co-hosts the Talking Gourds Poetry Club. She has thrice won Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, the Fischer Prize, twice won the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest, won the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, was a finalist for Dogwood’s Poetry Prize, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize.

Trommer also curates “Heard of Poets,” an interactive poetry map of Western Colorado poets and speaks about poetry and creativity for TEDx.

Since 1999, she has performed with Telluride’s seven woman a cappella group, Heartbeat, and since 2006, she’s written a poem a day.

Her MA is in English Language & Linguistics.

Visit Rosemerry Trommer at www.wordwoman.com
970-729-1838 * rosemerry@wordwoman.com * PO 86, Placerville, CO 81430