Word Woman, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, returns with Raghu to dive deep into poetry, spirituality, silence, grief, love, trust, and listening.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado with her family, served as the third Colorado Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate (2019). Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion and PBS New Hour, in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, in back alleys and on river rocks. Rosemerry is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process; and teaches and performs poetry for addiction recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats, women’s retreats, teachers and more. For more info, poetry books, and daily poetry offerings please visit, WordWoman.com
Poetry & Spirituality // Thanos Grabs Some Popcorn
Welcoming returning guest, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer—affectionately known by her fitting moniker, ‘Word Woman’—Raghu invites her to share about what drew her to poetry as a spiritual practice both for outward communication and inward self-exploration. From here, Raghu read’s a moving poem that Rosemerry wrote on election night.
“Certainly, the beginning of a poetry practice is self-exploration, the willingness to show up everyday with a blank page and see what’s here, what’s here now.” – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
For Rosemerry & Raghu on poetry as a spiritual path, tune to Ep. 387 of Mindrolling
Poems About Silence // Loss, Grief, & the Heart (15:30)
Raghu reads a poem from Brother David around finding meaning in silence, and the ‘sound of no sound,’ and invites Rosemerry to read her thematically apropos poem, ‘Ode to the Echo.’ Next, Rosemerry vulnerably shares the painful losses she recently experienced in her life, and what that taught her about her own heart.
“Writing poems about silence is such a fun practice because it is necessarily paradoxical. Poems are completely dependent on silence, as song would be too, that it is an interplay with with sound and silence that create each other.” – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Mirabai Starr & Ram Dev explore working with grief, on Ep. 87 of Healing at the Edge
Dwelling in Love // Transformation & Trust // Wide Open Listener (29:30)
Raghu shares a quote from Ram Dass about dwelling in love, which sparks Rosemerry to share a poem which helps us further open to the heart of the matter. This prompts Raghu to share a story of his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji) sending friend and devotee K.C. Tewari into a high state of samadhi (oneness). To close, they discuss the connection between transformation and trust, connect over luminous poems from Stephen Levine, and explore the importance of being a ‘wide open listener.’
“The transformational process was a natural process—it wasn’t something that one tries to do.” – Raghu Markus
“To be a wide open listener, that’s the real invitation of any poem. People say they need to find their voice; actually we need to be wide open listeners. That’s what’s really being asked of us. How widely can you listen? How openly can you listen?” – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Check out the new documentary on K.C. Tewari & his relationship with Maharaj-ji & states of samadhi: Brilliant Disguise
Photo via Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
