Essential Vulnerability: A Poetry Thoughtshop Celebrating our Humanness
June 26, 2025 6-7 p.m. MST
Zoom, sliding scale
“Nothing in Nature ‘becomes itself’ without being vulnerable. The mightiest tree’s growth requires soft and supple shoots, just as the hardest-shelled crustacean must first molt and become soft.”
—Gabor Maté in “The Myth of Normal.”
Our emotional vulnerability allows us to grow, to connect, to change. And it can be terrifying. In this one-hour webinar-style thoughtshop, join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer as she reads and talks about poems that honor and explore softness, insecurity and openness. She will then offer invitations for you to do your own writing later. There will be time for questions and responses. After the event, all who register will receive a link to the recording, links to the poems she reads, plus the writing invitations. Sliding scale. Register here. For help registering, please email Sarah Dedmon, sarahcraigheaddedmon@gmail.com.
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The Big Reframe: Poetry as a Tool for Re-Seeing the World
Tuesdays, July 22-August 12 5-7 mountain time
hosted by Kripalu
zoom, recorded, sliding scale
Your perspective matters. How you see the world—the way you meet even the smallest moment—affects everyone and everything in the world around you. The stories you tell yourself and others create the big conversation—what are we doing here? What does it mean to be alive? Practically speaking, how do we change our perspective? How might our stories limit us? How do we re-see what we’ve seen again and again? The poets have something to teach us about perspective—how to find meaning in the moment; how to unlearn what we think we know; how to be infinitely curious; and how to enter into deeper conversations with ourselves, each other, the moment, and the world.
When we meet the moment with a pen in our hands, we change our relationship to the world. We become narrators of our own lives—able to meet the story of the moment in fresh ways. In this four-week playshop (way more fun than a workshop!), we will read and discuss poems that help us re-see the world, and we’ll write and (if you wish) share our own poems, engaging in the powerful practice of showing up, leaning in to the realm of pure potential, and joining our small voices in the big conversation. What will happen when you show up? For more information and to register, visit here.
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The Mystery of Grief: Writing into the Loss
Zoom, hosted by Evermore
Wednesday, July 2, 5-7 p.m. M.T.
When we lose loved ones, writing can be a powerful tool for helping us remember them, helping us re-encounter the world without them, and helping us re-know ourselves as the loss transforms us. In this two-hour online program, Evermore Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will offer a few suggestions for writing. Together, we will read poems about grief and discuss them. We will have chances to do our own writing, there will be optional time for sharing what we wrote, and we will have time to reflect on the effect writing has on us.
The poems we read and write won’t be able to hold all the feelings, but they will offer us a way to touch our grief, to connect with the lives and deaths of our loved ones, to give voice to our anguish, to find compassion for each other, to fall in love with the world that is left, to express our heartache, and to explore the landscape of our hearts. Sliding Scale.
If you need an angel ticket or have any questions, please contact jena@evermore.org. Please note that your confirmation email with your link for the workshop will come from Zoom. To register, visit here.
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Stubborn Praise: The Sacred Pause
July 17, 5:30-7 p.m. mountain time
Zoom, recorded, $19
Join poets and friends Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and James Crews for another intimate conversation about poetry, life, creative process, showing up in difficult times and opening to the world as it is. Tonight’s theme is “The Sacred Pause.” Rosemerry will read new work and from her new book, THE UNFOLDING, and James will be sharing poems from his new collection, UNLOCKING THE HEART as well as his forthcoming book, TURNING TOWARD GRIEF.
To register, visit here.
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