Stubborn Praise: Writing as Refuge

James Crews & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will share poetry that meets the moment and discuss using writing of all kinds as a refuge for difficult times. Rosemerry will read from her new book, THE UNFOLDING, and James will be sharing from his new collection, UNLOCKING THE HEART as well as his new anthology, LOVE IS FOR ALL OF US.

James Crews is the editor of several bestselling anthologies, including The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He has been featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Christian Science Monitor, and on NPR’s Morning Edition. James is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry—The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment—and a book of short essays, Kindness Will Save the World: Stories of Compassion and Connection. James lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in the woods of Southern Vermont. Visit jamescrews.net to sign up for free weekly poems & prompts.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer co-hosts Emerging Form (a podcast on creative process), Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writer’s Circle. Her poetry has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, on Carnegie Hall stage, and on river rocks she leaves around town. Her collection Hush won the Halcyon Prize. Naked for Tea was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Rosemerry has been writing and sharing a poem a day since 2006. Find her daily poems on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils or a curated version (with optional prompts) on her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, available on your phone with the Ritual app. She is the author of Exploring Poetry of Presence II: Prompts to deepen your writing practice, and her poetry album, Dark Praise, explores “endarkenment,” available anywhere you listen to music. Her most recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding.

Host or Publisher James Crews