Opening to Joy in Difficult Times: A Heart-Forward Evening of Poetry & Music with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer & Ken Medema
In times of upheaval and instability, is joy even possible? Join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and pianist/storyteller/singer/improvisational virtuoso Ken Medema as the friends explore how we might open ourselves to personal and communal joy. The 90-minute program includes poetry, song, a conversation with the audience, and a chance to meet this same world, exactly as it is, in a new way.
COST: Sliding Scale – Pay what you can: $45, $30, $15
This event will be recorded. Those registered will get a link to the recording within 48 hours of the event. Not available to join live? You can still enjoy the event if registered.
REGISTRATION & DETAILS (click here)
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS:
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. 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, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. In 2024, she became poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and love through poetry. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day, sharing them on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. One-word mantra: Adjust.
Ken Medema has been writing and performing his own songs since 1970 when he began composing original material for his work as a music therapist in a psychiatric hospital. He is now involved in a full-time performance schedule that has taken him all over North America, Australia, Africa and Europe, singing in every venue imaginable for 50 – 50,000 people, from churches to conventions to colleges to corporations. Using his gift of improvisation, Ken hears with his heart, stories from people or themes from events or speeches and sings the stories back to audiences of all ages. His music is earthy and direct, full of stories and humor. It uses musical styles from classical to rock, from ballad to blues, from sacred to profane, always searching for ways people can connect to each other, enabling them to sense the sacred within themselves and in surprising places. Blind from birth, Ken understands the importance of inclusivity and sensitively seeks to challenge his listeners to dream and work for a world of justice and peace. At home in San Francisco with his wife Jane, they spend their time reading books, watching movies (yes, Ken is an avid movie goer) and delighting in their grandchildren.