Rhythm, Words, & Wonder

Featured Writers: Rosemerry Wahtola-Tommer, Craig Childs, David Mason

Invocations by: Wendy Videlock, Art Goodtimes

Percussion by: David Alderdice

Kirtan Ceremony with: The Daughter of Earth

Sonnet Seductions with: David J. Rothman

Workshops: Living the Ridiculously Creative and Curious Life with Wendy Videlock and

Wide-Open Listening: Where Nature Meets Human Nature with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Join us for a good old fashioned variety show, where you never know what’s going to happen next.  This unique evening of song, rhythm, poetry, adventure, and story, features some of the best writers and most dynamic performers in the region— all under one roof.  Sit back and enjoy as the brew is stirred and  the magic is made. This show is designed to open your heart, feed your soul,  delight your mind, awaken your curiosity, and deepen your perceptions of the arts, the humanities, and community. Come be surprised by what you'll find!

Featured Writers

Rosemerry Wahtola-Trommer

Rosemerry lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and daughter. Her poetry collections include Hush (winner of the Halcyon Prize for poetry of human ecology), Naked for Tea (finalist in the Able Muse Book Award), Even Now, The Less I Hold, The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday life with Rumi, Intimate Landscape. Her newest collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. She travels widely to perform and teach for clients such as Think 360, the National Storytelling Festival, Eremos, Camp Coca Cola, The Mission in Santa Barbara, Taos Poetry Festival, Business and Professional Women, Omega Institute and more. She loves co-leading retreats that combine poetry with meditation, art, and play therapy.  She co-hosts Emerging Form–a podcast on creative process, and co-founded Secret Agents of Change–a group devoted to surreptitious acts of kindness. For more visit: https://ahundredfallingveils.com/

Craig Childs

Craig has published more than a dozen books of adventure, wilderness, and science. He has won the Banff Award, the Orion Book Award, the Galen Rowell Art of Adventure Award, at he Spirit of the West Award, and three times he’s won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. His books include Animal Dialogues, The Secret Language of Water, House of Rain and Deep Wild.  His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, and The New York Times, where he’s been called "a modern-day desert father." He has a B.A. in Journalism from CU Boulder with a minor in Women's Studies, and an M.A. in Desert Studies from Prescott College in Arizona. He’s taught graduate courses in writing at University of Montana and the MFA programs at University of Alaska and Southern New Hampshire University. Craig regularly performs sold-out, uniquely dynamic shows across the country. He lives off-grid in southwest Colorado. Visit: http://www.houseofrain.com/

David Mason

David served as Poet Laureate of Colorado from 2010 to 2014, and taught at Colorado College.  His verse novel, Ludlow, was named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was also featured on the PBS News Hour and won the Colorado Book Award. Other books include a memoir, News from the Village, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry (2000), Two Minds of a Western Poet (2011), Voices, Places (2018) and Incarnation and Metamorphosis (2023).A former Fulbright Fellow to Greece, his recent books include Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, Davey McGravy: Tales to Be Read Aloud to Children and Adult Children. The Sound: New and Selected Poems, and Pacific Light.  David is also a librettist.  He currently lives in Tasmania, the island state of Australia with his wife, poet Cally Conan Davies. For more visit: https://davidmasonpoet.com/

Invocations

Wendy Videlock

Award winning poet Wendy Videlock’s syndicated newspaper column appears across the four-corner states. She is the recipient of the Keats Soul Making Prize, The Cantor Prize, the Fischer Prize and the AMP and PBTS Sonnet Prizes. Her poems and essays appear in Hudson Review, Poetry Magazine, O Magazine, The NY Times, Best American Poetry, Rattle, ALP and elsewhere. Wendy hosts a radio show, directs several literary programs and advocates for the arts in schools and public spaces. She is also a visual artist whose work is featured in galleries across the region. Her books are available where books are sold and include Nevertheless, Wise to the West, and Slingshots & Love Plums. Wendy continues to believe that poetry might just be the answer to all that ails us. She lives just outside Palisade at the foot of Thunder Mountain. She currently serves as poet laureate of the Western Slope. For more visit:  Wendy Videlock 

Art Goodtimes

Art served five terms on the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners as Colorado’s only Green Party partisan-elected official. He’s been connected with the Telluride Mushroom Festival in various capacities for over 40 years and is the former president of the Telluride Institute. Art has worked as pre-school teacher and director, as well as a freelance journalist, editor and columnist for publications around the Western Slope. His poems appear in the online Colorado Times Recorder.  Founder of the Talking Gourds Poetry Program and the gourds circle tradition, he has performed at bookstores, schools, libraries and coffeehouse venues all over the Southwest. In 2010, he was named the first Western Slope Poet Laureate. His books include As if the World Really Mattered and Dancing on Edge: the McRedeye Poems.

Percussion

David Alderdice

David is a father, husband & son, a music & outdoor educator, a band leader, musical director, percussionist, composer & multi-instrumentalist, a mountain backpacking guide & wilderness first responder, a gardener, skill toy enthusiast, avid rhythmist & Tedx speaker. David has been teaching music for over 25 years, has recorded on over 50 albums and has played over 1,000 live concerts in a wide variety of musical styles and settings. He is the founder of & lead teacher for the Embodying Rhythm School of Percussive Arts in Hotchkiss where he offers private lessons as well as group classes & workshops. Find out more about David and his musical projects, upcoming performances, backcountry adventures, on-line videos & different educational opportunities at  www.embodyingrhythm.com

Kirtan Ceremony with The Daughters of Earth:

Sarah Hutchinson is an RN, certified Yoga teacher, and Ayurvedic Wellness Educator living off grid on the Grand Mesa.  She is dedicated to teaching the power of to strengthening the body, calming the mind and bringing more joy to life.  Sarah is the founder of YogaBeyondthePoses.com, a virtual classroom serving clients all over the world 

Demi Garner is a lover of the outdoors and nature and a lifelong teacher of various subjects, with 30 years of experience in public schools and over 20 years of teaching yoga and wellness.  She loves sharing the practices that have helped her survive and thrive through life's ups and downs.  

Debra Weller has practiced yoga and meditation for over 30 years and has had the joy of studying with many gifted teachers.  She is a certified Para Yoga teacher, an Ayurvedic educator and a career English teacher.  She teaches lives and loves in Grand Junction, CO.  

Chessie Woodruff is a translator of languages and of experience.  She has studied yoga in India and blends Ayurveda, Reiki, mantra and drumming into her practice.  Her path is rooted in compassion, curiosity and continual learning. 

Jamie Colon-Orelup is a multi-talented traveling curendara from Rawlins, Wyoming. 

Dulce Bell-Bulley, Transpersonal Counselor, Alchemical Hypnotherapist, Astrologer and Radical Living Coach. 

Sonnet Seductions

David J. Rothman

David has served as the Director of the Poetry Concentration with an Emphasis on Form in the MFA program at Western State College of Colorado.  He is a Pushcart Prize winner and  has taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.  He has also served as Poet Laureate of the Western Slope. He is co-Founder of the Crested Butte Music Festival, Founding Editor and Publisher of Conundrum Press, and served for six years as Headmaster of Crested Butte Academy, He is President of the Robinson Jeffers Association. Rothman’s volumes of poetry include Dominion of Shadow, Beauty at Night and The Elephant’s Chiropractor. His poems and essays have appeared in Appalachia, The Atlantic, The Formalist, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Threepenny Review and elsewhere.

Exquisite Corpse

 Exquisite Corpse with Melody Jones of the Western Colorado Writers Forum.  Stop by the WCWF information table in the gallery of the Art Center to participate in this fun and collaborative writing project.  All are welcome.

With a Special Appearance by:

Danny Rosen

Danny lived in Philadelphia until 1980. At University of Wyoming he studied geology to learn about what he was climbing. Over time all things, stone and otherwise, coalesced in Fruita to become Lithic Press, then Bookstore. Publications include Suspended Erosion (Lithic Press), The Tuscan Journals (Cuneiform Press), Primate Poems (Lithic Press), and Ghosts of Giant Kudu (Kattywompus).

Emcee

CJ Brafford, a member of the Lakota Oglala Sioux Tribe, is the Director of the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose. Brafford has made key contributions at the state and national level on preserving Indigenous history and educating audiences.  In 2004 she took part in the Native Nations Procession. In 2018 she was given the Governor's Award for excellence in public service and in 2022 she received the Colorado Women's Day Spirit Award for her efforts in safeguarding and promoting Colorado's Native American traditions and culture. 

AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS

Living the Ridiculously Creative and Curious Life with award winning poet, visual artist and essayist Wendy Videlock. In this generative workshop Wendy will show the joys and benefits of doodling, scribbling notes and playing with language in order to  find meaning through music.  Each attendee will come away with a new poem or short story.  No experience necessary.

Wed., April 1st, Noon - 1:15. 

Wide-Open Listening: Where Nature Meets Human Nature with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. How do we deepen our relationship with the world around us? Using metaphor as a tool and wonderment as a practice, we’ll explore how poetry can build a bridge between the landscapes of our inner world and the landscapes we inhabit. As Mary Oliver says, “The world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you … over and over.” Poems help us hear the call and meet it with our attention. We’ll read, write, discuss process, and, if you wish, share. For writers, non-writers, people who think they hate poetry and those who see it everywhere they turn. 

Wed., April 1st, 1:30 - 2:45

Community Voice and Frame Drum Circle with traveling curandera, Jamie Colon-Orelup, 

 Wed., April 1st, 10:30 am - 11:45 am

This practice uses a frame drum and a focus on creative expression. Bring your medicine drums, rattles, bells, shakers and sound makers. If you don’t have a drum, Jamie will have a drum for you.

Activities Include:

️Guided voice and rhythm practice 

️ Intention setting

️Breathwork 

️Laughter

️Honoring the feminine

What to Bring:

️Your frame or medicine drum if you have one

️Something to add to the circle that you

     will then take back with you

️An open heart and open mind 

Join us if you feel called.