ROAN & BLACKContemporary Gallery

OUR POETS: Jack Ridl & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s most recent collection of poetry is Even Now: Poems and Drawings, a collaboration with artist Jill Sabella whose three line drawings are movingly paired with Trommer’s three line poems. Other collections

include The Less I Hold, Intimate Landscape: The Four Corners Region in Poetry and Photography, Holding Three Things at Once: Poems. Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, TEDx, in back alleys, and on A Prairie Home Companion. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate, directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years, and co-hosts the Talking Gourds Poetry club. She’s won the Fischer Prize, Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge (twice), the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Sundress Best of the Net Prize. Since 2006, she’s written a poem a day. You can find her at Word Woman – www.wordwoman.com.

Jack Ridl’s Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (Wayne State University Press), received the Foreword Reviews Gold Medal for Poetry. His other award winning collections are Broken Symmetry (WSUPress), Society of Midland Authors Best

Book of Poetry, and Losing Season (CavanKerry Press). He is co-author with Peter Schakel of Approaching Literature (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press). Winner of the Gary Gildner Poetry Prize, Jack was named by the Carnegie Foundation as Michigan’s Professor of the year. The Poetry Society of Michigan named him Honorary Chancellor, only the second poet so-named. Jack’s poetry has been nominated for 18 Pushcart Prizes. He was one of twelve people in the arts from around the U.S. invited to the Fetzer Institute for their first conference on compassion and forgiveness. More than 85 of Jack’s students are nationally published authors. You can find him also at his website – www.ridl.com.

Free Public Poetry ReadingFRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2017 | 7PMRoan & Black Contemporary Gallery, 3315 Blue Star Hwy, Saugatuck, MI 49453

Roan & Black Gallery, on Blue Star Highway between Saugatuck and Douglas, is a destination for contemporary fine art and found objects, a feast for eye and soul, and the magical setting for this reading. Come early to the poetry reading and walk through the comforting dazzle of gardens that envelop the gallery and enjoy the accompanying store, where you settle in with a bounty of surprises. Owners John Newland and Doug McIntosh make you feel as if you are hanging out with dear old friends. As soon as you arrive you’ll feel at home. Come, savor, leave with your soul well nourished.