Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer won a Silver Nautilus Award in May 2025. Her winning book, The Unfolding, published by Wildhouse Poetry in October 2024, explores the in-between space of sorrow and wonder in the face of devastating loss. After rising to the #1 spot of Amazon’s New Releases for Grief, Loss, and Death Poetry shortly after it’s release, The Unfolding continues to ‘wow’ readers with its shimmering prose and the urgent ask for self-compassion.
The Nautilus Book Awards recognize literary works that “support conscious living and green values, wellness, social change, social justice, and spiritual growth.” The Nautilus Book Awards considers books from dozens of genres, including Poetry and Death & Dying / Grief & Loss. When pondering which category to submit to, the Wildhouse Publishing team considered the multifaceted themes of The Unfolding, which speak not only to loss, but also to self-compassion, nature, and connection. The Nautilus called for poetry that “evokes compassion, wisdom, greater understanding, empathy, joy, delight, and passion through the artful and poetic use of language.”
The Unfolding was selected for that category and received an award alongside The Lilacs I Once Knew: Friddie’s Poems by Roni Rosenthal, and Instructions for Banno by Kiran Bath.
Trommer began writing one poem a day in 2006. This practice became a daily ritual and later blossomed into a wide-reaching newsletter, A Hundred Falling Veils. When her teenage son died by suicide in 2021, Rosemerry’s daily practice provided a “practice of wondering what’s here” and was a powerful tool of processing. Although she did not write poems for the first seven weeks after his death, when Rosemerry did return to the blank page, the poems that she wrote were tuned to the key of grief, wonder, and love.
Wildhouse Poetry editor Mark Burrows, Ph.D, discovered Trommer’s poems when a new family moved into his town. The family was grieving the loss of their own teenager, who died by suicide. The mother shared Trommer’s 2023 poetry book, All The Honey (Samara Press) with Burrows.
“I found the poems stunningly heartfelt, clear, and artful,” the editor said. Burrows found Trommer’s ability to poetically discuss difficult topics particularly compelling, and he knew that Wildhouse readers would benefit from this brave writing.
“She is a brave poet,” he said. “It’s important to see the darkness in this life, although it is never the final word. (American) society shies away from acknowledging shadows, which Rosemerry’s poetry urges us to do.”
From the poems written in the months after her son’s, as well as her father’s, passing in 2021, her thirteenth poetry book, The Unfolding, emerged. Burrows said that he helped Trommer organize these poems, rather than edit them, and identify a single thread to connect her pieces, which honor grief while also making room for praise.
“I do think that there are ways that having lost my son just over three years ago, and my father three months after that, in allowing myself to go deeply into that loss and turning toward it, that (I found) myself open to it,” she said on the First Draft Podcast, a weekly show produced by Literary Hub and hosted by writer Mitzi Rapkin. “I think the practice of showing up every day and being met with small wonders in a daily way, in some ways, made it possible for me, in a time of great loss, to still be open to the wondrous.”
These small wonders, such as bright red beets or blue dragonflies in flight, were points of meditation and gratitude for the poet, who ultimately invented four new words to describe the complex emotions of pain and awe that she felt while processing loss: verilujah, sorrom, samunion, and pangloria. These words act as the headings of the book’s four sections.
“Most of the poems in The Unfolding floored me, in fact, requiring deep breaths to steady myself,” wrote Glynn Young of Tweetspeak Poetry. “These are poems to cherish.”
In addition to the medal, The Unfolding captured the attention of several internationally celebrated authors. Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and mindfulness thought leader, described The Unfolding as “pure medicine for our tender, awakening hearts.”
“The Unfolding is the most powerful poetry collection I have ever read on grief and hope,” said Nikita Gill, celebrated British-Indian poet. “What a blessing to have read this masterpiece. What a privilege to walk an era where Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is writing and filling our lives with her beautiful, essential words. The Unfolding is a collection I am recommending to every poetry lover and reader I know.”
Trommer’s poetry is often “prescribed” to customers at London’s Poetry Pharmacy, which was featured on NBC News. The bright pink cover of The Unfolding was displayed at the register, and Trommer’s poems were chosen by Deborah Alma, the pharmacy’s founder, for the pharmacy’s official First Aid collection.
From the mountains of Colorado, where Trommer resides, to the streets of the United Kingdom, and all the way to New Zealand, The Unfolding has circled the globe.
“You don’t need to be a poet or even like poems to allow writing to be a companion for you as you grieve,” Trommer said, on the Peaceful Exit Podcast. “One of the greatest gifts that a poem can offer us is that it embraces paradox. My invitation to myself is always to write something true.”