WILD NATURE, WILD WOMEN, A WILD ECOPOETICS:
LAUREL RADZIESKI’S LEAF MANIFESTO
A BOOK REVIEW BY SHELLI ROTTSCHAFER
Laurel Radzieski welds her pen to manifest an embodied poetics and advocacy for the wild. Wild nature. Wild Women. This collection is unique because she plays upon the page physically and artistically in form, as many of these poems take shape within female curves. The growth from within is her child, and in this way the verse thrives.
The collection follows a flora lifecycle. Each section reminds the reader of this beginning to end: Seed, Germination, Sprout, Seedling, Sapling, Tree, Flowering, and ultimately the tempestuous Fruit. Radzieski sets out upon her poetics journey stating, “One day I said aloud / I might like to be a tree” (11) and so she entices her reader to figure out what this may mean.
Throughout Leaf Manifesto Radzieski prompts us with questions: “What is a woman?” (15). And provides multiple choice answers, that only lead to more internalized questions. Through this feminist lens she taunts her reader to poke at their own preconceived perceptions. “Who gets to be a woman?” (16). “What use is a woman?” (17). “What’s it like to be a woman?” (21). Once again, she tests her reader through a True / False dichotomy. She dares us to shade in our answer fully with a #2 Lead Pencil.
In “How to Identify as a Tree” (38), Radzieski considers identity, origin, and belonging. “Consider what others would want to know about your bark patterns and inner rings.” Yet how a tree-body-person may appear doesn’t describe the within. Rather, “roots and family tree” nudge toward fuller truths. Especially as it oft happens, “If you are on unseeded land, know the history of the ground, how it got that way.” In this way, Radzieski alludes to those who came before us. She acknowledges that the land of her manifesto is of indigenous origins and birthright.
Throughout her collection, Radzieski offers up Ven Diagrams. In “Woman Tree” (69), she encloses what these two entities have in common: branches, limbs, mistakes, leaves, organs, roots, flesh, rings, family, pain, and flowers.” At least with this last word, she ends on hope.
Radzieski’s final poem in the collection, “Past Life Regression” (121) is a haiku:
Fallen walnut. Such
a long way down, but then
soft idea of grass.
This seasonal form representing a walnut tree’s lifespan, culminates in a fruit-nut’s finality. Not eaten, but allowed to cascade to an end-place. Tranquility lands in grass. Her bed, which begins again the tree’s lifecycle as the seed buries into soil knowing she will sprout once more.
Laurel Radzieski won the Halycon Award from Middle Creek Publishing & Audio for this collection. It is her second full collection of poetry. Other poems have found a home in Rust + Moth, The New Your Quarterly, and Atlas. She lives in Reading, Pennsylvania and is the Director of Grants at Alvernia University.
LEAF MANIFESTO
BY LAUREL RADZIESKI
AVAILABLE NOW!
Shelli Rottschafer (she / her / ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2005) in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught at a small liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a Professor of Spanish. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and coursework in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University (2025).
Shelli’s home state is Michigan, yet her wanderlust turns her gaze toward her new querencia within the Mountain West where she lives, loves, and writes in Louisville, Colorado and El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner, photographer Daniel Combs and their Pyrenees-Border Collie Rescue.
Discover more of Shelli’s work at: www.shellirottschaferauthor.com
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