Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Shelli Rottschafer from our thirteenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Shelli Rottschafer: Nature kindles my creativity. One of my strategies for writing is what I call “braiding.” One trendle of line that I weave is having read or reacted to something that is a current issue. It may have been something I have seen on the news. It may have been an article I read. And I will hold onto that visceral reaction.
The next trendle is after reflection in nature. I will go there to seek calm, to breath in the season we are in. The third trendle is myself, including my five senses and colors that I associate with my experiences. When I gather these things together, I write notes and draft something out. This was my process for my poem, “Moth Clutched Loosely.”
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Shelli Rottschafer: I look up to is US poet laureate Ada Limón. An anthology she has edited is, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (2024). In this collection. Limón tasks creatives to, “observe and reflect on their place in the natural world”. Some verses contend with the destruction of nature, others consider nature’s abundance and resilience. What is clear is that “the nature of our humanity” is grounded in the natural world. Limón expounds upon her own connection, which I also tried to explain above in what kindles my creativity. She says it better than I do:
[When] I am trying to find myself, trying to ground myself, I stare at trees….
I become aware that I am in a body, yes, but it is a body connected to these trees, and we
are breathing together.
You might not know this, but poems are like trees in this way. They let us breathe
together. In each line break, caesura, and stanza, there’s a place for us to breathe….
[Poems] can be a place to stop and remember that we too are living.
I relate Limón’s words to a nature-based image: a grove of aspens. Each tree is an individual but
its root system is interconnected to others within its reach. Similarly, a poem’s individual words
grow into verse, establish place upon the page, and create community with its reader. I admire
Limón because for her, “poetry and nature have a way of simply reminding us that we are not
alone”.
This Tiny Spoon has done for me as well. They have helped fledge my poem into the literary
world, and together we share in these nature-inspired moments of wonder and awe.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Shelli Rottschafer: A recent publication of one of my poems is, “Manitou Passage” through Tiny Seed Literary Journal’s You Plant the Seed, We Help it Grow Project: “The Beauty of Water’s Depth” https://tinyseedjournal.com/2025/04/20/manitou-passage/ Manitou Passage is a body of water that looks west from Good Harbor Bay near Leland into Lake Michigan. In the distance is South Manitou Island and Lighthouse, slightly north is North Manitou Island. The beach where this poem is situated is in the northern part of the lower peninsula in Michigan. It has taught me the art of learning to “be” in place. Now that I live in Colorado, I am discovering new places that help me learn to simply be such as Kruger Rock Trail just outside of Estes Park.
An eminent project is my MFA thesis. It is a collection of poetry and lyric essays titled, Meanwhile, She Waits for Aperture. I am in the final revisions and I will graduate July 25, 2025 from Western Colorado University’s low residency MFA in Creative Writing. My concentration is Poetry. https://catalog.western.edu/graduate/programs/creative-writing-mfa/
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Shelli Rottschafer: A recent book I really have enjoyed is:
Trespass: Ecotone Essayists Beyond The Boundaries of Place, Identity, and Feminism.
Wilmington: Lookout Books U of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 270.
Trespass is an amazing place-based anthology written by Women-Nature Writers. In my
opinion, it is a hands down awesome collection. It includes essays from California, Alaska,
Michigan, Vermont, Arkansas. Some are rural others urban, and each shed perspectives from a
variety of multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-identifying lenses. Truly, I have not felt this way
about a book in a very long time. Authors of note in Trespass are Camille T. Dungy, Toni Jensen,
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lauret E. Savoy, Terry Tempest Williams, Allison Hawthorne Deming,
Aisha Sabatini Sloan, and Lia Purpura.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
Shelli Rottschafer: If you would like to learn more about me, here are two links:
The Philly Poetry Chapbook Review
Contributor Highlight: Through this interview I explain my writing origins and inspiration
within nature as well as authors who have influenced my practice.
https://phillychapbookreview.org/meet-our-contributor-shelli-rottschafer/
Bold Journey: An Ars Poetica Interview
Interviewed by Anita Patel at http://www.BoldJourney.com located in Culver City, CA.
The discussion led to my writing process, recent successes, and some of my literary ancestors’
influence such as Robert W. Service, Jim Harrison, and Linda Hogan.
https://boldjourney.com/meet-shelli-rottschafer/
A recent publication of mine is, “Calf Canyon Fire: An Autohistoria”. It was published online through New Mexico Wild http://www.nmwild.org https://www.nmwild.org/2025/03/31/calf-canyon-fire-an-autohistoria/ This is a short creative nonfiction essay about wildfire in the west. I would love it if you gave it a read!!
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Shelli Rottschafer: My partner and I share a Substack. Daniel is a landscape photographer. His website is http://www.danielcombsphotography.com He shares his nature-based photos on our Substack and I include recent pieces I have published such as poems, lyric essays, or short stories. You can find us at: https://rottschafercombs.substack.com/p/pictures-to-ponder-words-to-read
