The past is always there. As if time 
never moved from my arms when I held 
my newborn daughter in wonder. The longing in me 
when I smell lavender. Purple blossoms, green 
stems that grew outside her nursery and 
heard her first words. The blooms in late summer already dying. 

*From The Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions Publishing, 1971); text of the poem is also available at Poets.org (link retrieved on 30 July 2025):
https://poets.org/poem/fern-hill

Linda Nemec Foster

is the author of 14 published collections of poetry, including two collaborations with Anne-Marie Oomen and artist Meridith Ridl published by Wayne State University Press: The Lake Huron Mermaid (2024), and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2018), which was honored as a 2019 Michigan Notable Book. Her collection Amber Necklace from Gdańsk (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) was a finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry. New Issues Press published her books Talking Diamonds (2009) and The Blue Divide (2021), and Cervena Barva Press released her book The Elusive Heroine: My Daughter Lost in Magritte in 2018.

Ms. Foster’s first full-length collection of prose poems, Bone Country (Cornerstone Press, 2023), has been nominated for 20 book awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Selections from the book have been honored in eleven competitions—including Fish Anthology’s Flash Fiction Contest in Ireland (2022), Best Small Fictions 2022, and Best Spiritual Literature 2023.

Her work has appeared in more than 350 magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, I-70 Review, Indiana Review, The MacGuffin, New American Writing, Nimrod, North American Review, Quarterly West, Paterson Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Verse Daily. Her poems have also been published in anthologies in the U.S. and Great Britain, and translated in Europe. Collaborations with visual artists, musicians, and composers have brought her poetry to new venues and audiences; her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, set to music, and produced for the stage.

Ms. Foster has received more than 30 nominations for the Pushcart Prize and has been honored with awards from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, ArtServe Michigan, the National Writer’s Voice, and the Academy of American Poets. On multiple occasions, she has been awarded prizes in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest sponsored by Paterson Literary Review; in 2023, she won first prize in the prestigious competition. In 2015, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dyer-Ives Foundation for her poetry and advocacy of the literary arts in Michigan. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College, and was the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (serving from 2003-2005).

Author’s website: www.lindanemecfoster.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Bone Country: Prose Poems by Linda Nemec Foster, reviewed by Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice for Mom Egg Review (27 May 2025)

⚡ Bone Country by Linda Nemec Foster, reviewed by Michael Collins for North of Oxford (April 2023), which the journal named “One of the Most Read Book Reviews of 2023”

⚡ Linda Nemec Foster’s Bone Country, a micro-review by Clare MacQueen in Issue 18 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (April 2023); includes links to two prose poems from the book that were first published in Issue 15 of MacQ

⚡ Featured Guest: Linda Nemec Foster interviewed by Tim Green for Rattlecast 157 (29 August 2022)

⚡ Personal Diary: Same Day, Same Month, Different Year, microfiction by Ms. Foster in Coal Hill Review (Issue 29, Spring 2022)

⚡ The Talent of Knowing, a poem by Ms. Foster in homage to her dear friend Richard in Duende (Issue 2, Spring 2015)