Linda Nemec Foster
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Bone Country

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Poet & Writer

Linda Nemec Foster is the author of twelve collections of poetry including The Blue Divide, The Lake Michigan Mermaid, Talking Diamonds, Amber Necklace from Gdansk, Listen to the Landscape, and Living in the Fire Nest. Her first full-length book of prose poems, Bone Country, is forthcoming in March, 2023. Foster was selected to be the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2003-2005. She is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.

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“In Bone Country, Linda Nemec Foster’s fractured and melancholic travelogue, the poems (or micro-lyric essays) serve as such luscious and destabilizing portals through which the cities of our world are passed, emerging on the other side slick with luminescence—more amazing…more sad, holy, [and] essential…”

Matthew Gavin Frank
Bone Country

“I love the restlessness…the urgency of the poems in The Blue Divide, and their deep seriousness—how they peer into the present through layers of history, and peer into history through the lens of the personal; how they’re on intimate terms with both public and private violence—and can we tell the difference, after all? Tender, brutal, unflinching, magical—these poems [are] infused with the holiness of the real and the mystery of transcendence: ‘face becoming blossom becoming starburst becoming sea.’”

Cecilia Woloch
The Blue Divide

“When a young girl who fears she is losing everything stands along the shore of Lake Michigan she senses a presence hidden beneath the waves. As her grandmother did before her, she has faith in her intuitions, and in a moment of despair is met by a mysterious healing power. This lovely series of poems, beautifully illustrated in quiet watercolors, tells a tale of grief and longing healed by grace.”

Patricia Hooper
The Lake Michigan Mermaid

“In The Elusive Heroine: My Daughter Lost in Magritte, Linda Nemec Foster wonderfully illuminates that most potent of parental fears: the instant when a child slips the frame of care and is wholly gone. What’s left is the empty frame, and a sequence of moments to be filled. How perfect, then, are the paintings of Magritte to ground/un-ground this hyperattentive sequence, both representational and surreal, where a cloud “resembles/a piranha covered with gold dust” or a “serial killer,” where memory collides with dream and artifice and negation. In every poem, the daughter is not there. But in every harrowing line is a mother’s and poet’s precise, lyric devotion.”

Dennis Hinrichsen
The Elusive Heroine: My Daughter Lost in Magritte

“A humanist at heart, Linda Nemec Foster has demanded from her poetry an artfulness that engages ordinary life. With each new book her work has continued to mature, deepen, console, surprise, and Talking Diamonds is as wise as it is lovely.”

Stuart Dybek
Talking Diamonds

“The first lines in Linda Nemec Foster’s Ten Songs from Bulgaria, sing ‘Small lives, small lives/ we are trapped inside/ small lives.’ The paradox here is that Foster’s poems reveal how large and rich the worlds are in which these small lives are lived. In line after line, we encounter the depths and reach of those who live outside the zones of everyday safety. Foster makes herself vulnerable to a world ‘as tangible as fog’ with her own penetrating observations. She walks ‘the long journey’ and her poems reflect the haunting music of ode and elegy.”

Jack Ridl
Ten Songs From Bulgaria

“A poet whose words are like the haunting melodies made by a reed pipe, Linda Nemec Foster writes the lyrics to Dianne Carroll Burdick’s visual compositions. Listen to the Landscape is a book that illustrates in word and image Robert Frost’s definition of a poem as ‘a momentary stay against confusion.’”

Judith Ortiz Cofer
Listen to the Landscape

“Place and people, language, history, habitat and blood: the free range of Linda Nemec Foster’s richly textured witness is a gift—these poems, jewels.”

Thomas Lynch
Amber Necklace from Gdansk

“A beautiful, beautiful book. A stunning gem of poetry, art, and book design.”

Faye Kicknosway
Contemplating the Heavens

“Living in the Fire Nest is a free-wheeling, spirited, globe-and body-trotting collection of stunning poems. From “Old Lover” to “History of the Breasts” and beyond, Linda Nemec Foster lays down some mean, clean, touching licks—she and her book sparkle and fly.”

Gary Gildner
Living in the Fire Nest

view selected works
  • “…the voice of my grandmother…telling me that I was in my bone country…
    where only my heart would know the map.”

    from the prose poem, “Bone Country”

    read about this collection
  • “Stars as necklace
    bird as witness
    glass as vapor
    all embraced
    from the beginning.”

    from the poem, “Six Days: A Creation Myth”

    read about this collection
  • “…where the sun braids the hair of comets
    where the moon learns to write its name
    where everything begins and nothing ends”

    from the poem, “Trinity”

    read about this collection
  • “…We glow because we came from the same burnt-out dream
    of second-generation immigrants and learned to smile
    at the closed mouth of loss and dance, dance, dance.”

    from the poem, “Dancing with My Sister”

    read about this collection
  • “To walk like the scarves
    Of clouds, to abandon land
    And never return”

    from the poem, “The Dream of Trees”

    read about this collection
  • “…The galaxy complete
    within us. But what if the night
    sky is only a drape of black velvet?
    The stars only holes in the fabric,
    ready to tear at the seam?”

    from the poem, “Stars”

    read about this collection
  • “…I can hear you laughing in your house
    the foundations shaking and you
    wrapped in animal skins wanting her
    closer, your breath in her mouth
    closer.”

    from the poem, “The Peasant Woman Tells How Baba Yaga Took Her Grandmother”

    read about this collection
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  • “…the voice of my grandmother…telling me that I was in my bone country…
    where only my heart would know the map.”

    from the prose poem, “Bone Country”

    read about this collection
  • “Stars as necklace
    bird as witness
    glass as vapor
    all embraced
    from the beginning.”

    from the poem, “Six Days: A Creation Myth”

    read about this collection
  • “…where the sun braids the hair of comets
    where the moon learns to write its name
    where everything begins and nothing ends”

    from the poem, “Trinity”

    read about this collection
  • “…We glow because we came from the same burnt-out dream
    of second-generation immigrants and learned to smile
    at the closed mouth of loss and dance, dance, dance.”

    from the poem, “Dancing with My Sister”

    read about this collection
  • “To walk like the scarves
    Of clouds, to abandon land
    And never return”

    from the poem, “The Dream of Trees”

    read about this collection
  • “…The galaxy complete
    within us. But what if the night
    sky is only a drape of black velvet?
    The stars only holes in the fabric,
    ready to tear at the seam?”

    from the poem, “Stars”

    read about this collection
  • “…I can hear you laughing in your house
    the foundations shaking and you
    wrapped in animal skins wanting her
    closer, your breath in her mouth
    closer.”

    from the poem, “The Peasant Woman Tells How Baba Yaga Took Her Grandmother”

    read about this collection
PreviousNext
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Events & Readings

 Linda Nemec Foster is pleased to connect with the community through readings, workshops, and discussions. Please join her at one of the upcoming events.

Schedule An Event with Linda

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The First Major Book Launch For Bone Country

March 29, 2023
The first major book launch for Bone Country will take place in Ann Arbor at Literati Bookstore on March 29, 2023 at 6:30 pm.
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2019 Michigan Notable Book

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News

The First Major Book Launch For Bone Country

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/bonecountrybanner.jpg 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2023-03-29 08:00:102023-03-29 08:04:29The First Major Book Launch For Bone Country

Linda Nemec Foster's The Blue Divide Reviewed by Publisher Weekly

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Publishers_Weekly_logo.jpg 302 354 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2021-04-02 11:00:372023-01-30 10:50:51Linda Nemec Foster's The Blue Divide Reviewed by Publisher Weekly

The Lake Michigan Mermaid is Selected by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable Book for 2019

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/mermaidbanner.jpg 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2019-01-09 12:00:212019-01-11 12:26:35The Lake Michigan Mermaid is Selected by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable Book for 2019

Linda Nemec Foster Interview with Cynthia Canty on Michigan Public Radio

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/linda_nemec_foster-847x1030.jpg 302 489 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2018-05-21 14:00:062019-01-11 12:34:17Linda Nemec Foster Interview with Cynthia Canty on Michigan Public Radio

"Blue" by Linda Nemec Foster Published in Streetlight Magazine

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BLUE.png 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2018-01-31 11:08:082018-01-31 11:39:37"Blue" by Linda Nemec Foster Published in Streetlight Magazine

NPO Showcase - Aquinas College's Contemporary Writers Series

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LindaFosterInterview.jpg 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2015-02-23 13:53:332017-11-15 19:55:18NPO Showcase - Aquinas College's Contemporary Writers Series

The First Major Book Launch For Bone Country

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/bonecountrybanner.jpg 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2023-03-29 08:00:102023-03-29 08:04:29The First Major Book Launch For Bone Country

Linda Nemec Foster's The Blue Divide Reviewed by Publisher Weekly

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Publishers_Weekly_logo.jpg 302 354 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2021-04-02 11:00:372023-01-30 10:50:51Linda Nemec Foster's The Blue Divide Reviewed by Publisher Weekly

The Lake Michigan Mermaid is Selected by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable Book for 2019

https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/mermaidbanner.jpg 302 490 Administrator https://www.lindanemecfoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/LindaNemecFoster_LOGO.png Administrator2019-01-09 12:00:212019-01-11 12:26:35The Lake Michigan Mermaid is Selected by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable Book for 2019
 
 
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