Inspired in college, Linda Nemec Foster completely shifted her career ambitions.
Meet your local poets PROFILES
A vital, yet often overlooked piece of the community. BY ANN BYLE
// PHOTOS BY ALFIELD REEVES
Kyd Kane, Grand Rapids’ current poet laureate, said she is a spoken word poet “in limbo,” as so many poets are in these long months of the pandemic that has shut down venues, stopped indoor events and slowed community gatherings. “People are very interested in having spaces and places to communicate and express themselves again,” said Kane, whose book “Feel: A Collection of S*it” comes out this spring. She is curriculum creator and youth liaison at The Diatribe, a group of teaching artists who facilitate school programming and creative writing workshops rooted in poetry (www.thediatribe.org). The poetry community in Grand Rapids is vibrant, active, diverse and deep. She sees it as a long story of past and present. “It’s beautiful to be inspired by expressions that happened in the past. There is a beautiful thread from one generation to the next, an overall passion for expression and to speak to the times,” she said. “I feel that energy. It’s alive in a town where poetry is very important.” This small sampling is a taste of the many poets at work in Grand Rapids today. GR M AG .CO M
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