Michael Welch
Author, editor, and literary critic.
Latest Releases
Forthcoming on March 10, 2026!
The thirty-two writers in this collection grapple with the vastness of the lakes and the vastness of experience living alongside them. Gabriel Bump explores how his relationship with Lake Michigan changed after losing a friend. For another writer, the water provided the freedom to explore a romance that would have been too complicated on land. Come dive for shipwrecks, harvest manoomin, and visit the disappearing ice caves. Witness the chickadees, smelt, and cattails, but also zebra mussels, factory runoff, and algae. Each writer’s relationship with the lakes is personal and unique, but that relationship to the water is also one shared by so many of us.
“As a man who long convinced himself that he lived on the edge of the world, here’s my wish for you: Embrace the awe. Allow yourself to feel alone. Then remember you are not.”
Winner of the 2016 National Federation of State Poetry Societies Florence Kahn Award.
But Sometimes I Remember explores the narrative of memory — how it comforts and traumatizes us, how it shapes who we are, and how eventually it becomes fiction. These poems include characters driven by their desire to remember and be remembered, forget the pain that haunts them, and understand complex moments from their past. From larger-than-life childhood monuments, directions home through the old neighborhood, to a reimagining of Chicago, memories tie the past and present into a single story where the living and forgotten meet.
"This is a spectacular collection of poems — images that stay with us, that cling and illuminate our minds in the dark, right before we sleep. This is what poetry is all about."
-Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate
"...remarkable evocation of the recent past. But this is not poetry of soft-hearted nostalgia. These poems are as hard as a city street, as bright as a burning house, and as heart-breaking as a child in a casket. Michael Welch's ambition, talent, and craftsmanship are on brilliant display in this collection."
- Larry Waston, author of Montana 1948