Listen to Your Own Song

Helga Kidder lives in the Tennessee hills with her husband. She immigrated from the Black Forest, Germany, and is a retired medical assistant and teacher. During her career she was awarded an MFA from Vermont College, then started the Chattanooga Writers Guild with two friends and has been leading a monthly poetry group for the past twenty years. Her poetry is inspired by her gardens and surrounding woods. Her poems have recently been published in Orbis, Atlanta Review, Dandelion Scribes, and Wyld Side Press Anthology for those afflicted with breast cancer. She has five collections of poetry, Wild Plums, Luckier than the Stars, Blackberry Winter, and Loving the Dead which won the Blue Light Press Book Award, and Learning Curve, a collection of poems about immigration and assimilation. Her next collection, End with a Kiss, is slated for release in 2026 by Shark Lit. Praise for Helga Kidder’s Poetry'Your work was selected from thousands of poems submitted from across the U.S. and around the world. We were looking for poetry that was absolutely wonderful, that did what great poetry is supposed to do: refresh the heart, the mind, and the spirit.'- Atlanta Review'It has been a particular honor to have your work appear in Quiet Diamonds. Thank you for being a part of the Orchard Street family. Work like yours is the reason for our already strong - and growing - reputation as a home for excellence in poetry.' - The Orchard Street Press