John Foulcher graduated from Macquarie University with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours and a Diploma of Education. He has been a teacher in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Foulcher's work has been widely anthologised, and published extensively in national newspapers and journals, including the Age, the Bulletin, Quadrant, Poetry Australia and Overland. Foulcher's work often focuses on such subjects as family relationships, coping with grief, and the mysterious and unknowable future. His poetry has been described by the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature as 'simple, direct and convincing'.
In 1993, Foulcher was poetry editor of the National Library's Voices, and from 1986 to 1994 his poetry was set for study on the NSW Higher School Certificate syllabus.