Born to American parents, Johanna DeMay grew up in Mexico City. Like many expatriate children, she shuttled back and forth on a bridge of words, translating for uneasy neighbors. Poetry became her chosen way to knit her worlds together. Encouraged while still in her teens by Pulitzer prize-winning poet and fellow ex-patriot George Oppen, she has never stopped writing.
DeMay became an immigrant again when she resettled in New Mexico with her husband. For forty years the couple earned their living as studio potters while raising two children and building their solar adobe home. Her life took root in clay soil beside the Rio Grande, in a community founded in the mid-18th century by Sephardic refugees on the run from the Inquisition, on land where Native Americans have lived continuously for thousands of years.
She embraces her neighbors, their shared history and traditions, their efforts to build a future together in their beloved place. The high desert taught DeMay to love light, burning blue skies and vast distances. Place shapes her life; place speaks through everything she writes.
Now retired from her ceramics career, DeMay divides her time between writing and volunteering with the immigrant community. She tutors new residents studying to improve their language skills and take their citizenship exams. Many of her poems reflect experiences of displacement and transition—her own as well as those of the people with whom she works.
DeMay honed her craft at workshops taught by luminaries like Marge Piercy, Ellen Bass, Kevin Young, Thomas Lux, Tony Barnstone, Jennifer Clement, and Terese Svoboda, as well as UK Poet Laureates Carol Ann Duffy and Sir Andrew Motion.
Her poems have appeared in three anthologies and in journals such as I-70 Review, poem, The MacGuffin, Constellations, bosque, Passager, The Main Street Rag, Loch Raven Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Rust and Moth, and The Concho River Review. She has twice received nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Her first full poetry collection, Waypoints, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022.
Paperback: 108 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (April 14, 2025)