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Poets change the world.
As a journalist in the 1980s, Demetria Martínez covered the journey of two Salvadoran women seeking sanctuary in the United States. She ended up being charged with conspiracy against the government for her involvement in the story. Evidence brought against her in court included her poem written about the migrants’ plight. She was ultimately acquitted on First Amendment grounds.
Likewise, Susan Sherman had taken up activism in another era—protesting McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and fascism both in the streets and in print. She founded the revolutionary IKON magazine and wrote poetry to speak to the feminism emerging at that time.
In this collaborative volume, these two women and their new & selected poems engage in dialogue about their experiences in such different eras—and the continuing power of the written word in dangerous times.
This book will be published September 2, 2025. Advance orders have two choices: receive an early pre-publication copy, or receive a copy signed by the authors after launch.
Praise for Poetry in Dangerous Times
“These are dangerous times indeed. In such times, again and again, we turn to poets like Demetria Martínez and Susan Sherman. Here are two poets who have faced dangerous times before, always with courage, patience, compassion, and eloquence. In the face of danger, they not only speak, but sing. The proof is in the pages of this unique and necessary collection, two women from two different worlds showing us our common ground, the path we must walk, illuminated by the fire in these poems, to find our common humanity, to find the way home.”
—Martín Espada, author of the National Book Award-winning Floaters and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Republic of Poetry
“Meet two women from two worlds: Demetria Martínez, a Chicana rooted in family history passed on, and Susan Sherman, a Jewish woman self-exiled from a family who wanted to forget. Martínez whispers poems down the page in images so tender it feels like being let in on a secret: ‘Dreams opening/Like the fist of an infant.’ Sherman’s is a seasoned philosopher’s voice simmered in ‘the usual detritus of Manhattan nights’ resulting in a rich stew of insights to be savored, even better the second time around. When strong/queer/activist poets craft a gift this magnificent, take it.”
—Mary Oishi, Albuquerque Poet Laureate Emerita and author of Sidewalk Cruiseship
“What are some poets doing when they're not writing poetry? As Poetry in Dangerous Times: Two Women, Two Worlds reveals, they are trying to repair the world.… Free of didacticism and slogans, these poems address a wide range of themes and passions, always deeply moving as they remind us to struggle for social justice but also to rest and remember the people and things we love and struggle for; they are enriching and engaging.”
—Irena Klepfisz, author of Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems 1971–2021
About the authors
Demetria Martínez
Demetria Martínez, writer, poet, and activist, was born and raised in Albuquerque. As a journalist, she covered religion for the Albuquerque Journal and was a national news editor and a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter.
Martínez’s widely translated novel Mother Tongue, set during the Sanctuary Movement, won a Western States Book Award. Martínez’s poetry collections include The Devil’s Workshop, Breathing Between the Lines, and Turning, which appeared in an anthology of three Chicana poets, Three Times A Woman. She is the author of a short story collection, The Block Captain’s Daughter, which received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her essay collection, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, won an International Latino Book Award. She has also received the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature and has written and co-written several other works.
Susan Sherman
Susan Sherman is a poet, playwright, essayist, and editor and co-founder of IKON magazine. In the sixties, she was a poetry editor for The Nation and a poetry editor and theater critic for The Village Voice. She later opened IKONbooks, a bookstore which served as a cultural and movement center.
Sherman has had twelve off-off-Broadway productions and published an adaptation of a Cuban play by Pepe Carril, Shango de Ima (Doubleday), which won 11 AUDELCO awards for a 1996 revival produced by the Nuyorican Poets Café. She published her memoir, America’s Child: A Woman’s Journey Through the Radical Sixties, in 2007 to critical acclaim. She has published seven collections of poetry, among them the collection The Light That Puts an End to Dreams, which was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. She has also published a book of short fiction, Nirvana on Ninth Street, and a collaborative book of dialogue and poetry, We Stand Our Ground, with Kimiko Hahn and Gale P. Jackson. Her awards include the University Poetry Prize from UC Berkeley, a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts for Creative Nonfiction Literature, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for Poetry, a Puffin Foundation Grant, a Creative Artist’s Public Service Grant for poetry, editors’ awards from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Acker Award.