Alexis Page Montgomery was born in Chicago in 1950 and grew up in Rogers Park, a multicultural neighborhood of post-WWII immigrants and their families. As the eldest of four children, she was often sent to her grandparents' home, where she found her identity in books on art, architecture, and archaeology, and in the strains of classical music. They took her sailing on Lake Michigan in a small boat, an experience that was essential to her dreams and inspiration. The boat's smallness spoke to their modest means, while the lake's vastness, engendered her life-long spiritual connection to sea and sky. The sudden death of her grandmother at a young age was a defining event in her life.Though she began her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with dreams of becoming a painter, the dominance and promotion of Conceptualism in the visual arts, discouraged her from pursuing a career in oil painting. Instead, she became an expert in ceramic art restoration, an avocation that allowed her to honor both the past and appreciate the fragility of art itself, while also demonstrating the same attention to detail that characterizes her writing.In 2003, she moved with her mother to San Diego because Chicago had become too dangerous. She then experienced the anguish of caring for her dying mother, who was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. In the midst of her grief and exhaustion, she began to "hear" poems--verses that came to her in the morning before she was fully awake, and they became an unexpected outlet for her emotions. She was able to capture these poems for nearly four years, until financial need caused her mind to be diverted to practical concerns. However, after her retirement, she returned to editing and polishing her unfinished poems, and there are more to be completed.
