Sally Ashton (courtesy of Spartan Daily)
By Lisa Francesca, Contributing Writer
Little did returning student Sally Ashton know, when she took poetry classes from Professor Nils Petersen in 1999, that they’d become colleagues and friends, and that one day she would succeed him as Santa Clara County’s reigning poet laureate.
Ashton received her bachelor’s degree from SJSU in 2001 and then an MFA from Bennington College in Vermont. She published three collections of poetry, directed the first California Poetry Festival (through Poetry Center San Jose), became editor in chief of the online DMQ Review, an art and poetry journal, and started teaching. Private workshops in places like Villa Montalvo led to her current role teaching creative writing at San Jose State. Since her transformation from student to faculty member, Ashton has been nominated for three Pushcart prizes and is the recipient of an Artist’s Fellowship in poetry from Arts Council Silicon Valley.
In a recent spot on KNTV news, Ashton expressed her desire to bring poetry closer to the community during her two-year term. “Poetry and all art attempt to make the world look like what it feels like,” she said. “Poetry shouldn’t be a foreign language.”
We asked her what it was like to be on the faculty after being an SJSU student. “I love my colleagues and of course the students,” she said. “I love the diversity and (working with) people who are in general just working really hard. I don’t get a sense of anyone taking things for granted at SJSU. It’s just a lot of people on a journey. I find that age group really exciting, off on a lot of adventures. And it’s a real privilege to have studied with people who are now my friends. There’s a legacy of all the teachers who went before — there’s a sense of presence, not only of them but of the school’s history itself as the first public college in California — a college for people who love to teach, who are serving the community.”
Check out Ashton’s poetry projects on both the laureateship blog and her own.