portrait of Nils Peterson

Nils Peterson, courtesy of Poetry Center San Jose.

The SJSU Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Creative Writing Program, and the Poets and Writers Coalition will sponsor a special program, “A Tribute to Nils Peterson,” Santa Clara County poet laureate, at 7 p.m. March 18 in the Student Union Barrett Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.

“The program, organized in affiliation with the Arts Council Silicon Valley and co-sponsored by Poetry Center San Jose, will feature readings and tributes to Nils Peterson by former California Poet Laureate Al Young and by a group of Peterson’s former students and literary colleagues, many of whom are distinguished writers and poets and teachers active in the Bay Area,” said SJSU Professor and Creative Writing Program Director Alan Soldofsky.

Peterson’s two-year term as Santa Clara County’s first poet laureate will come to a close in April 2011. He is professor emeritus at SJSU where he taught from 1963 to 1999.  He was coordinator of the creative writing emphasis for more than 20 years, and served as coordinator of the creative arts and chair of the Humanities Department.

Peterson has published poems in many journals and written science fiction, as well as articles on subjects as varying as golf and Shakespeare. A  chapbook of poems entitled “Here is No Ordinary Rejoicing” was published by No Deadline Press, and a collection of poems entitled “The Comedy of Desire,” with an introduction by Robert Bly, was published by the Blue Sofa Press.

Peterson has been a poetry consultant for San Jose State Studies, an editor for “Discover America” (a collection of poems celebrating the U.S. bicentennial), and contributing editor to The Blue Sofa Review. Peterson was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize.#