Success Stories
Writing instructors help poet Lara Coley find her voice and future
Story by Chris Cunningham
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Student poet Lara Coley |
"She consistently makes me think I can do anything and that even what I am doing is special and amazing," student Lara Coley says of instructor Jennifer von Ammon. |
Since enrolling at Lane Community College last year, English major Lara Coley has published numerous poems in the Denali, Lane's student-run literary magazine that features fiction, poetry and photography. For the second year in a row, she is first-place winner of the local League for Innovation Poetry Award.
Putting pen to paper has long been gratifying to Coley, who spent her early childhood in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district with her single mother and two other women and their daughter. "It was a huge house of women," says Coley, who describes her upbringing and schooling as "very personal and liberal."
When Coley was 10 years old, her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a situation that compelled the family to move the child to Ojai, California, to live with her father and step-mother. At Nordhoff High School, she studied French. At home, she composed poems in her journal.
Following high school graduation, Coley attended Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, where she majored in social science for two and a half years. Her journal was always close by.
However, it wasn't until Coley enrolled in Lane's poetry and literature classes that her writing began to reflect a universe broader than "relationship woes and feeling lost. Now I'm writing about experiences that aren't mine."
Instructors Lance Sparks and Jennifer von Ammon played vital roles in Coley's literary maturation. They urged her to write and publish at every opportunity. Coley says of von Ammon, "She consistently makes me think I can do anything and that even what I am doing is special and amazing."
Von Ammon, who also is Lane's Service-Learning Coordinator, offers, "I am consistently impressed with Lara, both as a conscientious, dedicated student and as a poet who takes risks."
Coley's willingness to take risks is evident in the role she has assumed through von Ammon's popular Poet in the City class, which links students to the community through agency work. Coley is site coordinator at the John Serbu Youth Campus, which serves youth offenders. She leads writing and music workshops for teens who have had few opportunities for creative self-expression. On alternate days, the 24-year-old performs a similar role at the Heeran Center Residence, a facility that houses people who require intensive psychiatric care but do not need a hospital environment.
Soon Coley will leave for Caen, France, where for six months she will teach graduate-level students "the American usage of English" at the Institut universitaire de formation des maitres dans l'academie. Sparks' assistance with the institute's lengthy application process was invaluable, Coley says. "He makes me do the things I say I want to do," admits Coley, who maintains a 4.1 grade point average.
After she returns from France, Coley may apply to San Francisco State University's Creative Writing Program. As for the distant future, she would be satisfied if she was "just well-known enough that people want me to travel to their schools or their cities and teach, and to be in-house poet for the year."
May 2005
