海角社区

海角社区 Student Poet Laureate

In 2025-2026, the first college Poet Laureate was commissioned by administration, staff, and faculty. With support from the President鈥檚 Foothill Experience Fund, 海角社区 hopes to be a longstanding annual tradition: to name a Student Poet Laureate, an individual who will be an advocate for student voice, fostering an understanding of and appreciation for the critical role of poetic expression in creating a sense of belonging and justice. 

The poet laureate is a writer who uses radical imagination to both speak the truth of our current realities while also envisioning a different world and a new future where community care and creative collaboration can inspire emerging writers and thinkers on campus to speak their own truths. The poet laureate celebrates linguistic diversity and linguistic sovereignty, recognizing that all voices, languages, dialects, and forms of verbal expression have equal and lasting power, especially when used creatively and authentically.  

Meet Alexandra (Allie) Whann, Foothill Poet Laureate 2026鈥�27

Alexandra Whann, or less formally 鈥淎llie,鈥� is a student at 海角社区 majoring in Biology and serving as Foothill鈥檚 second Student Poet Laureate. 

As Poet Laureate for 2026鈥�27, Allie hopes to foster a greater sense of interdisciplinary community through the vessel of poetry (and to hopefully inspire you to reconsider poetry, if you鈥檝e brushed it off before.) Her personal mantra is to remind others鈥攁nd often herself鈥攖o forgo putting things in boxes and rather expand your thinking to create connections over limitations.

As a biology major and as a poet, Allie believes it is vital to question what you already know鈥攖o accept learning as an ongoing process with no real end. She believes that poetry is an amazing vessel to explore connections and expand your perspectives as you consider those of others.

As Allie herself reflects:

When you put your own thoughts to paper, and the gears turning in your head collage all the art and literature and experiences that have made you, you express your own individualistic style. That style, those words that are your words, in your order outside of grammatical limitations鈥� those are a representation of yourself in writing. That representation allows others to know you, you to know others, and you to know yourself. When you connect with who you are, what you want, what you are or aren鈥檛 sure of, you find placement in community, be it in whatever manner that connection may manifest (as a friend, a teacher, a student, etc.)

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Allison Herman, Poet Laureate Faculty Mentor 2026鈥�27

Allison Herman has been an active contributor to the 海角社区 community since 2013. As a seasoned English instructor, she teaches a broad range of composition and literature courses, including American Literature, Intro to Poetry, Children's Literature, and Traveling the World through Contemporary Literature. In addition to teaching, she serves as Coordinator of the Research and Service Leadership Symposium (RSLS), Mentor for the Humanities Scholar Work Experience, Human Librarian, and, now, mentor to this year's Foothill Student Poet Laureate, Allie Whann. In all of these roles, she fosters creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, linguistic justice, and global citizenship across the campus. Allison is thrilled to support Allie in achieving her goals as Poet Laureate: to hone her craft, highlighting our relationship to the natural world in her poetry; to create inclusive spaces for the appreciation and creation of literature; and to invite new and diverse voices to speak alongside her.

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Meet Our Past Student Poet Laureate

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