Tom Sexton, former state poet laureate, is remembered for his 'unbelievable' influence teaching Alaska writers
Mar. 22—It's difficult to overstate the impact Tom Sexton had on generations of Alaska writers.
As an English and creative writing professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage for nearly 25 years, Sexton spurred young writers to chase opportunity and inspiration.
"You turn over a rock and somebody took a class from Tom Sexton," said Mike Burwell, a writer, editor and former student. "It's unbelievable, his overall influence on writers in Alaska."
Sexton died this month at age 84, leaving a legacy as a prolific poet, an influential instructor and an initiator of literary platforms in the state.
Sexton grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and had his first exposure to the state in the U.S. Army. He later returned to the state in summer 1968, the day after he and his wife, Sharyn, were married.
Sexton earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and when the university expanded with a four-year institution in Anchorage, he started teaching at the school.
Alaska author Marybeth Holleman was an MFA student of Sexton's at UAA. For a decade, Holleman said, Sexton handled all of the university's writing courses, from film to fiction, and he even was the chair of the philosophy department for a time.
"He was a wonderful, generous, kind, very calm teacher," Holleman said. "His calm presence was so important when you're a student and you get all those anxieties, but he was just a great teacher."
Sexton was a founding editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review, launched by Ronald Spatz and James Liszka in 1980.
Holleman said Sexton and Spatz, a colleague at UAA, brought a number of notable writers to the state, giving students an opportunity to rub elbows and learn from the likes of Jane Hirshfield, Tobias Wolff and Rosellen Brown.
"They would give a public reading that anyone can go to," Holleman said. "Then they would give a craft talk to the students in the MFA program. And we just got to meet these incredible writers. So even though we only had two professors in the program, it was a much broader — just a lot of nourishment coming in from Outside."
Sexton retired at UAA in 1994 and was named Alaska's Poet Laureate in 1995, a role he held until 2000.
Even when he wasn't actively teaching at the university, Sexton still maintained an inspirational spirit. When circumpolar poetry journal Ice Floe was winding down its publication, he encouraged Burwell to launch Cirque. The Alaska-based literary journal Burwell publishes with Sandra Kleven has now been in existence for more than 15 years.
"Basically he was the spark for Cirque," Burwell said. "You know, we just put out issue No. 28, so we've been around a while. It was that original encouragement that really got me going on Cirque."
Holleman said it was notable that when Sexton was at UAA, he focused almost exclusively on teaching.
"He did give his all as a teacher," Holleman said. "He published very little when he was a teacher. And it was only when he retired in 1994 that he started putting out a book every other year. He's written dozens of books of poetry, but they came after he retired."
While Sexton was known for his Alaska poems of place, he also did a substantial amount of writing about his home and youth in Lowell. In total, he published more than 12 books of poetry in his time in Alaska.
"He turned out two or three books kind of around Lowell and the Lowell experience," Burwell said. "They're pretty hard hitting."
Both Burwell and Holleman later published Sexton's work — Burwell in Cirque, and Holleman in projects like "Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment," which she co-edited.
"He was my mentor in the program, and then afterwards, a friend and I have also had the great honor of publishing some of his poems in a couple of anthologies that I've edited, too," Holleman said.
Over the years, Sexton had a number of rural Alaska properties that functioned as writing retreats. That included a cabin along the Chulitna River where he would often spend weekends writing.
Holleman said Sexton was a well-known rover, and on his walks he would carry scraps of paper and write notes or lines that would eventually find their way into his poems.
"I don't know, there's just something about that that's so beautiful and so unusual for us now," Holleman said. "But he studied the Chinese poets, who just were wanderers. And so I feel like he kind of continued that lineage, this ancient lineage and brought it to us in contemporary culture."
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