Billy Collins

William “Billy” Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet. He served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006. He was recently appointed the Irving Bacheller Chair of Creative Writing at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and is a Visiting Scholar with the Winter Park Institute. He remains a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

Biography

Collins was born in New York City to William and Katherine Collins. Katherine Collins was a nurse who stopped working to raise the couple's only child. Mrs. Collins had the ability to recite verses on almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated in her young son the love of words, both written and spoken. Billy Collins attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains and received an A.B. (English) from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters. ^[1][2] In 1975 Collins founded The Mid Atlantic Review with his good friend and co-editor, Michael Shannon.^[3]

Collins is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. Additionally, he is a founding Advisory Board member of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College. He also has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York as well as teaching workshops across the U.S. and in Ireland. Collins is a member of the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook Southampton College, where he teaches poetry workshops. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006.

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem "The Names" at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6, 2002, held to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks. As Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the program, "Poetry 180," for high schools. Collins chose 180 poems for the program and the accompanying book, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry-- one for each day of the school year. Collins edited a second anthology, 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day to refresh the supply of available poems. The program is online, and poems are available there for no charge. ^[4]

In 1997, Collins recorded The Best Cigarette (ISBN 0-9658873-0-8), a collection of 34 of his poems that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under a Creative Commons license, allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems (2002, ISBN 0-670-03126-7). Collins has appeared on Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, numerous times, where he gained a portion of his large following. In 2005, Collins recorded "Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space" in New York City. Collins was introduced by his friend, actor Bill Murray.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the New York Times. When he moved from the University of Pittsburgh Press to Random House, the advance he received shocked the poetry world-- a six-figure sum for a three-book deal, virtually unheard of in poetry.^[5] The deal secured for Collins through his literary agent, Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic, with the editor Daniel Menaker remained the talk of the poetry world, and indeed the literary world, for quite some time.^[6][7]

Over the years, Poetry has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, bestowed by the Poetry Foundation (Poetry Magazine). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1993, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Works

• Pokerface (1977)
• Video Poems (1980)
• The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)
• Questions About Angels (1991)
• The Art of Drowning (1995)
• Picnic, Lightning (1998)
• Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001)
• Nine Horses (2002)
• Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003)
• 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (2005)
• The Trouble with Poetry (2005)
• She Was Just Seventeen (2006)
• Ballistics (2008)
• Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds (2009)

References

1. ^ Inteview with Billy Collins by Renee H Shea/
2. ^ The Coachella Review interview
3. ^ / The Mid-Atlantic Review
4. ^ the Library of Congress official website for Poetry 180,
5. ^ From The New York Times
6. ^ New Yorks Times
7. ^ Review by Ernest Hilbert

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Billy Collins

• The Library of Congress official site, "Billy Collins: Online Resources
• "Inspired by a Bunny Wabbit": Wall Street Journal article by Billy Collins on the influence of Looney Tunes cartoons on his poetry
• Audio recording of Collins reading at the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar
• "The Pleasures of Disorientation": 2009 Interview with Billy Collins on Littoral, the journal of the Key West Literary Seminar
• Q&A With Billy Collins
• Watch a collection of 11 animated poems read aloud by Billy Collins
• Watch Billy Collins recite his work at Open-Door Poetry
• 33 poems read aloud by Billy Collins, no charge (Creative Commons)
• Poems by Billy Collins at PoetryFoundation.org
• Author interview with Collins in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)
• Poem by Collins
• Steven Barclay Agency for Bookings - web page with a list of external links
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography (2004 judge and award emcee)
• Billy Collins at poets.org
• Review of the opus of Billy Collins at The Contemporary Poetry Review
• Billy Collins at poetenladen.de (poetshop)
• Poem by Billy Collins at Slush Pile Magazine