Lamont Poet Billy Collins

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (2001-2003), continued the Library’s Lamont Poetry series with a reading from his work on May 4, 2005 at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Hall.

Billy Collins is the author of seven volumes of poetry and creator of the “Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools,” a web site and anthology designed to “broaden the audience of poetry beyond the precincts of its practitioners.” It is Collins’s hope that the “program would suggest to young people the notion that poetry can be a part of everyday life as well as a subject to be studied in the classroom.” Collins’s honors include fellowships at the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize—all awarded by Poetry magazine.

Collins's books of poetry include Nine Horses (2002), Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001), Picnic, Lightning (1998), The Best Cigarette (1997), The Art of Drowning (1995), Questions About Angels (1991), and The Apple That Astonished Paris (2006).

Upon his appointment as Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, “Billy Collins’s poetry is widely accessible. He writes in an original way about all manner of ordinary things and situations with both humor and a surprising contemplative twist.”

Billy Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years. He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He lives in Somers, N.Y.