Billy Collins to Read Poetry at Union as Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecturer

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Billy Collins

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Two-time U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, one of America’s most popular and best-selling poets, will give a poetry reading at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6, in the Arkansas Union Ballroom, followed by a book signing. The event is free and open to the public.

No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal. His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry. His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience - enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio - includes people of all  backgrounds and age groups.

The poems themselves best explain this phenomenon. The typical Collins poem opens on a clear and hospitable note but soon takes an unexpected turn; poems that begin in irony may end in a moment of lyric surprise. No wonder Billy Collins sees his poetry as “a form of travel writing” and considers humor “a door into the serious.”

Collins has published eight collections of poetry, including “Questions About Angels,” “The Art of Drowning,” “Picnic, Lightning,” “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” “Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems,” “Nine Horses,” and “The Trouble With Poetry and  Other Poems.” In 1988 he published his very first collection of poetry, “The Apple That Astonished Paris,” with the University of Arkansas Press and his appearance here is in part a way to celebrate that book, which the UA Press is issuing this spring with a new preface by Collins, and to mark the Press’s 25^th anniversary. The Press was founded in 1980 and its first director, distinguished poet Miller Williams, worked closely with Collins to help him edit his first book. Williams, who will introduce Collins at the event, said: “There are not many towns as good to call home as Fayetteville. If there were some way to get Billy Collins to stay here when he comes to visit, there wouldn't be any towns coming even close. Not only is he one of the finest poets in the language, he's one of the finest gentlemen anywhere.  I'm pleased and proud to call him a friend.”

Collins also edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: “Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry” and “180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day.” His work has also appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly and The American Scholar.

Included among the honors Collins has received are fellowships from 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. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for humor in poetry. He has been a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College, and served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years. In June 2001, Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003). In January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate 2004-06.

 “One of the great things about Collins’s poetry is its accessibility,” said Tom Lavoie, director of marketing and sales at the University of Arkansas Press. “For people who have stayed away from poetry since high school, where they were often forced, in Collins’s words, to beat a poem “with a hose / to find out what it really means,” Collins’s poetry will be a breath of fresh air.” As USA Today writes: “Collins captures ordinary life - its pleasures, its discontents, its moments of sadness and joy.” And from one great writer to another, John Updike says that Collins writes “lovely poems ... more serious than they seem, [describing] worlds that are and were and some others as well.” 

The reading is sponsored by the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series, the University of Arkansas Press, the UA Creative Writing Program and department of English.