He’s been dubbed the “class clown in the schoolhouse of American poetry” by Guernica magazine, known for criticizing the stuffiness and pretension often associated with poetry. But through his own writing and public programs, Billy Collins, this year’s William Starr Distinguished Lecturer, and former United States Poet Laureate (2001 to 2003), has worked to transform poetry’s image, making it more accessible to the masses.
Poetry 180, one of his most successful programs as Poet Laureate, was introduced into the nation’s high schools to help students appreciate poetry, without the expectation of analyzing it. After compiling a book of straightforward poetry, Collins encouraged schools to include a poem a day in the morning announcements. From teachers to janitors, different readers took to the mic, reciting poetry purely for the purpose of enjoyment.
Collins’s poetry fills nine published collections, including The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems, The Art of Drowning, and Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, chosen as the common reading for the class of 2013. He has also published a collection of haiku and edited two anthologies. A former New York State Poet Laureate (2004-2006), Collins has won multiple fellowships and received several awards from Poetry magazine. He was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for humorous poetry and is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York.
“Poetry is clearly very serious for me, but without heaviness or a glib sense of spirituality,” he said in an interview with the New York Times. “I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader's defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more.” Whether he’s referencing the Beatles, enduring a neighbor’s barking dog, or remembering the victims of September 11, he’s best known for writing about seemingly ordinary things, but with a contemplative twist.
Clearly, this formula is working. “I have never before felt possessive about a poet, but I am fiercely glad that Billy Collins is ours,” said author Annie Proulx when Collins was appointed Poet Laureate. “Smart, his strings tuned and resonant, his wonderful eye looping over the things, events and ideas of the world, rueful, playful, warm-voiced, easy to love.”
Sponsored by the Freshman Writing Seminar, the program is only open to the Vassar community and will be held on September 23 at 5:30pm in the Villard Room.