Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Billy Collins to serve a second term as the Library's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
The Poet Laureate concluded the 2001-2002 literary season on May 8 withLibrarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Billy Collins to serve a second term as the Library's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. a lecture on "Hedonism and the Pleasures of Poetry."
His "Poetry 180" program, available on the Library's Web site at www.loc.gov/poetry/180, has been greeted with great enthusiasm across the country. He conceived the Web site to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem each day of the approximately 180 days of the school year, hence the name of the site. He selected the poems with high school students in mind.
Collins' books of poetry include a volume of new and selected poems, "Sailing Alone Around the Room," which was published by Random House last September; "Picnic, Lightning" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); "The Art of Drowning" (1995), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist; "Questions About Angels" (1991), a National Poetry Series selection by Edward Hirsch; "The Apple That Astonished Paris" (1988); "Video Poems" (1980); and "Pokerface" (1977).
His honors include 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.
He is 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 University, and he has served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.
