Billy Collins, a popular American poet, was born in New York City in 1941. His works have appeared in anthologies and publications such as Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. Collins writes with a sense or humor and his subjects usually involve the ordinary and everyday life. Collins has received numerous fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2001, he was appointed U. S. Poet Laureate, and in 2004, New York Poet Laureate. In 1992, he served as Literary Lion for the New York Public Library. The Art of Drowning was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and Questions about Angels was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series. Billy Collins is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY).
Major works by Billy Collins
Pokerface (1977)
Video Poems (1980)
The Apple that Astonished Paris (1988)
The Art of Drowning (1995)
The Best Cigarette (spoken word CD) (1997)
Picnic, Lightning (1998)
Questions about Angels (1999)
Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001)
Nine Horses (2002)
Poetry 180 (2003)
The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems (2005)
Billy Collins and the Web
Listen an audio interview with Billy Collins on this site.
To hear Collins read his poems "I Ask You” and “Neither Snow,” visit this site.
Collins’s official website includes an index of all his poems, downloadable audio readings, and etexts of various poems.