August 12, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins reads
from his pleasurable and thought-provoking work
at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Billy Collins
• An Evening with the U.S. Poet Laureate
• Author of Nine Horses and Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems
• One of the most popular and acclaimed poets since Robert Frost
• Co-presented with the UCSB Office of Student Life
• Monday, September 15
• 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General public: $20 / UCSB students: $10
• Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, author of seven collections of poetry and Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, will read from his entertaining and illuminating work on Monday, September 15 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall.

Not since Robert Frost has a poet combined such critical acclaim with broad public appeal. Billy Collins publishes regularly in The New Yorker, Poetry and The Paris Review, and his last three books have broken sale records for poetry. His public appearances are almost always sold out events. After a recent reading, the Boston Globe wrote, “The approval was sudden and abundant. The crowd laughed, warmed, sighed and applauded well past what is required for politeness, giving thanks for a poetry that is notable for the welcome it extends....Collins professes to anyone in earshot that poetry is a human exercise, not only or entirely an intellectual one, not only or entirely a scholarly one, not only or entirely an artistic one.”

Nine Horses, Collins’ most recent collection, which will be released in paperback in October, continues his delicate negotiation between the clear and the mysterious, the comic and the elegiac. His poetry is lauded for its approachability, and for taking readers to lyrical conclusions after beginning grounded in the detail of daily life. The 2001 release of Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems led The New York Times Book Review to claim, “There are brainy, observant, spit-shined moments on almost every page....You finish feeling pleased that such a sensible and gifted man is America’s Poet Laureate—young writers have plenty to learn from his clarity and apparent ease.” Over 55,000 copies of Sailing Alone Around the Room are in print, making it a poetry megaseller as most poetic volumes sell in the 1,500 to 2,500 range.

In his capacity as Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the Poetry 180 program designed to make it easy for high school students to hear or read a poem each day of the 180 days of the school year. Collins chose poems he thought were particularly rewarding when heard aloud, poems he believed were not only thoughtful but also immediately pleasurable. Collins also hopes the program’s name suggest a 180-degree turning, back to poetry. On the website for the program he writes, “Hearing a poem every day, especially well-written, contemporary poems that students do not have to analyze, might convince students that poetry can be an understandable, painless and even eye-opening part of their everyday experience.” Random House published an anthology of these poems in 2003.

Billy Collins earned his B.A. from Holy Cross and a Ph.D. in romantic poetry from UC Riverside. Earlier books include The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988, University of Arkansas Press), the National Poetry Series winning Questions About Angels (1991, University of Pittsburgh Press), The Art of Drowning (1995, University of Pittsburgh Press), and his first best-selling volume Picnic, Lightning (1998, University of Pittsburgh Press). In addition to his live readings, he has read on A Prairie Home Companion and been interviewed on Fresh Air, among other high-profile public radio appearances.

On September 15 Billy Collins will also deliver the UCSB Convocation Address from 3-4 pm on the Faculty Club Green. This lecture is free and open to the public and part of UCSB’s annual convocation ceremonies, welcoming new freshmen and transfer students in the entering class of 2003.

Courtesy of Borders Books, works by Billy Collins will be available for purchase and signing at the evening event. This reading is presented by the UCSB Office of Student Life and UCSB Arts & Lectures, and is sponsored by The Upham Hotel and Borders.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.