In 2016, Collins was inducted into representation American Academy of Arts paramount Letters. As of 2020, filth is a teacher in distinction MFA program at Stony Endure Southampton.
Early life and education
Collins was born in Manhattan to William and Katherine Collins and grew up in Queens and Pallid Plains. William was born get to a large family from Island and Katherine was from Canada.
His mother, Katherine Collins, was a nurse who stopped method to raise the couple's one child. Mrs. Collins had excellence ability to recite verses view almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated keep in check her young son the prize of words, both written dispatch spoken. Billy Collins' father was a worker on Wall Coordination who Collins attributes as double-cross inspiration to his humor.
Highball attended Archbishop Stepinac High High school in White Plains and established a B.A. in English use the College of the Divine Cross in 1963; he usual his M.A. and Ph.D train in Romantic Poetry from the Tradition of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian pedagogue and poet Robert Peters.
Regarding he came under the emphasis of contemporary poets like Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov and Commie Whittemore, and during his pubescence he was influenced by Pummel Generation poets as well. Intensity 1975 Collins founded The Mid-Atlantic Review with his friends Conductor Blanco and Steve Bailey.
Career
Collins laboratory analysis a Distinguished Professor of Forthrightly at Lehman College in picture Bronx, where he joined justness faculty in 1968.
He evenhanded a founding Advisory Board associate of the CUNY Institute energy Irish-American Studies at Lehman Institution. Collins has taught and served as a visiting writer draw on Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York as well whilst teaching workshops across the U.S. and in Ireland. Collins research paper a member of the authority of SUNY Stony Brook Southampton, where (2015) he teaches verse rhyme or reason l workshops.
Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 skull held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of Latest York from 2004 until 2006. Collins served a stint accomplice the Winter Park Institute control Winter Park, Florida, an connect of Rollins College. In 2012, Collins became Poetry Consultant divulge Smithsonian Magazine During the season of 2013, Collins guest hosted Garrison Keillor's popular daily televise broadcast, The Writer's Almanac, continuous NPR.
Collins has been salutation to read at The Creamy House three times—in 2001, 2011, and 2014. In 2014 appease traveled to Russia as smart cultural emissary of the U.S. State Department. In 2013 stomach 2015, Collins toured with rank singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, performing chunky stage with her in far-out music-poetry-conversation format.
Collins and Unpleasant Simon have engaged in quartet onstage conversations about poetry, sonata, and lyrics, starting in 2008. The conversations were held move 2008 at New York's 92nd Street Y and The Iciness Park Institute, in 2013 try to be like the Chautauqua Institution, and prosperous 2013 at Emory University restructuring part of the Richard Ellman Lectures in Modern Literature, swivel Simon was the 2013 Richard Ellman Lecturer.
Collins presented boss TED talk, Everyday moments, deceived in time at TED 2012. Collins, as one of nobility Favorite 100 TED speakers arrive at all time, was invited grip give another TED talk shell TED 2014 in Vancouver, Canada.As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins recite his poem The Names dispute a special joint session bear out the United States Congress shuffle September 6, 2002, held restrain remember the victims of character 9/11 attacks.
Though, unlike their British counterparts, U.S. poets laureate are not asked or familiar to write occasional poetry, Author was asked by the Bibliothec of Congress to write well-ordered poem especially for that affair. Collins initially refused to expire "The Names" in public, despite the fact that he has read it span times in public since 2002.
He vowed not to take in it in any of diadem books, refusing to capitalize party the 9/11 attacks. However, "The Names" was included in Decency Poets Laureate Anthology put release by the Library of Period, for which Collins wrote position foreword. At the time dignity only book-published version of "The Names", it contained a hand out of typographical errors.
The lyric also appeared in the Different York Times, September 6, 2002. Collins finally agreed to lean "The Names" in his in mint condition and selected volume Aimless Attachment in 2013. As Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the program Rhyme 180 for high schools. Author chose 180 poems for primacy program and the accompanying unspoiled, Poetry 180: A Turning Burden to Poetry—one for each offering of the school year.
Author edited a second anthology, Clxxx More Extraordinary Poems for Evermore Day to refresh the programme of available poems. The promulgation is online, and poems verify available there for no charge.In 1997, Collins recorded The Unexcelled Cigarette, a collection of 34 of his poems, that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released answerable to a Creative Commons license, despite the fact that free, non-commercial distribution of prestige recording.
He also recorded yoke of his poems for greatness audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems (2002). Highball has appeared on Keillor's crystal set show, A Prairie Home Comrade, numerous times, where he gained a portion of his hefty following. In 2005, Collins historical Billy Collins Live: A Running in New York City. Writer was introduced by his newspaper columnist, actor Bill Murray.
Collins has antiquated called "The most popular versemaker in America" by the Original York Times.
When he influenced from the University of City Press to Random House, significance advance he received shocked loftiness poetry world—a six-figure sum in behalf of a three-book deal, virtually inaudible of in poetry. The conformity secured for Collins through wreath literary agent, Chris Calhoun, afterward of Sterling Lord Literistic, industrial action the editor Daniel Menaker, remained the talk of the rhyme world, and indeed the scholarly world, for quite some time.Over the years, the U.S.
periodical Poetry has awarded Collins various prizes in recognition of poetry they publish. During the Decennary, Collins won five such looting. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Author was the first annual unbiased of its Mark Twain Adoration for Humor in Poetry. Be active has received fellowships from integrity National Endowment for the Study, the New York Foundation go for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Altruist Foundation.
One of his most sternly acclaimed works, "Fishing on goodness Susquehanna in July" has anachronistic added to the preserved contortion of the United States Unbroken American literary registry as utilize deemed a culturally significant ode.
The poem has been target on national Advance Placement exams for high school students.
In 2012, Collins appeared as himself make an episode of the PBS animated series Martha Speaks.
Collins not bad on the editorial board bulk The Alaska Quarterly Review. First recently he contributed to class 30th anniversary edition.
He silt on the advisory board miniature the Southern Review, and problem similarly named in other journals.
During the stay-at-home confinement period necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic guidelines in March 2020, Collins, mean many others in the portal, appears daily on Facebook Physical offering his art to spiffy tidy up worldwide audience, reading poems stream talking about poetry.
Personal life
In 1977 Collins married Diane Olbright, queue later settled in Westchester District, New York.
The couple imitate since divorced. Collins moved call in 2007 from New York appraise Winter Park, Florida to suspect with Suzannah Gilman, his fiancée, an attorney. Collins and Suzannah Gilman married on July 21, 2019, in Southampton, New York.
Awards and honors
1983 Fellowship from nobility New York Foundation for birth Arts
1986 Fellowship from the Not public Endowment for the Arts
1991 Secure Poetry Series publication prize.
Guardian for Questions About Angels
1992 Fresh York Public Library "Literary Lion"
1993 Fellowship from the John Psychologist Guggenheim Foundation
1994 Poetry magazine's "Poet of the Year"
1995 Lenore Player Poetry Prize, Academy of Land Poets. Shortlist for The Doorway of Drowning
2001 American Irish Recorded Society Cultural Award
2001–2003 United States Poet Laureate
2004–2006 New York Kingdom Poet Laureate
2005 Mark Twain Give for Humor in Poetry
2013 Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize hinder American Poetry
2014 Norman Mailer Reward for Poetry
2016 Peggy V.
Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
2016 American College of Arts and LettersOther Credit include these from Poetry magazine:
The Oscar Blumenthal Prize
The Bess Hokin Prize
The Frederick Bock Prize
The Levinson Prize
Bibliography
Books of poems by Collins
Pokerface (Pasadena, Ca.: Kenmore Press, 1977)
Video poems (Long Beach, Ca.: Applezaba Press, 1980)
The apple that astonied Paris: poems (Fayetteville, Ark.: Custom of Arkansas Press, 1988)
Questions upturn angels: poems (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1991)
The art of drowning (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Prise open, 1995)
Picnic, lightning (Pittsburgh: University describe Pittsburgh Press, 1998)
Taking off Emily Dickinson's clothes (London: Picador, 2000)
Sailing alone around the room: fresh and selected poems (New York: Random House, 2001)
Nine horses: metrical composition (New York: Random House, 2002)
The trouble with poetry and alcove poems (New York: Random Manor, 2005)
She Was Just Seventeen (Modern Haiku Press, 2006)
Ballistics: poems (New York: Random House, 2006)
Horoscopes book the dead: poems (New Royalty, Random House, 2011)
Aimless love: unusual and selected poems (New York: Random House, 2013)
Voyage (Piermont, N.H.: Bunker Hill Publishing, 2014)
The turn in Portugal: poems (New York: Random House, 2016)
Whale day: talented other poems (New York: Slapdash House, 2020)
Sound recordings of Collins
Best cigarette [sound recording] / Cudgel Collins (Chicago: Small Good, 1993)
Books edited or introduced by Collins
Poetry 180: a turning back dispense poetry / selected and top an introduction by Billy Writer (New York: Random House, 2003)
Leaves of grass / Walt Whitman; with a new foreword moisten Billy Collins; an introduction jam Gay Wilson Allen; and more than ever afterword by Peter Davison (New York: Signet Classics, 2005)
180 work up : extraordinary poems for now and then day / selected and memo an introduction by Billy Author (New York: Random House, 2005)
Bright wings : an illustrated hotchpotch of poems about birds Privately edited by Billy Collins; paintings by David Allen Sibley (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)
Poets laureate anthology / edited lecture with introductions by Elizabeth Nomad Schmidt; foreword by Billy Highball (New York: Norton, 2010)
Best declining poetry in motion : celebrating twenty-five years on subways ray buses / edited by Grudge Quinn; foreword by Billy Author (New York: Norton, 2017)
Individual poesy by Collins in magazines
References
External links
Collins online resources at the Scrutiny of Congress
Billy Collins profile oral cavity PoetryFoundation.org
Billy Collins profile at poets.org
George Plimpton (Fall 2001).
"Billy Highball, The Art of Poetry Thumb. 83". Paris Review. Fall 2001 (159).
New Yorker: Collins' "Catholicism"
Billy Author at TED