Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, visited The Hill as the fourth speaker in the School’s "Writers at Work" series on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. Tony Reid '75, Director of the Writing Center, introduced the acclaimed poet and referred to Collins as one the greatest poets in the United States -- if not unquestionably the greatest.
Collins gave a poetry reading to the captivated audience of students, faculty, and parents in the Center For The Arts, sharing a number of his poems including a selections written in the voice of a dog, a young girl, an adult man, and a 10-year-old child. Read more about Collins.
Collins referred to his career as a poet and spoke self-deprecatingly about the processes he uses in writing poetry, commenting that sometimes a poem is born out of inspiration, but other times his inspiration actually stems from irritation at some occurrence or, even, from a "visceral" reaction to what he feels is a truly bad poem.
He spoke about writing Haiku, noting that this difficult, disciplined method of poetry is good practice for poets. In writing Haiku, one “enters into a sort of negotiation with the form,” he said.
Collins is not the first distinguished poet to speak at Hill; he acknowledged that he was “very impressed to find out that Robert Frost preceded me here,” referring to Frost’s visit to Hill in 1961.
Earlier in the day, Collins visited with English students and faculty in Hill’s Writing Center. During a question and answer session he spoke about his time as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003. He recalled being asked to write a poem to commemorate the one-year anniversary of September 11 and how he questioned if this was something he -- a poet who writes about dogs, for example -- could do eloquently. He shared how he woke up at 5 a.m. one morning and was inspired to write a poem that took the shape of an elegy and honored those who had lost their lives. He read that poem, titled “The Names,” during a special joint session of Congress in New York City on September 6, 2002. Read “The Names” here.
Reflecting on his time spent on campus that afternoon, Collins recounted his experience of seated lunch in Hill’s dining hall, commenting wryly that he found “eating lunch in 13 minutes with 500 other people a very exciting experience.”
Following his reading, Collins signed copies of his most recent book, Ballistics, for students and faculty.