U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins to Sign His Books at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Billy Collins, the United States Poet Laureate, will sign copies of his books at Holy Cross on May 23, from 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. in the College bookstore, located on the first floor of the Hogan Campus Center.

Collins, a 1963 graduate of Holy Cross, is the speaker at the College's commencement ceremony on May 24. He was named recently to a second term as poet laureate, a position he calls "a kind of bully pulpit or position of advocacy."

Collins is a professor of English at Lehman College at the City University of New York and writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Picnic, Lightning (1998); The Art of Drowning (1995); Questions About Angels (1991) and the recently published Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems.

His poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks and a variety of periodicals including Poetry, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. Collins' work has been featured in the Pushcart Prize anthology and The Best American Poetry anthologies for 1992, 1993 and 1997. A recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, he has received the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, the Oscar Blumenthal Prize and the Levinson Prize.